Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide - Product Strategy Development: Idea Generation and Screening

CREATING NEW FOODS
THE PRODUCT DEVELOPER'S GUIDE

CHAPTER 3
Product Strategy Development:
Idea Generation and Screening

3.4 FREE IDEA GENERATION

Free or lateral thinking can be used by the group or the individual. Brainstorming, by a group of people, is common in companies who want to foster creativity in the company, and for product ideas it is called the PIG (Product Idea Generation) group to focus it onto product ideas and away from general brainstorming. The individual, often called the inventor, is the person who develops their own creative techniques to develop new ideas. Individuals can be taught techniques to improve their creativity.

3.4.1 The group

Brainstorming (or the product idea generation, PIG, session) is a group technique to develop ideas concerning a specific problem. It can be either informal, free brainstorming, where the general problem area is described and then ideas allowed to generate, or a formal, nominal group technique where the general problem is described, members write down 3 to 4 ideas and produce these for the discussion.

It is useful to use a variety of people, for example an engineer (knowledge of processing), salesperson (knowledge of the market), purchasing person (knowledge of the raw material and ingredient market), customer/consumer (knows their needs and wants), graduate trainee (new to company), retailer (knowledge of available products).

One question is - do you have them in a mixed group or in separate groups? A variety of people stimulate discussion into a wider area, but sometimes they can be antagonistic or competitive and this stifles the creative atmosphere. For example, in food service product development, the chefs can be suspicious of each other and it can be more useful to have a mixed group of chefs, product developers and restaurant customers. In developing ingredients for a group of food manufacturing companies, it may be impossible to bring a group of the companies' product developers together because of secrecy and competitive influences. It is important to select groups for each project to give the idea generation required, and not always have the same group - creativity may go stale.

There are various techniques that can be used in idea generation and they are selected according to their suitability for the task.

Quantity of ideas is wanted, so that original ideas can develop in the discussion. Modification or combination of one idea with another idea, and development from one idea to another, are encouraged. Unusual, remote or wild ideas are sought. Wild ideas are useful because they often open completely new areas of thought. There is no criticism of ideas. All ideas are valid at this stage. No member is allowed to either pressurise the group to accept their idea or to make 'fun' of any idea.

3.4.2 The individual

The inventor is always important in all areas of idea generation. Such people may be scattered throughout the company - the consumer researcher, the product developer and the product designer are expected to be creative, but often the operational people in production and marketing have original ideas because they are constantly presented with problems which need solutions. The question is how to collect these ideas and develop them further. The old version of the suggestion box and its modern version of the e-mail and text message is an avenue for ideas in the company, but there is also a need for personal contact, both for encouraging ideas and collecting them. Many senior staff have difficulties in providing the creative stimulus to the individual and also in keeping the communication gate open.

The individual can help their own creative ability by ‘doodling’, keeping an ‘ideas’ notebook, ‘playing’ with the products and with equipment. We have all met them in companies - the person at the Monday morning tea-break who produces the weekend's inspirations. They can be annoying but they are often the ones with original ideas.