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DEVELOPING NEW BUSINESS IDEAS mental workout one – checklists Checklists provide an

effective way to get started with innovative idea generation. As their
name suggests, checklists provide structured prompts to generate
business ideas by highlighting areas to investigate and explore. They
are great confidence-boosters because they help prevent obvious
solutions being overlooked and are also easy to use.

Many different forms of checklist exist. Very few of them would claim to
be rocket science. As is often the case with the best management tools,
they represent organised common sense. However defined, all serve a
common purpose, namely to apply a structured approach to generating
ideas and new perspectives on products, services and processes.

The following section highlights five of the most frequently used.

Davis product development list The possible solution checklist for

product improvement developed by G. A. Davis and others uses seven
items to stimulate idea generation.87 Table 4.2 shows recent examples from
the camera world to illustrate each item of the checklist category.

Table 4.2 Davis product development list applied to cameras

Checklist item Camera example

Add and/or subtract something Add on motor drives to achieve more frames per
second; introduce digital technology to allow image
manipulation

Change colour Different camera body colours

Vary materials Plastic lenses to replace glass; metal or plastic
camera body

Rearrange parts Integrated or external flash

Vary shape Movie-camera style with single grip

Change size Compact; disposable; conventional

Modify design or style Combine digital camera with mobile phone;
replace manual focus with auto focus;
weatherproof and underwater cameras

osborn product and service development list Creative

problem-solving pioneer Alex Osborn developed an extensive list of
idea-spurring questions to stimulate the development of a new product
or service by altering an old one. The eight questions in Table 4.3 are
particularly helpful and possess the advantage over the preceding Davis
list of being as relevant to services as they are to products.