38 • 100 GREAT BUSINESS IDEAS
In practice
IDEO, a prominent American design company, believes that there
are several stages in deep-dive prototyping (for further information
see The Art of Innovation: Lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s
leading design fi rm by Tom Kelley and Jonathan Littman).
- Understand your market, customers, technology, and perceived
constraints. - Observe people in real-life situations.
- Synthesize and organize the key themes from the fi rst two
phases. - Visualize: this often involves intensive brainstorming and
discussion. Imagine new concepts and ideas around the main
themes of the design. - Prototyping is next, and this involves building ideas and physical
brainstorming. - Refi ne and streamline your ideas. Again, brainstorm ways to
improve the prototype and overcome obstacles, and narrow and
focus your concepts. Evaluate and prioritize your ideas, and
decide how they will be implemented.
Other valuable aspects of creative problem solving that may be
applied when time is tight include:
- Tr ying fi rst (and asking for forgiveness later).
- Test marketing.
- Ensuring that teams are as varied and diverse as possible.
- Seeking external input.