[AI-Driven New Business Creation] Why Divergent Thinking Is Essential to Idea Creation: The Qualiteg View

Hello to everyone visiting the Qualiteg blog. I'm Michele. In my work on AI-driven new business development and marketing, there are questions I hear from clients again and again. Through this blog, I would like to offer my own answers to the challenges that anyone considering an AI-based business venture is likely to face.

When your department decides, "Let's come up with a new business!", how do you go about it?

Everyone shares the ideas they brought, but perhaps without realizing it, people defer to the boss and say "sounds good" even when they don't really think so...

There is one "idea person" on the team, and since you are not good at that sort of thing, you leave it to them...

We hear comments like these often in our new business consulting work, and this is a real waste.

The importance of incorporating "divergent thinking" into the idea creation process has gradually become familiar since around the late 2000s, when design thinking began to spread. Overseas, it is recognized by many companies pursuing innovation, but what about Japanese companies?

Are you incorporating it in your organization?

At Qualiteg, as an AI company, we believe that creative thinking is the core of what shapes next-generation technology and richer lives.

Today, I would like to explain why divergent thinking is indispensable to idea creation, along with the reasons behind it.

Generating Ideas from Diverse Perspectives

We believe the greatest advantage of divergent thinking is that it draws out ideas from diverse perspectives that go beyond conventional boundaries.

Part of this is our firsthand experience that the evolution of AI technology in particular is complex, and approaching it from different angles often produces new solutions. But beyond that, we recommend creating a diverse environment; specifically, bringing together roughly eight people who differ in gender, occupation, age, nationality, and so on, to generate ideas together.

In the idea creation phase, the game is won by how far you can let ideas diverge and how many ideas you can produce across many different directions. So, even if it means riding on other members' ideas in the best sense of the phrase, build on what others have said and keep the ideas coming, without holding back!

Passing through this step allows team members to let their thinking roam freely with no risk, and it becomes the foundation from which unexpected combinations and ideas emerge.

Innovation-Cross from Qualiteg Inc. is a co-creation program with a proven track record of supporting innovation across a wide range of industries. From new product development at major manufacturers, to the digital transformation of real estate developers, to customer experience innovation in the service industry, it has produced numerous success stories. Drawing on that experience and expertise, we provide powerful support for your company's innovation.

With a consistent approach spanning analysis of your company's current state, strategy formulation, and implementation support, we realize innovation that would be difficult to achieve in-house through collaboration with outside partners. Using proven methods such as idea workshops, hackathon planning, and the application of AI technology, we deliver reliable results. Bring the proven innovation capability that our track record demonstrates to your company's innovation efforts.

What If Forming a Multinational Team Is Difficult?

Depending on the company, I imagine there are many cases where it is hard to gather people who differ in age, nationality, and so on. What we advise in such cases is to form a team with people from completely different departments or divisions.

To be honest, I understand that talking with the people you interact with every day in your own department produces ideas with a similar flavor and creates a "comfortable atmosphere."

However, the goal here is not to "enjoy a pleasant atmosphere" but to produce many ideas viewed from every possible angle. So, for example, bringing together people such as:

• someone from B2B sales
• a software engineer
• someone from the call center
• a product designer
• someone from B2C marketing
• someone from the legal department
• the department's secretary or general affairs staff

that is, people who are in charge of different products and services in different departments, often gives rise to diversity as well. Client companies that are a little skeptical at first tend to report an especially high sense of freshness and satisfaction after the workshop, which is why Qualiteg recommends this approach.

Stronger Communication and Motivation to Collaborate on Service Development

In divergent thinking, team members share their ideas with one another, build on each other's ideas, try subtracting from them, and influence one another.

This kind of open environment also has the benefit of encouraging collaboration and making it easier for new ideas to emerge as people with diverse backgrounds work together.

Also, in a common corporate pattern, only the planning staff do the planning and then hand it off to in-house engineers to build. We recommend instead involving all stakeholders in idea creation right from the ideation stage.

One reason is, of course, that we want diverse perspectives feeding into the ideas. But there is another: because each person contributes ideas drawing on the expertise cultivated in their own work, in some cases feasibility can be evaluated at the same time.

In addition, involving stakeholders from the earliest stage of the project ensures transparency and deepens understanding of and empathy for the goals, which also makes it possible to lower the barriers between departments.

Above all, the people who took part in the initial idea creation will, throughout project execution and service planning and even after the release to the world, become your allies, your evangelists, and your continuing supporters.

From the perspective of building a base of internal allies at an early stage as well, these approaches are highly recommended.

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 this has caught your interest, or if you have specific requests, please feel free to contact us through the inquiry formhere.

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: engineers, designers, and marketers.

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