Evaluating Creative and Innovative Ideas


Overview/Description
Target Audience
Expected Duration
Lesson Objectives
Course Number



Overview/Description
Proposing ideas is just the first step to innovation. But for every thousand ideas you generate, only one may have what it takes to make a real difference in your organization. Many great ideas will remain just that--ideas. Unless they have true commercial potential, or offer real advantages, they are destined to remain in the mental "incubator." To determine which ideas are worthy of further attention and which should be discarded, you will need to expose them to evaluation. This can be a painful time, when you feel protective of "your baby." After all, up to this point, you may have been guarding your idea against any criticism. Yet in a hard-nosed business world, all ideas must undergo intense scrutiny to enable their true potentials to be assessed. In this course, you'll be determining what aspects of creative and innovative ideas require evaluation, and then exploring common evaluation techniques, such as Return on Investment (ROI), SWOT analyses, and the Six Thinking Hats theory.

Target Audience
Anyone who wants to be more creative and innovative at work, such as team members and team leaders, and those recently appointed to innovation roles, such as innovation directors, product development managers, and R&D specialists

Expected Duration (hours)
3.5

Lesson Objectives

Evaluating Creative Ideas: the Basics

  • recognize the value of evaluating creative or innovative ideas in an organization.
  • identify the reasons why creative and innovative ideas should be evaluated.
  • identify the criteria for evaluating creative or innovative ideas.
  • determine when a given idea is ready for evaluation.
  • Innovating for Business Performance

  • recognize the benefit of evaluating creative ideas from a business viewpoint.
  • determine whether a given idea should be accepted or rejected, based on organizational criteria.
  • determine if a given SWOT analysis conducted for a hypothetical idea has been done correctly.
  • identify the correct Return on Investment formula.
  • calculate the anticipated Return on Investment for a fictitious innovation or innovations.
  • Assessing the Value of Creative Ideas

  • recognize the value of using different holistic techniques to assess creative ideas.
  • identify examples of intuitive evaluation.
  • match the Six Thinking Hats, as proposed by Edward de Bono, with correct descriptions.
  • use Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats theory correctly in a given evaluation situation.
  • analyze whether a given team works effectively or ineffectively in terms of generating creative ideas.
  • Course Number:
    PD0033