Introduction: Generating Product Ideas: Heuristic Ideation Technique

Have you ever been in a situation where you thought you were on to something big only to be disappointed? I have been there recently. I learned about generating product ideas using a model called the Heuristic Ideation Technique. The issue is that I wanted to use the technique in a way that was never intended and I fell flat on my face. I felt as if I let myself down.

I spent weeks reading the paper in the Journal of Marketing, titled, HIT: Heuristic Ideation Technique: A Systematic Procedure for New Product Search by Edward M. Tauber.  I read the paper repeatedly, but could not figure out how to use the technique in the way that I wanted to.

After sleeping on the blog post that I wrote, 5 Steps to Get the Most Out of Reading Books (infographic), that did not go where I needed it to, I came up with an example for myself. The example I came up with is to generate product ideas for Book summaries. You can play with the ideation technique using your examples to generate own product ideas.

Have you read?

5 Steps to Get the Most Out of Reading Books (infographic)

From conducting research on the internet, I discovered that there are three types of summaries: Main Point Summary, Key Point Summary, and Outline Summary. Those would go across the top of the matrix as options. The forms of a book summary include: Written, Video, and Audio. The forms are options going down the left-hand side of the matrix. You match each type with a form, crossing out product ideas that already exist.

Main Point Summary: This is like an article abstract. Included in this type of summary are the title of the book, the name of the author, and the main point in the book. You can use a quote, but it should support the main point. This type of summary is mainly used in academic papers.

Key Point Summary: This type of summary includes the features of the main point summary, in addition to the key points that support the main point. This summary is used to explain the book to the reader, agreeing or disagreeing with the author’s argument.

Outline Summary: This uses the structure of the book (Table of Contents) to summarize the text. The main point and the arguments are present in the same sequence as they appear in the text.

When summarizing a book, I do not follow any of the three types of summaries. I do things my own way. I have a template that I created that I follow loosely. However, there are specific elements that I want with every book summary that I craft.

Generating Product Ideas Matrix

You would cross out the product ideas that already exist, so you would do that for all the written book summaries because they already exist. Audio summaries are also very common, and video summaries exists, although they are less common. Therefore, there are no new product ideas to generate.

But what if there were other possible forms of book summaries? What can you come up with? This exercise is supposed to be fun, so go crazy coming up with ideas. What if someone acted out a book summary? That means a form of book summaries could be a simulation. Now we are getting somewhere. Do you see how the Heuristic Ideation Technique works?

Generating Product Ideas Matrix 2

This new matrix with simulation as a factor has potential for generating product ideas for book summaries because it is innovative. I will continue to experiment with the Heuristic Ideation Technique to generate product ideas, but I would be over the moon if I figured out a way to use it to generate product ideas from the books that I read.

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