7 Criteria to Select the Best Idea

Leading the innovation process requires getting your team to develop a lot of ideas (good and bad ones) and connecting them in creative ways. It’s an ideation journey that’s at once fun, exhilarating, and frustrating. You need to present the criteria you used to support your decision. The following are some criteria that you should consider.

Clarity

By choosing an idea that has the fewest unknowns a leader can safeguard against surprises and disasters.
A leader who promotes innovation won’t always take the well-traveled road, but won’t leave behind their map either.

Usability

Does the idea fulfill a practical need? Is it utilitarian? That is, does it answer some particular problem or meet some particular market demand. The practicality, usability, and marketability of an idea are crucial.

Integration

Often ideas and prototypes are wonderful in their own right, but outliers in the organizational strategy may not receive the organizational support necessary to sustain the viability of the effort. Great ideas, useable prototypes must be integrated, or capable of being integrated with the overall strategy of the organization.

Stability

Is this a niche idea answering a one-time unique need or customer demand? Does the idea have some market stability over time, or is it a fad? Ideas that become antiquated before they even reach market are ideas that should be selected with extreme caution.

Profitability

Competing ideas are always ranked by their perceived earning potential, but the answer is not always clear. It’s an innovation leader’s unique job to keep an eye not only on an idea’s dissemination potential and revenue opportunity, but also on the other factors discussed above.

Scalability

Ask yourself if the prototype is capable of being scaled. Can it be duplicated with consistency, meet continuous standards, and be replicated in such a way that it can be produced and produced again without constantly being reinvented or adjusted?