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Selecting the best ideas


Iram Yasin of Oxfam explains Oxfam's approach to selecting the best ideas. You can see her Prezi here.

One thing that distinguishes successful organisations from those with lesser rates of growth is the adoption of an innovation process. It is not so important what the process is as long as it exists. Part of that process is filtering ideas.

There is no right way to filter. The method that works best will be the one that fits with the culture of your organisation. You can read about two very different approaches in the first few posts in the Selecting Ideas series.

Other posts in the series provide insights on selecting ideas and useful tools for narrowing down your selection.

Selecting Ideas 1: Top Tips from Paul Vanags, Oxfam

Paul Vanags Head of Innovation OxfamMany charities are very good at coming up with ideas but struggle to take any of them forward. 

Organisations with an innovation process in place tend to have better growth than those that don't.  Part of any innovation process should be filtering for ideas worth taking forward. 

Paul Vanags, Head of Innovation at Oxfam explains Oxfam's approach to selecting the best ideas.

Selecting Ideas 2: Guest Blog - Groundwork UK

Graham DuxburyAt December's Innovation Group LIVE! Graham Duxbury, Director of Development at Groundwork UK discussed Groundwork's approach to selecting the best ideas.  Here he offers his thoughts on innovation at Groundwork and explains how the cuts can have a positive impact. 

Groundwork is on the cusp of celebrating it’s 30th anniversary year, a time for reflecting on history and setting new goals for the future.  Read on to find out how Groundwork UK keeps the innovation engine going.

Selecting Ideas 3: What's the best way to do it?

Katherine William-PowlettOne thing that distinguishes successful organisations from those with lesser rates of growth is the adoption of an innovation process. It is not so important what the process is, as long as it exists.

Part of that process is selecting which ideas to develop. I often hear people in the sector saying that they have no shortage of ideas but express frustration at how none come to fruition. This may be because the ideas are not good quality or do not fit with the strategic mission (see earlier blog posts on this). Alternatively it may be due to a lack of focus and having no clear process for selecting ideas worth investing in. Read on to find out how two organisations filter and gain from the insights of the most recent Innovation Group LIVE!

Selecting Ideas 4: Don’t lose momentum

Katherine William-PowlettIf you have followed  my Generating Ideas blog series you will know that employing good ideas generation tools can get you a lot of ideas – after all one of the ground rules is 'Go for Quantity'. But what on earth do you do with the wall of post-its that you've created? Read on to find out.

Selecting Ideas 5: One way to choose

Katherine William-PowlettMy previous blog posts on Generating Ideas looked at how to get lots of good ideas to meet your current challenges. This series looks at how to narrow them down when you have them. A Paired Comparison Analysis (PCA) helps compare and prioritise between a few ideas.

Selecting Ideas 6: Another way to choose

Katherine William-PowlettMy previous blog posts on Generating Ideas looked at how to get lots of good ideas to meet your current challenges.  This series looks at how to narrow them down when you have them. One way to aid selection is by setting up a simple matrix on a spreadsheet.

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