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The IDEATE Method

From The IDEATE Method: Identifying High-Potential Entrepreneurial Ideas by Daniel Cohen, Greg Pool and Heidi Neck (SAGE). Ideate is a working tool built around the book's six phases; the wording below is ours, and the book is worth reading in full.

I

Identify

Tell a high-quality problem from a low-quality one before you fall for a solution.

  1. What problem is behind this, stated without any solution in it?
  2. Is it a migraine or a mosquito bite for the person who has it?
  3. Are people already paying for a bad fix?
D

Discover

Go looking for problems where they live, instead of waiting for one to arrive.

  1. What do you know better than most people?
  2. What annoyed you this week, twice?
  3. What do you do every week that is harder than it should be?
Your expertiseYour passionsDaily frustrationsPlaces you have beenThings you do every weekWhere things are heading
E

Enhance

Take something that already exists and add the novelty that makes it worth switching to.

  1. What already works that could be ten times better?
  2. Who else would win if this existed: customer, partner, us?
  3. What business model would make this obvious?
Add noveltyValue for allNew business modelRide another innovationReimagine it
A

Anticipate

Use change to see the opportunity before it is obvious to everyone else.

  1. Who is the customer going to be in five years?
  2. What just became cheap, easy or possible?
  3. What rule, law or platform policy is about to change?
Social and demographicTechnologicalPolitical and regulatoryIndustry structure
T

Target

Find the customer who needs this most, and learn what else they need.

  1. Who has this problem worst, by name if you can?
  2. Why would they buy it from us and not someone else?
  3. Where could you go and watch them have the problem?
E

Evaluate

Score honestly, narrow to three, and make each one defend itself.

  1. Which of these would you still be excited about in a year?
  2. What is the strongest reason each one fails?
  3. What is the cheapest thing you could do this week to find out?

Scoring

Migraine × Enthusiasm + Gut, each from 1 to 5. Migraine is how badly the customer needs it. Enthusiasm is how much you want to work on it. Gut is your instinct for the size of it. The multiplication means a painful problem nobody is excited about loses to one that is both. A card is not scored until all three are set; until then it shows as not scored, never as zero.

What Ideate adds

The ambition dial, from Practical to Moonshot, sets how far Claude reaches. Think bigger climbs any idea three rungs in scope. Neither is in the book; both exist because the brief for this tool was to help people think bigger than they would alone.