Ideating
What is ideating?
Ideating is the process of generating multiple solution ideas to address a specific target opportunity. Rather than stopping at your first obvious idea, effective ideation involves generating 15-20 ideas focused on solving the same problem.
This practice draws from design thinking's strengths in ideation and helps teams get past obvious solutions to discover more innovative options. Academic research supports this approach—the more ideas you generate, the more diverse and novel those ideas tend to be. If you want to get away from "me too" ideas, focus on generating more ideas.
How should teams approach ideating?
The most effective approach is to start by generating ideas individually first. Research shows that individuals working alone generate more, diverse, and unique ideas than the same people working together as a group. After individual ideation, team members can share and build on each other's ideas.
Make sure you're ideating for a specific target opportunity rather than across your whole opportunity solution tree. Most teams are drowning in ideas, but they're drowning in first ideas that each address different problems. This doesn't help you focus and it misses the point of ideating.
If your team presents multiple solutions, ask: "Do all of these solutions address the same need?" If the answer is no, refocus on your target opportunity. Usually when you refocus, you'll realize you don't have that many ideas and you need to keep ideating.
Generate 15-20 ideas for your target opportunity. This forces you past your first obvious ideas and helps you generate more innovative solutions. You're looking for different variations on how to solve the problem, not different problems to solve.
Why is ideating a key discovery skill?
Ideating solutions is one of the core skills teams need to develop as part of continuous discovery practice, alongside interviewing customers and testing assumptions. It's not something you do once—it's a skill you get better at over time.
Teams who generate more solution ideas have more options to test and learn from. This increases your chances of finding a solution that truly addresses your customer's needs while also delivering on your desired outcome.
Learn more:
- Stop Brainstorming and Generate Better Ideas
Related terms:
- Brainstorming
- Opportunity Solution Tree
- Target Opportunity
- Solutions
- Assumption Testing
Last Updated: October 25, 2025