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Using Additional Questions in Idea Form Design

Use additional questions to help people think through their ideas in the same way the sponsor and review team members are thinking about the business issue. Common questions to get you started:

• How will your idea impact the customer?
• How will your idea impact the company?
• Do you see any barriers to implementing your idea? How could those be overcome?

The key here in designing Idea Form questions is to ensure these questions align with the review team’s review criteria, and leads the idea generator through a complementary thought process. This leads to ideas that are well formed and focused on business outcomes, which leads to better and more powerful collaboration. 

You’ll also want to achieve a balance on your Idea Form length and complexity. While you can have up to 15 questions on the idea form, the longer or more complex your idea form, the fewer ideas will be submitted – which can sometimes be deliberate:

• Complex events to knowledge workers benefit from several very focused questions (e.g., a highly scientific or technical challenge).
• Simple business issues to diverse audiences benefit from few and/or simple questions (e.g., gathering customer pain points).
• Less complex Idea Forms can also lead to a higher number of weaker ideas. An “all company” challenge might benefit from a more complex idea form to reduce weak or off-topic ideas.
• Questions can also be mandatory or optional – optional questions will make the idea form easier, but may often be left blank. Consider whether the question is truly needed before making it optional.

Idea Form Areas – a special question

Areas are a special question on the Idea Form. Once ideas have been submitted it is possible to look at ideas by Area, report on ideas by Area and even review ideas by Area. Consider natural ways to segment your ideas such as by product line, department impacted or any other natural grouping. When configuring the area the best practice is to have the idea generator choose a single area of best fit vs. multiple areas. This way, the segmentation you’ve designed will be useful as you look at ideas.