You're brainstorming ideas for R&D. How do you choose between creativity and feasibility?

One thing I have found useful is to understand the needs upfront, especially the 'unstated needs', which I believe are the most difficult to grasp. Once the needs are understood, the choice between creativity and feasibility would depend on the needs of the project. Sometimes it may require a more creative approach and sometimes a less creative approach itself may suffice. All depending on the needs.

When brainstorming for R&D, start by assessing the needs and goals of the project. Identify the problem you’re solving and the requirements of your target audience. Evaluate how creative ideas align with these needs and whether they address real-world challenges effectively. Assess feasibility by considering available resources, technology, and time constraints. Balance creativity with practical constraints to ensure your ideas are innovative yet actionable. Prioritize concepts that meet both the needs of the market and the practicalities of implementation, ensuring your solutions are both visionary and viable.

Un equipo multidisiplinario, que incluya y/o contemple la realidad del posible cliente o beneficiario, toda innovacion de servicio o producto tiene un usuario final, el objetivo es satisfacer esa necesidad, alineada con la mision, vision y objetivos de la empresa o institucion.

The first step in choosing between creativity and feasibility in R&D is to assess the needs of your project, market, or problem you’re trying to solve. Understanding the core requirements and constraints will guide your brainstorming process effectively.

Assessing needs at the outset of any R&D initiative is crucial from both internal and external stakeholder perspectives. Internally, this ensures team alignment, guiding creative efforts towards shared goals and optimizing resources. It fosters a culture of purposeful innovation, where ideas are evaluated for impact and feasibility. Externally, understanding market demands and customer pain points builds trust and relevance. It demonstrates a commitment to solving real problems and delivering value, strengthening stakeholder relationships and market positioning. This approach ensures that creativity is strategic and impactful for all stakeholders.

Encourage free-flowing ideation without immediate constraints. Allow your team to explore wild and unconventional ideas that may push boundaries. Emphasize creativity and open-mindedness during brainstorming sessions, where all suggestions are welcomed and considered. This approach fosters innovation and can lead to groundbreaking solutions. Ensure that, after the ideation phase, you systematically evaluate each idea’s practicality, feasibility, and alignment with project goals. Balancing this free-spirited creativity with structured assessment will help in generating effective and visionary R&D outcomes.

Me ha resultado útil en procesos de generación de ideas propiciar escenarios en donde todas las opciones son válidas, es decir, en esta etapa aún no se descartan opiniones de ningún colaborador. En algunos casos las ideas que parecen no ser tan coherentes dan lugar a recorrer el camino que conduce a lograr soluciones más eficientes e implican menores retos.

Encouraging free ideation is essential for unlocking creativity. Create an environment where all ideas are welcome, no matter how unconventional they may seem.

Ideating freely in R&D means team members can generate and explore ideas without constraints, fostering an environment of creativity and innovation. However, this does not mean a complete absence of boundaries. Ethical guidelines, budget constraints, regulatory requirements, and alignment with organizational goals still need to be considered. Within these boundaries, innovation can be achieved by encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration, leveraging diverse expertise, and maintaining a focus on problem-solving. Structured brainstorming sessions, incentivizing creative thinking, and utilizing rapid prototyping can also help balance freedom with practical considerations, ensuring that innovative ideas are both groundbreaking and feasible.

Indeed, I always told my students that any crazy idea is welcome! Novel, creative ideas could be excavated from free brain storming which are allowed to pass over boundaries, and even go to fantasy.

Once you’ve gathered a diverse range of ideas, the next step is to filter them based on relevance and feasibility. Evaluate each idea against key criteria such as technical feasibility, market potential, cost, and alignment with your project’s goals. Use tools like SWOT analysis or feasibility matrices to objectively assess each concept. Involve key stakeholders in this process to ensure that the chosen ideas are both innovative and practical. This systematic filtering ensures that you focus resources on ideas with the highest potential for success, while maintaining alignment with project objectives.

Once you have a broad set of ideas, the next step is to filter them based on feasibility. This involves evaluating each idea against your project’s goals, constraints, and available resources.

Filtering ideas in R&D involves systematically evaluating and selecting the most promising concepts from a pool of creative ideas. The process begins with several hypotheses generation, capturing all ideas without judgment to encourage creativity. These ideas are then refined using criteria such as strategic alignment, potential impact, and innovation level. Initial validation methods like stakeholder engagement and POC testing are crucial. Engaging stakeholders early provides valuable feedback and aligns the ideas with market needs. POC testing allows for practical demonstration and assessment of feasibility. Engaging cross-functional teams throughout the process guarantees diverse perspectives and addresses practical challenges.

I would agree with this narrowing of ideas on table to reach to feasible ideas which are worth to invest on them. Sources are always limited and should be directed to the most promising feasible ideas.

"As I navigate the idea generation process, I recognize the importance of filtering my concepts through the lens of feasibility. I need to balance my creative enthusiasm with a dose of practicality, considering factors like technical limitations, resource availability, and time constraints. This step is crucial in distilling my ideas down to those that are both innovative and achievable. By doing so, I ensure that my R&D efforts are focused on ideas that have the potential to make a real impact, rather than getting bogged down in unrealistic or unworkable concepts."

Start prototyping as soon as you have a viable idea to bring it to life quickly. Early prototypes, whether they're sketches, models, or basic versions of the final product, help visualize and test concepts before full-scale development. This approach allows you to identify potential issues and gather feedback early in the process, saving time and resources. Rapid prototyping also facilitates iterative improvements, enabling you to refine and enhance the product based on real-world testing and user input. This method bridges the gap between concept and execution, making sure that creativity aligns with practicality.

After achieving a successful POC, the next step is transitioning to early prototyping and testing. This phase involves developing a functional prototype that embodies the core features validated during the POC. Rapid prototyping techniques, such as simulations, can be employed to quickly create and iterate on the design. Early testing is conducted to identify and rectify any issues, focusing on functionality, usability, and performance. Engaging with cross-functional teams and external stakeholders ensures a holistic evaluation. This iterative process of prototyping and testing accelerates refinement, reducing risks and ensuring the product meets regulatory, technical and user requirements.

Diversify with prototyping as per the problem statements initially conceived for target stakeholders. The praticality of each diversified constitutents that enabled the intermediate steps in the prototyping makes one learn about the assumptions that could have gone unnoticed. Such refinements plug the inefficiencies of the prototypes and provide direction to qualitative improvements early on during the project.

Creating early prototypes helps in validating the feasibility of your ideas. Prototyping allows you to test and refine concepts before committing significant resources.

What does early stage mean here! It is a vague statement, and could be quite different, and in many researches impossible to construct. It is always wise to have a prototype of the final research output, however, this general statement does not help that much.

As a designer, balance creativity and feasibility in R&D by first brainstorming freely to generate innovative ideas, then filtering them based on their potential impact and resource needs. Assess each idea’s technical viability, market demand & cost. Prioritize ideas, create quick prototypes, and gather feedback. Evaluate risks and allocate resources wisely, staying flexible to adapt as new insights come in. This approach helps ensure your designs are both creative and practical, pushing boundaries while remaining achievable.

Iteration is the fundamental basis of all improvement. Iterative development is key to balancing creativity and feasibility. Continually refining and improving your ideas through multiple iterations ensures they are both innovative and practical.

"Rigorous iteration is like polishing a gemstone. It makes your idea shine brighter with each try. This process turns good ideas into great ones, making them creative and practical. Iteration helps you fix flaws, find new opportunities, and improve your idea step by step. Keep iterating to make your solution the best it can be and turn your idea into something amazing."

Sounds logical. In each trail, hopefully, you resolve one problem, or fix a wrong interaction between different elements of the prototype. There is no straight path toward a final product.