Guideline: Managing Ideas
This guideline addresses many of the common elements that are intrinsic in a comprehensive idea management process and provides guidance on how to apply them to managing ideas for managing a product portfolio.
Main Description

The process of managing ideas can be best described as an idea or innovation pipeline in which "best of breed" organizations apply a systematic and repeatable series of idea management or innovation processes to advance an idea from its inception to delivery.   

Idea management processes vary from one organization to another, and they are dependent on the product management method that the organization uses (such as Stage Gate or Pragmatic Marketing).

Sources of ideas

As the Product Management Hub diagram in Figure 1 depicts, there can be numerous sources of ideas and product requirements. It is essential that the idea management process to be employed for managing product portfolios include the identification of the sources from which ideas are required (or expected) to be collected, as well as the process by which they will be captured.

Figure 1. Product Management Hub and potential sources of ideas and products requirements

Product management hub illustrating the potential sources of ideas and product requirements

A key objective of managing ideas is to establish a process framework that effectively supports the receipt and advancement of ideas in a manner that is responsive to market needs and profitable to the organization. 

Receiving and qualifying idea submissions

The process defined for receiving and registering ideas should strive to systematically capture vital information that facilitates the validation of the idea's worthiness for consideration. Information such as the market problem addressed, strategic alignment, affected markets, risk, and return on investment (ROI) are examples of data points that help to ensure that an idea is qualified to be considered for selection. 

Prioritization of ideas and requests

For all product and project portfolios, the challenge is to balance scope against the constraints of schedule, budget, staff resources, business needs, and quality goals. For the trade-off decisions that need to be made to achieve an optimal balance, you must give consideration to what information and data points must be provisioned so that you can judge and measure the relative importance of one idea or request in relation to others.

To enable management to distinguish the relative values of different ideas, it is essential to consider information such as strategic alignment, estimated value contribution, risk and cost to implement, competitive advantage, compliance and regulatory implications, and so forth.

If the organization has adopted and established SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) data for its various products, the ability to determine how an idea or request improves a product's SWOT position will also help to ensure that the right ideas or requests rank higher in the selection process.