Don’t go blue sky – find ‘peeve points’ instead

Too often, I hear about people running “blue sky” brainstorms. You know those sessions where you get a group of people together in a room and ask them to come up with ideas.

Any idea is a good idea (or so the facilitator says), and people typically leave these sessions with a bunch of ideas generated. However, the big problem is that most of the ideas, if implemented, would take the organisation way off strategy because the idea generation was unfocused.

Instead, what you want to do is focus your idea generation efforts around the most profitable challenges and opportunities that your organisation can look to solve.

One of the ways Inventium helps organisations do this is through identifying “peeve points”. Peeve points are those things your product or service does – or even what one of your competitors does – which frustrate or piss off your customers.

Peeve points are one of the richest and most profitable things you can look to solve through innovation. I recommend using one or all of the following methods to identify them for your organisation:

Observe – Watch customers interacting with your product or service. Keep an eye out for “work-arounds” (a temporary fix to a problem that a customer has created), swearing and general frustration. All of these things indicate a clear opportunity for you to innovate your offering.

Ask – Ask your customers about the things that frustrate them most about your product or service category. After speaking to a number of customers, themes will start to emerge. If you can solve a frustration that a large portion of your customers are complaining about, then chances are you have a profitable innovation on your hands.

Do – Use the product or service yourself and write down anything you personally find frustrating or annoying about the experience.

Once you have identified the biggest peeve points or frustrations, you are now ready to start generating ideas, which will be focused around something your customers will actually want.