Working from home or in a hybrid model has drastically changed how we work, affecting both large and small companies worldwide. One of the biggest challenges? Finding new and effective methods for brainstorming and gathering feedback from clients.
Enter Idea Morph, a wonderful tool that can change the traditional approach to brainstorming and engaging clients. It’s not just a simple tool, but an entire process for generating ideas that works quickly and easily, from anywhere, at any time. What’s truly great about Idea Morph is that everything is guided and automated, making the process of organizing and generating ideas smooth and straightforward. Essentially, anyone can become creative and provide good solutions to daily challenges.
Idea Morph is useful both for internal teams looking to collaborate better and for companies that want to involve their clients in the co-creation of campaigns, products, or even new product features.
What is co-creation and why it is important
Though it might sound like a complex process, co-creation is pretty straightforward. It involves close collaboration within a team or with potential clients and users to generate as many concepts and ideas as possible. Co-creation is an important process in implementing a modern work system where teamwork and open innovation are increasingly valued.
The traditional approach to generating ideas involves scheduled brainstorming meetings where the team explores and debates directions. When working in small teams or teams with solid dynamics, brainstorming sessions can be very effective. When each member actively participates, respects others, and listens without criticism, brainstorming works well even without a well-defined process.
However, there are situations where brainstormings become lengthy meetings that don’t really result in useful ideas. In some cases these meetings can negatively impact the team’s harmony. Successful brainstorming sessions usually depend on efficient collaboration and adherence to the creative process, which is meant to prevent blockages. Often, the cause of ineffective brainstorming sessions is the lack of a well-organized creative process for generating and debating ideas and solutions.
Co-creation and idea generation in 5 simple steps
It would be wonderful if inspiration and creativity happened naturally. And sometimes, they do. But in most cases, creativity requires a specific process. This process involves several steps that consistently produce results:
1. Understanding the problem
A deep understanding of the problem enhances the chances of generating relevant and innovative ideas.
2. Inspiration
Ideas come from exploring concepts, combining solutions from one’s own industry or others, analyzing what and how others have done, tracking trends and tendencies, understanding current limitations and exploring how they can be overcome.
3. Individual idea generation
Everyone has a personal process that stimulates their thinking. For some, walks are very effective. Others prefer relaxing activities or individual brainstorming and sketching ideas on paper. Regardless of the personal process, everyone needs time to let their brains process information, digest it, and form new connections.
4. Choosing the best ideas
The numerous ideas generated by a well-structured process need to be narrowed down to just a few of the best. To give all ideas an equal chance and remove subjectivity, it is recommended to use an anonymous voting system.
5. Developing concepts
The selected ideas are combined and refined into detailed concepts, ready for implementation.
Idea Morph provides the ideal framework for co-creation. Each participant can fully understand the challenge and generate valuable ideas in their own time. In Idea Morph, projects come with carefully selected resources to stimulate everyone’s creativity, as well as ideation exercises that bring perspective shifts and increase participants’ ingenuity. Perhaps the most efficient thing from a creative standpoint is that everything happens asynchronously. There’s no need for calls or online meetings, making the entire process accessible to any team member, regardless of location.
The advantages of co-creation
Involving a large number of people in the co-creation process results in more ideas that are diverse and of higher quality. This holds true both for internal teams and when clients and end-users are involved, who can directly contribute valuable perspectives.
Think about creating a new product or service. In this case, it’s a good idea to involve as many people as possible who have direct contact with the customer, as well as colleagues who will be working on the product’s implementation. This approach secures buy-in right from the start, as those involved from the beginning in the product’s thought and ideation process feel a heightened sense of responsibility and loyalty.
Since it’s an asynchronous process and a digital tool, Idea Morph can be used by any employee or potential client, regardless of the time or location. Moreover, the number of participants can be virtually unlimited. There are no live meetings, no calls, no meeting rooms to be booked, no schedules to be aligned.
As far as a product’s success goes, inviting clients into the co-creation process adds tremendous value. The ideas they generate are grassroots, stemming from needs they are intimately familiar with. Ultimately, the company not only discovers fresh ideas but also opportunities that might otherwise have been missed or unnoticed by competitors.
Implementing co-creation
Every new journey begins with a first step and some good planning. If you decide to start implementing co-creation, it’s wise to have some help to make sure everything goes smoothly. Without good results, it can be very challenging to convince your team to adopt new ways of working or processes. That’s why it’s advisable to use a facilitator or a tool like Idea Morph, which simplifies the whole process. Idea Morph acts as a virtual facilitator, helping you stay on the right track from the start.
A recent example of a successful project is a major bank in Romania that initiated a co-creation process with its customers, inviting 4,000 participants. Within just two hours of launching, 800 had registered, generating 900 ideas, and in two weeks, the number of ideas had soared to 5,000. Idea Morph is a tool that works and can be used for many purposes, from building great marketing campaigns, to building a revolutionary product or service.
Idea Morph is a project co-financed within the “SME Growth Romania – Support for Startups” program, with the Innovation Norway fund as the program operator.
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