Page 118 - 100 Great Business Ideas: From Leading Companies Around the World (100 Great Ideas)

Defer

Put into a separate ( a tegory any item that is not particularly
timely but may he useful later. Defer is similar to exclude
except the criteria are different.

Feedback

Review the ideas that have been combined, eliminated, modi-
fied, or deferred to seek new insights.

Classify by Dissimilar Columns

Establish a column for each group of related ideas. Despite
the name of the technique, seven is not a magic number: eight,
nine, ten, or more columns may be necessary.

Rank Ideas in Each Column

When you have sorted all the ideas into columns, rank each
idea card on the basis of the usefulness or importance of the
idea relative to the objective.

Generalize Columns

It is often advantageous to provide a title for each column,
as in storyboarding. You could probably put those which
are similar under the same column heading. Alternatively,
the highest-ranking idea in each column could serve as the
heading.

Rank Columns

Place the best, most important, timeliest, or most critical ideas
in the left-hand column, the second-most important in the
next column to the right, and so on.

There are many variations on the 7 x 7 technique. Like
storyboarding, it can be used in group sessions.

SUMMARY OF STEPS

1. Place idea slips on a 7 x 7 racking board.
2. Combine, exclude, modify, defer, feedback, classify, and rank

ideas within columns; generalize the columns; and then rank the
columns.
3. Evaluate the results.

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