Coming Up With The Best Ideas
The Best Ideas
If there is one thing I can talk about all day, it’s ideas. I’m an idea person through and through, and love bringing them to life. But how do you know when you have a great idea on your hands that’s ripe for production?
Let’s find out.
Bringing an Idea to Life
For some people, coming up with ideas (and lots of them) is easy. For others, they get stuck and need help. Whatever your starting point, it’s always helpful to make sure you’re moving forward with the right idea, before investing too much time and energy.
When determining the best idea to bring to life, follow these steps:
1. Identify Your Idea Selection
2. Develop Your Best Idea
3. Check the Viability
Identifying Your Idea Selection
With ideation, the paths to your destination are endless. Anything is possible. Ideas comes from everywhere, and everyone. Just take a minute to look around, breathe and see what comes to you naturally.
Even if you are bent on moving forward with one idea, it’s always a good idea to examine all viable ideas available to you. After all, you never know what’s just around the corner. This is where your idea selection comes into play.
Steps for creating your idea selection:
1. Brainstorm – the art of brainstorming eliminates the word no; take a piece a paper and jot down all ideas that get you excited
2. Collaborate – some of the best ideas come from working with others and layering on each other’s ideas; decide if this is a solo venture or one you can partner on
3. Refine – after brainstorming all your ideas, pick the idea that makes the most sense while getting you fired-up
Once you’ve selected your best idea, you can move forward with the next step in bringing your idea to life.
Developing Your Best Idea
Think of your idea like a crown jewel. You want to make sure it’s bright, shiny and ready to dazzle your audience. It also needs to have the right structure to take you where you need to go.
Ask yourself:
· What is your ultimate goal?
· What does your idea need to be produced?
· What are your audience’s expectations?
The trick with this stage is to invest just enough of your time to flesh it out; but not too much of your time, in case it’s the wrong idea.
When developing your idea, try using these steps:
1. Create a Treatment – sketch out your idea from beginning to end using basic points; make sure you have all the details needed while addressing any gaps
2. Research It – perhaps you have a basic sketch of your idea but need additional information; take time to research your idea and any other elements needed for production
3. Ask for Help – collaboration is an incredible tool for development; seek out a friend, colleague or expert who can help work through the details
By completing this stage, you should have a pretty good understanding of how strong your idea is and if it’s ready to move on to the next stage.
Checking the Viability
The last step before deciding to move forward with an idea is checking the viability. Of course, nothing is ever 100% guaranteed – but, there are a few mechanisms available to gauge audience appeal and potential likeability.
Before you start, ask yourself:
- What does success look like to me?
Everyone has a different vision of success – and that’s quite all right. Ironing it out before you get started – along with your benchmarks and expectations – will help get you where you need to go.
When determining the viability of your idea, try these steps:
1. Socialize It – take your idea to a handful of people and ask them what they think; their response will give insight on how strong your idea is and if there are gaps that need to be addressed
2. Study the Market – research similar ideas that are already available; your findings will give an indication of what works and what doesn’t
3. Understand Audience Expectations – create a profile of your audience to determine what they like; this will show you how to align your idea with what they’re already looking for
The objective of this stage is to determine the viability of your idea, so you can move forward and have some fun.
In Conclusion
Investing time and energy into an idea can be risky – especially if you don’t have a good sense of its viability. Using this process will allow you to feel confident about your idea while bringing to life a piece your audience loves.
Join me for my next blog where I talk about audience pleasers.
Let me know your thoughts! Share your comments below.