A lot has been written about Ideation, from formal ideation workshops and procedures, Design Thinking for example, to much more off-the-cuff ways of going about it.
Essentially Ideation is the process of creating an idea and somehow solidifying it to be more than just a vague concept. In terms of business this generally means thinking about some problem and how to fix it. Some people jump straight to creating the solution, oh that could be solved with a web app or an on-demand service or whatever. It’s my opinion that jumping to the solution without proper exploration of the problem leads to an incomplete product/or service.
Ideation refers to the process of developing and conveying prescriptive ideas to others, typically in a business setting. It describes the sequence of thoughts—from the original concept to implementation.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/ideation.asp
People often think that ideas strike like lightening bolts, akin to Archimedes getting struck with inspiration and screaming “Eureka!”. It’s my experience that ideas, good ideas, require a lot more work than that. They are often teased out, through many iterations, to the point that they are the full finished product.
We rarely see the early versions of ideas, the ones with warts and holes, the ones that either don’t work or don’t work in a meaningful way. Ideas that don’t pass muster get shunted to the side, to be forgotten, whereas those that succeed enter the mainstream media and generally become part of our collective toolkits.
In order to successfully Ideate, you should narrowly define the problem, who exactly experiences it and who economically benefits by having it solved. According to the literature the best problems to solve are those where there is a burning platform and it effects lots of people. Ie. The problem is so bad that no matter what people are going to have to change and there are enough people who face the problem that there is a real business to be made.
Try to find problems that fit those criteria, and then you can begin coming up with the solution.
20/20 Hindsight 