SCORΣ Ideas©

Even with a solid process for creating ideas, many times the wrong idea is chosen for implementation. The process of downselecting ideas can be a challenge for even the best corporations. It is important to prevent the wrong idea from being chosen for implmentation and development into future products.

The SCORΣ Ideas© process is a simple, concise way to generally organize, rough sort and categorize data into a idea worksheet containing five separate fields. These five areas are where the idea creating session output can be quickly evaluated to determine the utility of the proposed concepts.

This process, illustrated in the figure below provides an intuitive indication as to where the next idea creating session should concentrate, what ideas can immediately be implemented and a balanced interpretation of the information.

SCORΣ Ideas© Grading Sample Template

In the figure above, we have a series of ideas based upon the availability of “Water” for everyone, everywhere at any time. A multitude of ideas were imported and ranked and rated against pre-determined criteria. This ranking and rating process was accomplished by a group of Subject Matter Experts (SME’s) who have a valid background to analytically describe each idea. The original imported information was analyzed and the tool has created a hierarchical weighted comparison that is both Qualitative (ABC) and Quantitative (123). “A” represents low hanging fruit, “B” represents the beginning of a concept and “C” represents a concept. Numerically a higher score represents a more positive position in the idea criteria(s).

While “Risk” based assessments and evaluation of ideas are great ways to review your internal capacity to realistically implement an idea, to truly rank, rate and analytically evaluate ideas requires a different mindset. This mindset is objective and leads to a quantitative interpretation or “Grading” of ideas based on specific weighted paired comparison(s).

This means that each idea has a specific weighted ranking that is compared against the other ideas to create a pallet of potential ideas along with a clear identification of the “Best” idea based upon an “Idea Criteria”. In other words, if we used cost as criteria, a Volkswagen would score higher than a KIA, and both of them would score below a Cadillac. This simple illustration is easy to see when you only have simple ideas but when you have many ideas and multiple idea criteria(s) identifying the best ideas can be very complex. This naming translation is an acronym which stands for:

Scribe - opportunity to make sure the initial idea or concept is phrased accurately and that everyone understands it to limit the chances of concept misinterpretation.

Category - typically ideas will formulate themselves into 4-5 natural categories that allow easy generalization and a natural interpretation to form to extract or identify similarities in features allowing the recognition of an alternative way of implementing the idea.

Order - allows clarity relevant to the uniqueness and conceptual validity to the ideas generated. Ideas are broken down into three separations and graded by placing an “X” in the appropriate box, [A], [B] or [C].

Rate – ideas are broken down into a minimum of two (2) features, which can be used to provide a quantity characteristic measured with respect to another measured quantity characteristic to calculate the value of or appraise.

Evaluate - take the numeric grading assigned in the Rate field section as a complexity factor and add it to the letter assigned from the Order field and you have an idea grade which can be analyzed against other ideas to determine an ideal solution.

Each SCOR∑ © process step has predefined, specific fields for you to fill out to fully describe, define, rank, rate, sort, organize and analyze multiple ideas for quantification.