Ideation & Innovation
From opportunity to a concept worth implementing.
Somos-Co helps organisations identify future opportunities, understand real customer needs, develop alternative solutions and turn the most promising ideas into concrete concepts.
Five connected steps: explore the future, understand the customer, generate ideas, prioritise ideas and develop the selected concept.
Explore the Future
Understand the Customer
Generate Ideas
Prioritise Ideas
Develop the Concept
Ideation journey
Five steps from future opportunity to concrete concept.
Ideation is not an unstructured brainstorming exercise. Each step connects strategic opportunities, customer insight and business requirements to a traceable selection decision.
Explore the Future
Examine market developments, technology trends, emerging risks, new business opportunities and changing customer expectations.
Understand the Customer
Identify the relevant customer groups and understand what they really need, not only what they ask for.
Generate Ideas
Develop several possible approaches from strategic opportunities, customer insight, business challenges, technology potential and process weaknesses.
Prioritise Ideas
Compare promising approaches against shared criteria and make the reasons for selection transparent.
Develop the Concept
Turn the selected idea into a concrete business or solution concept and identify the open questions for Dynamic Modeling.
Customer insights
Understand what customers really need — not only what they ask for.
Customer needs are collected, challenged and specified systematically. This creates a sound basis for ideas that address a relevant problem.
Select Relevant Customers
Clarify which customer, user or stakeholder groups are affected by the opportunity and a possible solution.
Collect Needs
Bring together statements, observations and existing insight from suitable sources.
Structure Needs
Group related requirements and organise their relationships clearly.
Uncover Underlying Needs
Look beyond expressed requests to reveal the underlying job, expectation or constraint.
Classify Needs
Separate different types of need so they can be assessed appropriately.
Prioritise Needs
Determine which needs matter most for customer value and the concept decision.
Specify Needs
Express prioritised needs clearly enough to guide and test solution alternatives.
Systematic selection
Compare promising ideas against shared criteria.
The evaluation makes assumptions and trade-offs visible. It does not create false precision; it creates a traceable basis for the concept decision.
Customer Value
Guiding question
How relevant is the approach to a prioritised customer need?
Business Impact
Guiding question
How could the approach contribute to the intended business outcome?
Strategic Relevance
Guiding question
How well does the approach fit the organisation’s direction, capabilities and priorities?
Feasibility
Guiding question
Which business, technical and organisational prerequisites are already visible?
Implementation Effort
Guiding question
What time, resources and change would implementation be likely to require?
Risk
Guiding question
Which uncertainties, dependencies and possible side effects need to be tested?
Concept development
A concept concrete enough to test, compare and decide.
The selected idea is developed far enough to clarify its intended value, its main assumptions and the next decision questions.
Opportunity and Customer Need
A clear description of the future opportunity and the relevant customer problem.
Compared Solution Alternatives
Several approaches with documented selection criteria, assumptions and trade-offs.
Selected Target Concept
A concrete business or solution concept with its intended value and main prerequisites.
Questions for Dynamic Modeling
The operational questions, scenarios and assumptions to test before an investment decision.
Next stage · Dynamic Modeling
Ideation generates possible futures. Dynamic Modeling helps determine which future will actually work.
Once a concept is concrete enough, its expected behaviour can be modelled in the real process environment and compared with alternatives. Dynamic Modeling becomes the bridge between idea and investment decision.
Questions the model can investigate
Will the concept work under realistic operating conditions?
What impact will it have on throughput and lead time?
Which bottlenecks will appear?
What resources will be required?
How will changing demand affect performance?
Which alternative provides the strongest basis for the business case?
What should actually be implemented?
Discuss a future opportunity
Which opportunity is worth developing further?
Bring the opportunity, customer question or first idea. Together, we clarify which structured ideation step should come next.