[AI-Driven New Business Creation] Qualiteg's View on What to Do and What Not to Do in Idea Creation

Hello to everyone visiting the Qualiteg blog. I'm Michele. Working on AI-driven new business and marketing, I often receive certain questions from clients. Through this blog, I would like to offer my own answers to the challenges that people considering AI-based business development commonly face.

At Qualiteg, where we are constantly developing services that leverage AI technology, we believe that idea creation is the foundation for generating new value. Today, I would like to share some concrete advice on what to do, and what to avoid, in the idea creation process.

What to Do in Idea Creation

1. Embrace diverse perspectives
In idea creation, it is important to gather a wide range of opinions and perspectives. By actively involving team members with different backgrounds in age, gender, experience, and job role, new perspectives and fresh ideas emerge.

At the ideation stage, don't worry about how much knowledge each person has. Instead, provide everyone with research materials and other high-quality input beforehand, and then generate ideas as a whole team.

2. Keep creating ideas with an open mind
In idea brainstorming sessions, you often hear comments like:

"Company A is already doing that."

"I thought of that idea a while ago and dropped it."

The more someone wants to show off their knowledge, the more likely they are to make critical comments, and as a result, people with less knowledge become intimidated and stop speaking up.

Criticism at the early stage tends to obstruct the creative process and harm the team's interests, so in order to raise the creativity of the entire team, refrain from critical remarks.

3. Make use of generative AI
Make use of generative AI, which holds more knowledge than any individual possesses.
Generative AI is also extremely effective in idea creation.

By using generative AI, you can obtain ideas that go beyond conventional boundaries, as well as new perspectives. AI can generate original proposals from vast amounts of data and present unexpected combinations and solutions. You may use the ideas generative AI produces as they are, but adding human wisdom as the essential ingredient will lead to more diverse and original ideas.

4. Prototype early and validate
This depends on the industry, but when we consult for manufacturers, for example, many clients build a simple prototype the moment an idea emerges, see it for themselves, get a real feel for the idea's merits, and then move on to the next step.

(In the past, we have even had brilliant engineers bring a prototype to the brainstorming session to present their idea!)

Even if you are not a manufacturer, when considering something like SaaS, we recommend building UI design mockups or designing a customer journey to visualize how users will experience the service, aligning the team's understanding, and moving to the next step with confidence.

It is also a mistake to do this with only the planning staff at this stage. If you push ahead with something you merely wish were possible without knowing whether it can actually be built, the project often ends up dropped when it turns out it cannot be built.

Technical feasibility and market feasibility need to be fundamentally assessed at an early stage, so if possible, it is good to conduct a feasibility study at this stage as well, one that goes beyond usability and gives you a sense of whether you can build it in-house or by commissioning another company.

In today's rapidly changing business environment, continuous innovation is essential for sustainable growth. Innovation-Cross from Qualiteg Inc. is a co-creation support program designed with your company's long-term growth in mind. We provide comprehensive support, from precise strategy formulation based on analysis of the current situation to execution support for creating innovation through collaboration with external partners.

Through diverse approaches such as idea workshops, hackathon planning, and the application of AI technology, we realize innovation that is "difficult to achieve alone" and build a foundation for competitive advantage and sustainable growth. Our experienced professional consultants work alongside you to create innovative value that delivers both short-term results and long-term growth. Today's success and tomorrow's growth, through the power of co-creation.

What Not to Do in Idea Creation

1. Don't fixate on a single idea
Maintaining flexibility in the idea creation process is extremely important. Creative thinking requires exploring many possibilities and evaluating ideas from various angles.

A case we often hear about is:

"Everyone defers to the boss's idea and only comes up with variations of it."

In corporate life, the desire to look good in front of one's boss is understandable, but if you flatter a poor idea with a "great idea" and later end up building a service that doesn't sell, it is that very boss who will be in trouble. If you don't think it's good, you should offer an alternative.

Fixating too much on a particular idea carries the risk of overlooking other promising options and more effective solutions. Spending all your time on that one idea alone is a waste, too.

The key is to select the best option later from a broad range of choices, so at this stage, don't fixate on one idea; generate as many ideas as possible, across a wide range.

2. Don't judge ideas on the spot
Avoid judging whether an idea is good or bad right there on the spot. Early ideas are keyword-based and don't yet have specific use cases identified, yet a great many people are eager to judge them immediately, saying things like:

"What does that even mean? That doesn't make sense."

"Company B is already doing that."

Mercari was born as a startup, but if it had been at a large corporation, someone might have said:

"Isn't that the same as Yahoo! Auctions?"

and it might never have come into the world.

It is rare for a service that will one day generate hundreds of millions in revenue to be fully conceived in a matter of seconds, so ideas need to be carefully developed later, updated over time, and polished.

Also, judging on a keyword basis misses the point. For example,
even if another company offers a similar service, that itself means there is a market for it,
and

it is our view at Qualiteg that services can look entirely different depending on the quality of the user experience.

It is very common for a simple initial idea to grow, through continued discussion, into a service that offers an innovative solution. For that reason, we do not recommend judging ideas immediately at this phase.

Thank you very much for reading this column to the end. At Qualiteg, we provide training and consulting on AI technology and on methods for planning new businesses. If you are interested, or have specific requests, please feel free to contact us through the inquiry form here.

We also run a well-received workshop for those who want to master the steps of new business creation. The training focuses on having each participant think about the business from an executive's point of view, and the content is suitable not only for planning staff but also for their counterparts in engineering, design, and marketing.

We sincerely look forward to hearing from you. Please stay tuned for our next column.