Module 04: Problem Solving and Ideation Methods
Module 4
Module 04: Problem Solving and Ideation Methods
Module 3 stopped at a well-framed problem. This module generates solutions to it, makes those solutions acceptable to the people who must live with them, and then picks which ones to build.
What makes an idea great
Memory hook: "A great idea is one which has utility but more importantly has novelty." Three supporting maxims run through the module: enlightened trial and error succeeds over the planning of a lone genius; try things and ask for forgiveness rather than permission; and fail often in order to succeed sooner.
4.1 Rules of ideation
Rule 1: quantity produces quality
When are you full of ideas? In the bath, on a walk, driving, playing with a pet or a child, doing a hobby, or in the moments before sleep and after waking. What those have in common is that you are alone, under no time pressure and with nobody breathing down your neck.
The photograph thought experiment
Thirty students split into two groups of fifteen, all given a phone and a full day on campus.
| Group | Constraint | Total submitted |
|---|---|---|
| A | Best three photographs per person | 45 |
| B | Up to 100 photographs per person | 1,500 |
An independent jury judges the finalists. Group B wins. Group A's members hesitate at every interesting subject, wondering whether to spend a shot or save it. Group B's members simply keep clicking, and by the thirtieth or fortieth frame a learning curve has already set in, so their hundredth photograph beats the other group's third.
The coconut farmer case
Two days with about 35 coconut farmers near Coimbatore, on how to improve coconut yield and how to get the second generation to work on the farmland. They produced 550 ideas, reduced to 50.
The reduction method is the point: he went from 550 to 50 by fusing ideas, not by eliminating 500. Compare that with going from zero to 50 by taking the first 50 ideas that arrived. Both end at 50; only the first is high quality.
Nature makes the same argument. Over roughly four billion years, 99.9% of all species that have ever lived are extinct. Nature keeps running experimental mutations, and everything alive is an experimental outcome, which is exactly why it is robust.
Common trap: The word "average" is what makes "a lot of average ideas" sound unappealing. But you cannot produce a hundred good ideas. Aim for quantity, accept slightly average quality, and watch quality rise as you go.
Rule 2: brainstorming, and why it underperforms
Brainstorming was coined by the American advertising and marketing expert Alex Faickney Osborn in the 1940s. Participants openly share ideas in a group, generating as many as possible without immediate evaluation.
Osborn's rules for running a brainstorm
- Focus on the topic.
- Never criticise an idea.
- Build on others' ideas.
- Stay focused.
- Keep it time-bound, with a defined group.
The four failure modes
Seventy to eighty years of research produced a comprehensive and surprising finding: both the quality and the quantity of ideas from a brainstorm are inferior to what the same people produce working independently. Four reasons.
| # | Failure mode | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Idea blocking | In a group of five, an idea occurs to you while someone else is speaking. You are obliged to listen, and by the time they finish the idea has evaporated because you neither wrote it nor said it |
| 2 | Evaluation apprehension | You have a contrarian, boat-rocking idea and hold it back, because voicing it would read as criticism of someone else's. Over time the group settles at the lowest common denominator. You fear not only that your idea will be evaluated but that you will be |
| 3 | Groupthink | The whole group converges into one mind, so it no longer matters whether there are two people in the room or five |
| 4 | Free riding and social loafing | As in tug of war, not everyone pulls equally. Some contribute heavily and others hang around |
Common trap: Brainstorming survives in organisations because it buys buy-in, not because it generates ideas. Use it deliberately for the former and do not rely on it for the latter.
Rule 3: brain stilling and brain writing, the remedy
This is Soni's stated panacea for all four failure modes above.
How to run it
- Take the same group of five people.
- Give each person ten minutes to think privately and write their ideas on post-it notes, one idea per note.
- Place an urn or bowl in the middle of the table and have everyone drop their notes into it.
- Then pick the best ideas, using the prioritisation methods in 4.4.
- Better still, sketch the ideas rather than writing them, which links back to Module 2's habit of thinking with your hands.
Why it fixes each failure mode
| Failure mode | How brain writing removes it |
|---|---|
| Idea blocking | Nobody is waiting for a turn to speak. Every idea is written the moment it occurs |
| Evaluation apprehension | Notes go into a bowl anonymously, so no idea is attached to a person while it is being considered |
| Groupthink | The ten minutes are private, so nobody has heard the group's direction before forming their own view |
| Free riding and social loafing | Everyone must produce written output, so nobody can coast on the group's effort |
Memory hook: "Because my ideas have already been captured in the first ten minutes, I have no reason to push my way through or to convince others that my idea is better." Everybody's ideas get captured without breaking sweat.
Rule 4: the right size for ideation
A pair. Anything larger is too much, and working alone means you get bored, your idea productivity saturates and you learn little.
Whom to pair with: people unlike you. The Hindi saying Soni quotes translates as: if everybody is like you, you have no uniqueness left, and if everybody is like me, I have none either. Pairing with someone unlike you is testing, and useful.
4.2 Ideation methods
Ten methods. The purpose of all of them is the same: be systematic about generating ideas. Told simply to "generate ten ideas" you will produce five quickly and then feel the fatigue by the sixth or seventh. These techniques carry you past that point.
4.2.1 Challenging assumptions
How to run it: list every assumption embedded in the current solution, however self-evident, then negate each one in turn and ask what a product would look like without it.
| Case | Assumption attacked |
|---|---|
| UPI | That moving money requires knowing an account number |
| Dyson bladeless fan | That a fan needs blades |
| Dyson bagless vacuum cleaner | That a vacuum cleaner needs a bag |
| The mosquito bat | That mosquitoes should be repelled. It kills them instead |
Applied to a helmet: attack "a helmet must be rigid", "a helmet must be worn before the impact", "a helmet must be carried around". The collapsible helmet idea that appears later in this module (a muffler worn round the neck that deploys at or seconds before impact) is exactly what falls out of attacking those assumptions.
4.2.2 Lateral thinking
Edward de Bono is the father of lateral thinking.
| Vertical thinking | Lateral thinking | |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Builds logically on existing assumptions, one step stacked on the last | Approaches sideways, unconventionally, counter-intuitively |
| Feels | Correct | Wrong, until it works |
| Case | The sideways move |
|---|---|
| Waqar Younis and reverse swing | Everyone treated an old, scuffed ball as a disadvantage. He turned deterioration into a weapon |
| Lowering heavy machinery with ice | With no crane available, the machine is set on blocks of ice and lowered gently as the ice melts |
How to build the habit: observe everyday solutions that quietly solve hard problems, such as retractable wires and gimbals.
4.2.3 SCAMPER
Warm-up: the divergent thinking test
The classic version asks how many ways you can use a brick: doorstopper, paperweight, height booster, hammer for a nail, a line drawn with its colour, an explanation of shape or colour, sealing a hole, levelling ground. Soni's version uses a pencil and asks for 15 uses in two minutes. Note the instruction: the uses need not be practical.
The seven letters, run on a pencil
| Letter | Prompt | Applied to a pencil |
|---|---|---|
| S | Substitute: remove something and put something else in its place that serves the same purpose | Wood replaced by plastic. Graphite replaced by a safer composite, since children chew pencils |
| C | Combine: merge two things into one | The eraser attached to the pencil |
| A | Adapt: adjust it to a new situation | A double-ended two-colour pencil; a clutch pencil; a retractable nib |
| M | Modify, magnify, minify | Thicker barrels for children learning to grip, as with thick crayons and toothbrushes; ribs for grip; a cap that extends the holding space of a stub |
| P | Put to another use | Wedging a wobbly table leg, and everything from the divergent thinking test |
| E | Eliminate: remove something you believed essential | Remove the wooden casing entirely, leaving something like chalk. The Dyson fan's blades are the general case |
| R | Rearrange or Reverse | Interchangeable pencil nibs |
The same seven letters on a live problem: children watching mobile phones
| Letter | Move |
|---|---|
| Substitute | Replace the phone with books or musical instruments |
| Combine | Gamify the substitute so it competes on the phone's own terms |
| Adapt | Adjust permitted screen time by age and behaviour |
| Modify | Use the phone for things that actively develop the child |
| Put to another use | Reposition the phone as a utility device rather than an entertainment device |
| Eliminate | Strip out the specific elements a child finds addictive |
| Rearrange or Reverse | Reverse the flow: phone time is earned through good behaviour |
4.2.4 The six ideation triggers
From Blue Ocean Strategy. Each trigger is a place to look for ideas that competitors are not looking at.
Trigger 1: Alternate industries
Explore industries serving the same customer base. Ola expanded from car hailing into a range of services. Amazon expanded from retail into cloud.
Trigger 2: Strategic groups
Innovate by addressing a different tier or group within the same industry. Fevicol speaks to professional carpenters and to household consumers as two distinct groups.
Trigger 3: Buyer groups
Focus on an underserved buyer segment. Nintendo Wii shifted the console from children to adults. Watch manufacturers segment sharply by buyer group.
Trigger 4: Complementary products and services
Offer additional products or services around the core purchase. Maruti Suzuki runs driving schools and a used-car business alongside selling cars.
Trigger 5: Functional-emotional orientation
Flip an industry between functional and emotional appeal. Insurance sold on functional benefit (returns, tax) versus insurance sold on emotion (protecting your family).
Trigger 6: Time and trend
Ride shifts in taste, often towards nostalgia and authenticity. Tea served in traditional clay cups. Premium snacks labelled as homemade.
How to run it: take your own day-to-day experiences, products and services and map them onto all six triggers. That mapping is the assignment.
4.2.5 The four tiers of users
Also from Blue Ocean Strategy. Every market divides into four tiers, and each tier needs a different question asked of it.
| Tier | Who they are | The question to ask |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Loyal | Regular customers who consistently buy and often advocate for the brand | How do we deepen the experience further? |
| 2. Dissatisfied | Former users who had a bad experience and moved away | What broke, and how do we win them back? |
| 3. Refusing | People who deliberately avoid the product over cost, design or fit with their needs | What misconception or genuine barrier is driving refusal? |
| 4. Unexplored | Potential customers the company has never approached or considered | Where else could this capability be applied? |
Common trap: These are not primary, secondary, tertiary and excluded users. They are loyal, dissatisfied, refusing and unexplored, and the distinction matters because each tier implies a different strategy.
Worked case: DigiYatra
DigiYatra is facial-recognition-based airport check-in.
| Tier | Who, in this case | Strategy |
|---|---|---|
| Loyal | Regular business travellers, people with little or no check-in luggage, frequent flyers at major metro airports | Deepen it. Integrate flight timings and gate information into the DigiYatra system |
| Dissatisfied | Users who tried it and hit problems: Aadhaar or credential linking through DigiLocker failing, system errors, or discomfort at sharing facial scans | Retention: demo campaigns, nudging, multilingual support, auto-fetching data to reduce effort |
| Refusing | Smartphone owners who resist anyway, out of distrust of the technology or a misconception that it only serves people without check-in luggage | Awareness: campaigns on convenience and security benefits, including reducing CISF load and preventing human error |
| Unexplored | Entirely new settings for the same biometric capability, such as high-security government institutions like ISRO | Expansion into sectors beyond airports |
4.2.6 The Buyer Utility Map
Why methods work at all
Memory hook: "The human mind is extremely powerful when it is loosely structured." Completely unstructured thinking is haphazard and boring. Completely rule-bound thinking is predictable and boring. Chess survives because its rules are stable and fully visible to both players, with nothing hidden as in cards, and yet one player can out-manoeuvre the other purely by thinking ahead. Methods put you on that middle path. Be a person of methods, because then you are predictable, reliable and scalable, and you can hand the baton to your team.
The grid
The lecture opens with a six-stage buyer experience cycle: pre-purchase, purchase, deliver, use, maintain and supplement, dispose, against levers including convenience, simplicity, value for money, risk reduction and sustainability. Soni then simplifies it, for use, into a four-by-three grid. Learn the simplified version.
Four stages (horizontal axis):
| Stage | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Pre-purchase | Every decision made before the transaction |
| Purchase | The transaction itself |
| Usage | Living with the product |
| Maintain and supplement | Keeping it working and adding to it |
Three utility levers (vertical axis):
| Lever | What the buyer wants |
|---|---|
| Value for money | Value received exceeding money paid |
| Ease and simplicity | Minimum friction |
| Peace of mind | Absence of anxiety |
Worked case: accelerating electric scooter adoption
| Pre-purchase | Purchase | Usage | Maintain and supplement | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value for money | A test drive before committing roughly a lakh of rupees | Zero-cost EMI, since electronics depreciate fast; the seller doubling as the low-cost lender | Long battery life; good range per charge | Take the entire cost of maintenance upfront so it is knowable |
| Ease and simplicity | A total-cost-of-ownership comparison chart for year one, year two, and battery replacement | Minimum documentation; a driving licence issued on the spot for those without one | Charging from an ordinary three-pin home plug; a removable battery you can carry indoors; batteries buyable online | Partner with garages equipped to service electric vehicles |
| Peace of mind | Addressing range anxiety and fire risk by demonstrating safety and insurance cover | Battery warranty and a buyback guarantee at a stated price after X years; roadside recharge within ten minutes; an app locating charging points | Range expressed in time rather than kilometres, because people cannot judge kilometres; nearest-station plotting; interchangeable batteries usable across vehicles, like a universal C-type charger | Clarity on wear and tear, which is genuinely unknown for EVs: a petrol two-wheeler costs about a thousand rupees per service, an EV has few moving parts but electronics that misbehave, batteries that can leak in the rain and underperform at temperature extremes |
Tata Motors is the case: struggling five or six years ago and now the country's number one car seller, and the revival came predominantly through electric vehicles, mainly by addressing the pre-purchase stage rather than through distribution or technology.
How to actually run it: work as a pair, take a large A1 sheet and draw the matrix by hand. Do not use a computer or laptop. Write ideas on post-it notes and stick them into the boxes. The boxes populate faster than you expect.
4.2.7 Theory of constraints
Eliyahu M. Goldratt, in The Goal.
What is a constraint? A limitation or bottleneck. The total throughput of a system is determined by its constraint. Formally: demand on the activity exceeds the capacity of the activity.
Memory hook: The chain is only as strong as its weakest link. And: "Constraints don't kill creativity, constraints liberate creativity."
The five steps
Worked on the example of the single recording studio at IIM Bangalore, which many professors want to use.
| Step | Action | Applied to the studio |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Identify the constraint | Find the bottleneck in the process | The recording studio is the bottleneck in content creation |
| 2. Exploit the constraint | Get maximum output from it as it stands, with no new investment | Optimal scheduling, no downtime |
| 3. Subordinate and synchronise to the constraint | Align every other process to the constraint's rhythm | Content planning, scripting and crew scheduling all align to studio availability |
| 4. Elevate the constraint | Now increase its capacity | Add a second studio, or extend studio hours |
| 5. Repeat | Go back to step 1, because the constraint has now moved | A new bottleneck emerges elsewhere and the cycle restarts |
Common trap: Do not jump to step 4. Exploiting and subordinating are free; elevating costs money. Most teams buy capacity before they have finished squeezing what they own.
4.2.8 Nine windows
A TRIZ tool. Examine a system across three levels and three time frames, giving nine cells.
| Past | Present | Future | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Super system | |||
| System | |||
| Subsystem |
How to run it: put your system in the centre cell, then fill each of the other eight in turn. Each empty cell is a prompt you would otherwise never have written.
Worked case: garbage segregation
| Axis | Content |
|---|---|
| Subsystem | The individual elements: bins, tools, bags used for segregation |
| System | The process of sorting waste at the point of disposal, and the challenges of implementing it |
| Super system | The wider environmental impact and government policy |
| Past | Earlier methods, efficient and inefficient. Village pits where wet waste was dumped for animals to eat |
| Present | Current sorting systems and their existing problems |
| Future | Technological or systemic improvements to segregation |
Memory hook: "History may not repeat, but history rhymes." The past column exists because old solutions are a free idea bank.
4.2.9 Drawing analogy
Why it works: sometimes the solution is sitting just outside your immediate domain. This is where the T-shaped personality from Module 2 pays off: depth for credibility, breadth for the analogy.
Biomimicry is the practice of emulating nature's designs, processes and systems to solve human problems, and it is the richest single source of analogies.
| Case | Source domain | What was borrowed |
|---|---|---|
| Shinkansen bullet train | The kingfisher's beak | Beak geometry, to eliminate the pressure wave and noise on exiting a tunnel (biomimicry) |
| Henry Ford's assembly line | The slaughterhouse disassembly line | The idea of the work moving past stationary workers |
| Toyota's Just-in-Time | The Piggly Wiggly supermarket | Replenish only what has been taken off the shelf |
The water conservation exercise
Watch three unrelated videos, an F1 pit stop, an operation theatre and an air traffic control tower, and transfer their mechanisms to conserving water at home.
| Source | Mechanism | Transferred as |
|---|---|---|
| Operation theatre | Continuous monitoring of every parameter | Measuring to manage: install water meters at home so consumption is visible |
| Air traffic control | High-precision technology substituting for human judgement | Technology substitution: jet-based handwashing systems that use a fraction of the water |
| Surgery | Blood recirculation | Best practice reuse: using water from one task for another, such as routing water from brushing to sewage flushing |
Memory hook: "You become a copy of all the content you consume." Analogies only exist if you have consumed something outside your field. The International Space Station is offered as a source for analogies on reducing gadget usage.
4.2.10 Looking for extremes
How to run it: deliberately design for the fringe user or the extreme situation, then let the design flow back to the mainstream. Ask "who is the hardest possible user of this?" and design for them.
| Designed for the fringe | Became mainstream as |
|---|---|
| Subtitles, for the hearing impaired | Standard viewing behaviour and general accessibility |
| Phone vibration, for the visually impaired | Indispensable for everyone on silent mode |
| Ramps, for wheelchair users | Convenient for everyone carrying luggage, prams or trolleys |
| Wheelchair-friendly car design, and design for diabetics | Swivelling car seats that mainstream buyers prefer |
| Extreme EV scenarios: battery fire, or depletion mid-journey | Automatic emergency response and battery shielding for all vehicles |
4.3 Making ideas acceptable
"An idea is only as good as it getting implemented." Communication is therefore not a soft add-on, it is the last technical step.
4.3.1 Stakeholder mapping
A key stakeholder is anyone who is either part of the problem you are solving or part of the solution you are implementing. Never discount one, because a stakeholder who feels left out and unvalued can jeopardise the whole idea.
The Byju's cautionary case. When the product was built, the customers considered were the student who learns and the parent who pays. The school teacher was never considered a stakeholder. Then a teacher whose class had run ahead on Byju's called a parent-teacher meeting and told parents their children need not attend her class if they were studying online, and the families withdrew. The unconsidered stakeholder threw the spanner.
Memory hook: You are not required to keep every stakeholder happy. But no stakeholder should come to you as a surprise.
How to run the map
- Identify the key stakeholders, not all and sundry. For automating a shop floor: labour, the union leader, HR, finance, IT, the vendor, the leadership team. For baby food: the parents who buy and approve, the baby who consumes, the doctor who assesses nutritional value, the retailer who stocks it.
- For each stakeholder ask two questions: with this idea implemented, what is the positive for them, and what is the negative?
- Find the stakeholders carrying a lot of negatives. Those are the critical ones. A stakeholder who sees only positives is already your ally.
What to do with a hostile stakeholder
Three options, and only one is right.
| Option | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Neutralise or discard them | Wrong. It is neither a zero-sum game nor a one-time interaction. Neutralise them now and they will neutralise you in the next round |
| Remove the negatives | Usually impossible. If automation reduces labour, it reduces labour. Trying to remove the negative dilutes or destroys the idea itself |
| Add positives | Correct. Add enough positives that the negatives no longer look daunting |
Adding positives, worked on shop-floor automation. For displaced labour and the union leader: redeploy them elsewhere, retrain them into another function, offer voluntary retirement, get them absorbed by vendors and suppliers, place them in a small-scale sector, or invest in them so they become entrepreneurs.
The mirror move: add negatives to change behaviour
Behaviour changes when you play with both sides of the ledger.
- The paediatrician. Giving a child an injection, they do not reduce the pain. They add a gain: a toffee, a sticker, a distraction. The pain is unchanged; the balance is not.
- FASTag. Adoption was slow until the government imposed double toll charges on non-users. That is adding a negative to force a behaviour change.
Memory hook: "Change or innovation is a political process. Don't play politics, but don't get played by politics." And APJ Abdul Kalam: "A good vision is one in which everybody can see their own vision."
4.3.2 SCQA
From Barbara Minto of McKinsey. SCQA is the flow of your narrative.
| Letter | Element | What goes in it |
|---|---|---|
| S | Situation | The stable, agreed context |
| C | Complication | What has gone wrong with that context |
| Q | Question | The question the complication forces |
| A | Answer | Your proposal |
Worked example, voter turnout:
| Element | Content |
|---|---|
| Situation | General elections every five years, assembly elections every couple of years |
| Complication | Turnout is abysmally low, not more than 55% in urban Bangalore. Far more people share opinions about government and governance on social media than actually vote, preferring Nandi Hills or a shopping mall on polling day |
| Question | How do we ensure people turn up to vote? |
| Answer | Publicly recognise and reward those who do vote, making social examples of them, because social sanction and approval carry enormous weight in a social media era |
4.3.3 The Pyramid Principle
Also Barbara Minto, who coined MECE. The Pyramid Principle is how you construct the logic underneath the SCQA flow. Three layers, built from the bottom but delivered from the top.
| Layer | Position | Content |
|---|---|---|
| Answer | Top | Your conclusion, stated first |
| Key arguments | Middle | Why the answer carries weight |
| Data and evidence | Bottom | The facts the arguments are derived from |
Worked example, India's Olympic performance. Michael Phelps has won more individual gold medals than the entire country of India, and a nation of 1.35 billion cannot assemble a medal-winning contingent.
| Layer | Content |
|---|---|
| Answer | Grassroots preparation, more sports in school and college curricula, and social change, since the prevailing ideology treats sport as a route to ruin and study as a route to nobility, which no longer serves a country where sport is a respectable and well-paid profession |
| Arguments | Where has this worked? Australia, whose national focus on sport and fitness is exceptionally high |
| Data | Per capita investment in sports facilities, number of schools, people trained per hour, hours spent per day or per week |
Why the pyramid works: no information goes to waste. Every lower layer feeds the layer above it. It is also an effective way of thinking through a situation, not only of presenting one. Delivery rule: if someone is convinced without the arguments, stop there. If they need arguments, give arguments. If they need data, give data. Do not pounce with everything at once.
4.3.4 The Success Principle
From Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick. SCQA is the flow, and SUCCES is the set of elements that make a story stick.
| Letter | Element | What it requires, and how to do it |
|---|---|---|
| S | Simple | Do not carry too many characters. Characters that do not contribute significantly confuse the audience. Simple things are scalable and simple things stick |
| U | Unexpected | Put a twist in it. A linear story never registers. Bring counter-intuitive data: for example, the third biggest cause of death in the US, after stroke and cancer, is medical negligence. The unexpected breaks the audience's lazy pattern of thought |
| C | Concrete | Give it a structure that is irrefutable |
| C | Credible | Cite research, market data, or work from psychology, philosophy, management, sociology or economics to buttress the argument |
| E | Emotional | The literal meaning of emotion is to move. Without emotion nobody moves to a decision. Build a central character. The strongest technique is being vulnerable by choice: tell your own story, that you grew up with this problem and suffered it, which is simultaneously simple, concrete, credible and emotional because you are standing in front of them |
| S | Stories | Deliver the whole thing as a narrative |
Common trap: There are six elements, not seven, and the final S is Stories. A list that separates "Story" and "Stories" into two items has duplicated one element.
Worked example, the collapsible helmet. The idea, arrived at by challenging assumptions, is a helmet in collapsible form worn like a muffler round the neck, deploying at or seconds before impact. Pitched with the Success Principle it becomes simple (one object, one moment), unexpected (a helmet you are not wearing), concrete (a mechanism), credible (accident and head-injury data), emotional (a specific rider, and the fact that a brain cannot be replaced) and a story.
4.4 Prioritise ideas
Ten methods generating even ten ideas each leaves you with roughly a hundred ideas. Three tools bring that to a workable number.
4.4.1 The innovation sweet spot
A winning idea must satisfy all three simultaneously.
| Criterion | The question it asks |
|---|---|
| Human desirability | Will the protagonist you are working for (customer, user, buyer, seller, employee, friend, yourself) actually love it? |
| Technical feasibility | Do we have the technical wherewithal to pull it off, or is it wishful thinking? |
| Business viability | Does it make commercial sense? |
Worked example: the solar-powered car
| Criterion | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Human desirability | Yes. Everyone would love one |
| Technical feasibility | No. Not with current technology |
| Business viability | No. Unclear that anyone would pay what it would cost |
Two out of three is a fail. The EV transition is the counter-example that proves the point: people switched from petrol to electric only once prices became comparable. However desirable and however feasible, if it is not commercially viable nobody switches.
Common trap: The three criteria are human desirability, technical feasibility and business viability. They are not demand, feasibility and differentiation, and the framework is not from Blue Ocean Strategy.
4.4.2 The impact-time matrix
Once ideas have passed the desirability, feasibility and viability rubric, plot them. Impact on the vertical axis; time to impact on the horizontal, meaning time to create the impact, time to ROI, or time to implement.
| Time to impact: LOW | Time to impact: HIGH | |
|---|---|---|
| Impact HIGH | Stars | Pipeline |
| Impact LOW | Starters | Pipedream |
What to actually do with each quadrant
| Quadrant | Action |
|---|---|
| Pipedream (low impact, long time) | Drop them outright. They are dreams that never realise and they are not worth the while |
| Starters (low to moderate impact, quick) | Begin here. They warm you up and rally people around your ideas, building the momentum and credibility you need for the rest |
| Stars (high impact, quick) | Focus your effort here |
| Pipeline (high impact, deferred) | Keep them warm. Maintain a pipeline of these so there is always something high-impact maturing |
Common trap: Module 3 has an impact-FREQUENCY matrix whose quadrants decide quick fix versus perma fix for problems. Module 4 has this impact-TIME matrix whose quadrants are Stars, Pipeline, Starters and Pipedream and which sequences ideas. Same vertical axis, entirely different horizontal axis, different quadrant names, different question. Soni himself introduces this one by saying "we remember the impact-frequency matrix... similarly for ideas we have this impact-time matrix", which signals a parallel, not the same tool.
4.4.3 MECE
The same Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive discipline from Module 3, applied here to ideas rather than problems. Sort your surviving ideas into non-overlapping categories that together cover the whole space, so no two workstreams duplicate each other and nothing falls through a gap.
Memory hook for the whole course: understand problems thoroughly, prioritise the problems worth solving, generate solutions systematically, pick the best, then implement. "The quality of your life depends on the quality of your thinking. If you can think well, you can live well."