Idea management methods - Idea Lifecycle

Often good idea requires additional efforts to adapt this idea to the reality. There are many good methods for idea processing, such as brainstorming, mind mapping and so on. Mind Pad is software to support your idea processing tasks.

Why Mind Pad can support different idea processing methods?

Uniqueness of the Mind Pad bases on its object-oriented approach. It’s a tool, which can be adapted to many business tasks and many different methods for idea processing, problem solving and knowledge representation. 

We know that the difference between mind mapping and concept mapping is that concept map describes relationships, but mind map describes subject domains. Mind Pad allows creating classical mind map, but also it allows writing text on links, so mind map turns to concept map. 

Also, Mind Pad can be used for any subject representation, because of opportunities that it provides to create your own models and styles of frames. You can create your frames and visualize your specific problem workspace. 

Simple key shortcuts provide supporting team conversations and brainstorming methods, because new frames and branches can be created in a very simple, quick and easy way. Concrete way of different idea producing methods with Mind Pad will be described in the following. But the main features which provide such a free adaptability of Mind Pad are custom designed objects. Meaning that you can turn Mind Pad for your own specific tasks very easy.  

Lear more about Mind Pad 2.0. functions and benefits.

Idea processing. Stages and methods.

What is idea processing? In the beginning of any new activity, business or problem you have one main idea. It should be well outspoken. For example it could be: “I want to create outstanding program for C++ code checking” or “I want to raise price for our product” and so on. Write this idea down to see your end goal. 

Let's start ideas processing with ... mind mapping

Then you should make your idea well-defined. What features should your program have or how much do you want to raise your price? Any idea is a complicated thing and you should clearly know what you really want. Map out everything you know about your idea. That is mind mapping method. It is very simple – idea is a central topic, all details are branches.  

• Learn more about mind mapping technique.

Describe ideas in details with process mapping 

The next stage in idea processing is visualizing idea’s data domain. Everything is interconnected in our world and you always should be clear in your mind about this. Represent this context as a concept map to define all relationships which influence on your idea. For example, here you can find out that your competitor will make good use after your prices rising. 

• Learn more about concept mapping techniques.

Find opportunities with brainstorming 

When you look at your idea in the context, you see problems with its realization. Often, you should think about it and offer some steps for avoiding this. It could be difficult and maybe you will need to use brainstorming methods to generate a decision.  

Brainstorming (sometimes referred to as Word Storming or Thought Showering)  is an organized approach for producing ideas by letting the mind think without interruption. Brainstorming has many applications but it is most frequently used in obtaining ideas for new products and making improvements to existing products; developing ideas for advertising campaigns; finding ways of improving business and production processes; generates sharing and discussion of ideas while stimulating participants to think.

With Mind Pad you can use a modified variant of brainstorming, when ideas are judged and put into an organized structure as opposed to the classical brainstorming where judgment is reserved for later stages.

... or use nominal group technique

Maybe it will be defensible to use nominal group technique to get rank-ordered list of ideas. Nominal group technique is a type of brainstorming that introduces structure to the process. It is useful in ensuring that all participant have an equal say and can be used to generate a rank-ordered list of ideas, if you can use your team to help you with some problem.  

Typically each participant is asked to tell their ideas. Moderator writes down each idea as a branch in Mind Pad. Then each participant should give each idea a score. Scores summed, providing a rank-ordered list. To get final result – use reporting feature.

Now it's a time to act

After that you should create a plan with dates and exact actions. Here you can use knowledge representation methods because at this moment you have a lot of information about your project. At the end of idea producing you know what you really want and what you should do to make it real.

Mind Pad and idea processing methods.

Now we know some methods supporting idea processing. Let’s see how Mind Pad can help you with it. 

• To describe your idea you can use the base Mind Pad feature – creating mind maps. User-friendly interface, new techniques for managing map topics will help you with it. Learn how to get started with Mind Pad.

• To create a concept map for the context of your idea you should just add writing text on links. Double click on link between two frames and put some comments into the text box. Learn more about links.

• To use nominal group technique you can create new custom frame using Mind Pad editor with score property and write small script for summarizing. Learn more about object-oriented mapping.

• To create a plan – add date property to standard frame and use images to picture task our stages specific.

• At the end – create one mind map to unite all results of idea processing with your idea as a central topic and all your stages as a branches. 

Now you have the integrated complex view of you idea, it’s difficulties, advantages and realization plan. All this is the half of success already.  

Idea Life-cycle

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