generating product ideas

Continually generating ideas for products and product features is key. As I've mentioned before it's not important WHO has the idea, it's only important that the product manager FIND the best ideas to incorporate in to the product.

Whatever your source (users, target audience, company, client, product team) one of the most effective ways to identify and organise the best ideas from a group of individuals is to run a group thought shower.

How to run your thought shower:

• Book a room and invite your participants (go for an airy room with plenty of places to write down ideas.)
• Try not to make one session last longer than 1.5 hours. (We all get tired pretty quick.)
• Start the session with a statement of a problem you are trying to solve or a scenario/outcome you are aspiring towards.
• Break the session in to 3/4/5 sections.
• Keep the sections relatively short (15-20 minutes is ideal.)
• Have one (or more) specifically recording ideas (take photos of notes on a white-board, use post-its, use a separate piece of large paper.)
• Begin the session with broad discussion section and use subsequent sections to get more definition on the strongest ideas.
• Attempt to end with no more than a handful of specific ideas or themes that the group agrees are the strongest candidates for taking forward.
• Always write-up the results and circulate to the group post-session.
• Don't make it any more complicated than the above.