What Is Ideation? Business Success Guide (2026)

Developing good ideas is central to the success of any ecommerce business, but the process can feel elusive. How, for instance, do you even come up with new ideas, much less tell a good one from a bad one?

This is where ideation comes in. Ideation is simply the process of generating, exploring, and refining ideas (and it’s not just for creative types). It’s a super common practice in business, especially in product development, innovation teams, and customer experience design. Anytime companies want to build something better, understand customers more deeply, or stand out in a crowded market, they turn to structured ideation to spark fresh thinking and get the best ideas on the table.

“In a great team, you argue about ideas totally independent of ego. In great teams, the success of your idea is independent from your success. Just helping to find the best idea matters,” Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke says. This quote highlights how important it is for entrepreneurs to set up the right teams and processes for ideation.

Specific ideation techniques can help to improve your problem-solving skills and creative thinking when generating ideas. Read on to learn more about some of the most popular ideation techniques, as well as strategies for how to prepare your next brainstorming session.

What is ideation?

Ideation is the process of generating, culling, and refining new ideas to solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. 

It’s a structured but open-ended approach, meaning you’ve got a clear goal, but you give ideas room to breathe and evolve. A big part of ideation is letting thoughts flow without immediate judgment, so you can explore creative directions before deciding what’s actually worth pursuing. For example, an ecommerce merchant might use ideation when dreaming up a new product line or planning a fresh content marketing strategy.

Now that we know what ideation is, let’s look at how it fits into the bigger picture of bringing your own ideas to life.

How ideation works: 5 stages

Ideation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It sits inside a broader innovation cycle. Here’s where it fits within the design thinking process, so you can see how ideas move from spark to test to real-world impact.

1. Empathize. This phase involves gaining a clear understanding of your customers’ experiences and needs.
2. Define. At this stage, set clear goals for a business innovation process or development based on the needs of your customers.
3. Ideate. The ideation phase consists of gathering as many possible solutions to a problem or opportunity through a variety of ideation techniques.
4. Prototype. This stage involves creating a virtual or physical version of your solution to test and improve.
5. Release, observe, and restart. This final stage consists of releasing a version of your idea to customers, observing how it performs and how customers respond, and starting on new ideas or improvements based on their feedback.

How to prepare for an ideation session

1. Set clear goals
2. Perform market research
3. Organize a diverse group of participants
4. Consider your environment
5. Establish a process

A great ideation session doesn’t happen by chance. With the right prep, clear goals, the right people, and a supportive environment, you set the stage for real breakthroughs. Here’s how to get ready.

1. Set clear goals

Develop a clear problem statement to define an issue you want to solve or an opportunity you want to explore. For example, you might want to generate ideas for cosmetic products, decide how you’d like to launch your own subscription box service, or establish a design challenge for improving the user experience on your ecommerce store.

Whatever your focus, define explicit goals to keep your ideation sessions on track and help guide everyone toward the same target.

2. Perform market research

Before your ideation session, prepare market research materials about your industry, business, and target audience. Use quantitative research from sales, marketing, and other ecommerce analytics channels, as well as qualitative research like customer feedback from surveys and interviews.

Pull data that directly applies to the goals of your ideation session to stay focused. One of the benefits of using an ecommerce platform like Shopify is that it comes with integrated analytics reporting that lets you pick and choose which customer behavior trends to zero in on.

3. Organize a diverse group of participants

The best ideation sessions are only as creative and productive as the people involved. Select a team of individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and skill sets to contribute as many ideas as possible. A team that includes too many members with a similar perspective runs the risk of failing to think outside the box. Bringing together people with widely varying views can help keep your ideation process fresh and challenge assumptions made by those too close to the topic. 

For example, you could include two team members from your customer service department and two software engineers to contribute to an ideation session about how to improve the user experience (UX) design of your website.

For a small business, a group of four to seven people is typically ideal. Research shows that brainstorming groups in that range hit a sweet spot: small enough for everyone to contribute meaningfully, yet large enough to bring a variety of voices. 

When groups grow much larger (say eight, nine or more), problems like production blocking (where participants wait their turn or get distracted) and social loafing (where people contribute less because they assume others will) might start to creep in. 

4. Consider your environment

The space where your ideation session takes place has a huge impact on its outcome. Whether you’re holding a virtual or in-person ideation session, explore ways to make the space more conducive to creativity and productivity. For example, you could hold an ideation session in a new co-working space with your team rather than at your regular office.

Make tools available for your team to use, like whiteboards, pens and paper, and reports with relevant information. If you’re hosting a virtual ideation session, set up a collaborative online system for taking and editing notes remotely. Google Docs and Slack are both examples of online tools that can facilitate remote ideation sessions.

5. Establish a process

To run a productive ideation session, start by communicating your goals, setting clear ground rules for the ideation process, and outlining the ideation methods you’ll use. Disorganized brainstorming sessions can easily become unfocused and unproductive; develop a clear framework for generating ideas and winnowing down only the good ideas.

Determine who will be in charge of managing the session and keeping it on track. Make sure everyone involved understands the purpose and process of your session and has enough advance notice to prepare. For example, you could establish a procedure that involves brainstorming new product designs on a whiteboard before the group votes on which ideas to pursue.

When you plan the time for your ideation session, aim for something that gives enough space to think, but not so long that energy fades or the ideas stagnate. Many practitioners recommend around 30 to 60 minutes when focusing on one tight challenge. For example, one study suggests that 45 to 60 minutes is a good amount of time to generate ideas and refine them without participants getting bored.

If you have a more complex topic or want to include several rounds, you might stretch into 90 minutes or two hours, but with care: take breaks, keep energy high, and avoid letting the session drag. One of the most important things to remember is to defer judgment while everyone comes up with as many ideas as they can. 

Here’s a potential breakdown for a 60 minute ideation session: 

• 5–10 mins: Purpose, ground rules (no immediate judgment, structured but open ended).
• 20–30 mins: Generate lots of ideas, encourage innovative thinking.
• 15–20 mins: Cluster ideas, vote, select most promising.
• 5–10 mins: Assign next steps, clarify who will refine, what happens next.

Effective ideation techniques

• Brainstorming
• Reverse thinking
• SCAMPER
• Creative pause
• Mind mapping
• Storyboarding
• AI and software

Once your team and goals are set, it’s time for the fun part: choosing the right idea generation methods. There’s no one “right” way to generate ideas. Different prompts unlock different thinking styles. 

Below are classic methods, unconventional twists, and modern AI-powered ideation techniques to help you spark fresh ideas from every angle.

Brainstorming

One of the most popular ideation techniques is a traditional brainstorming session, where you bring a group together and simply generate as many ideas and innovative solutions as possible for a given topic. 

During these brainstorming sessions, avoid evaluating or judging any ideas at first; the point is to create an open and creative space where innovative and unexpected ideas are welcome.

Enter: the “How Might We” question.

This is a simple but powerful tool that helps you frame the brainstorming challenge in a way that encourages creativity while keeping everyone on the same page. According to the Interaction Design Foundation, a “How Might We” (HMW) question is a method used to open up ideation sessions with the aim of generating a large number of potential solutions.

The result is a question like: “How might we make checkout feel more trustworthy for first-time buyers?” or “How might we turn abandoned carts into re-engagement opportunities?” You then use this question as your launch pad for ideation.

Let’s imagine you run a session about improving the onboarding flow for your ecommerce site. You could structure it like this:

• Present the insight: “Many new customers drop off at step two because they’re unsure about data security.”
• Frame your HMW: “How might we make new customers feel completely confident about their data when they land on step two?”
• Run the ideation (round-robin or brainwriting) with that HMW question as the anchor.
• Converge and vote on your favourite ideas, and then move to next steps.

You can also use a POV statement to help kickstart the ideation process. This is basically a short, clear sentence that frames the problem you want to solve from the user’s perspective. 

It’s usually formatted something like “[user] needs a way to [user need] because [insight about why it matters].” 

For example, “first-time online shoppers need a way to feel confident entering payment info because they worry their data won’t be secure.”

Tip: The idea is to focus on quantity during the early part of your traditional brainstorming session. Aim to collect 50 to 100 ideas that you can then start paring down. 

Reverse thinking

One of the more unconventional ideation methods is called reverse thinking or inversion. 

Instead of asking how you can achieve the best result, this technique asks you to flip the problem and explore the opposite scenario (basically, how could we make this go terribly wrong?). It might feel a little odd at first, but thinking through the worst-case ideas can help you see blind spots and spark genuinely creative solutions you might not see when you’re only aiming for “good.”

For example, if you’re ideating how to improve customer service, you might brainstorm the “wrong” things like:

• Long wait times
• Unclear answers
• Robotic, unhelpful replies
• Agents who sound irritated or rushed

From there, you flip each item back into a positive direction (fast responses, proactive help, empathetic tone, knowledgeable team, etc.).

You can use this same “opposite scenario” approach for other challenges too:

• New product launch or product discovery. Worst case might be confusing messaging, zero excitement, poor timing, no social proof, but you can flip that to clear positioning, strong pre-launch buzz, launch date customers are ready for, creator/tester testimonials.
• Website onboarding. Worst case might be too many steps, hidden fees, forced account creation, overwhelming text. Flip it to a short, friendly flow, transparent pricing, guest checkout, simple language and visuals.
• Email marketing. Worst case might be spammy subject lines, irrelevant content, too many emails, no personalisation. Flip it to valuable content, helpful cadence, audience segmentation, human tone.

SCAMPER

Another one of the most common ideation techniques is called SCAMPER, which is an acronym that stands for substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, and rearrange. Each of these words represents a prompt that you can use to think creatively and challenge assumptions about a particular topic.

• Substitute. This asks what aspects of your problem or opportunity could be replaced with alternatives, like substituting new product photos for old ones when considering how to increase online store traffic.
• Combine. Ask yourself if you could combine different strategies, products, or ideas to create an innovative solution to your problem.
• Adapt. This involves exploring if you can redefine existing solutions or apply past ideas you’ve used successfully to a new problem.
• Modify. You can focus on ways to modify and improve existing products, services, or strategies.
• Put to another use. When developing a new product line, consider alternative uses to identify opportunities you haven’t considered.
• Eliminate. What aspects of your topic can you reduce, simplify, or eliminate? Ask yourself what is the simplest solution to your particular problem, or the most essential version of your product or service.
• Rearrange. Consider how different orders or arrangements of a particular solution can result in different outcomes, such as experimenting with different arrangements for your checkout flow.

Using the SCAMPER method, a merchant might combine user-generated photos (combine), switch to transparent pricing earlier in the flow (rearrange), and remove extra checkout fields (eliminate), leading to higher conversion rates and more first-time purchases.

Creative pause

Developing ideas in a concentrated brainstorming session can be productive, but it can also put too much pressure on team members and stymie their creativity. 

One of the potential solutions for this problem is a creative pause, which involves a deliberate interruption of your brainstorming session with activities like going on a walk outside or listening to music. Another creative pause tactic is to stop your session for the day and resume the next morning after some sleep.

Beyond the utility of recharging your creative energy, the creative pause method can inspire ideas that spring up organically outside of the traditional brainstorming framework. Keep a journal or tablet nearby when you take creative pauses and set a schedule that establishes creative pauses as part of your daily routine.

After a 24-hour “creative pause,” someone on the team might return with a totally fresh angle, like turning a stalled product concept into a bundle offer that ends up outperforming the original idea by 30% in early stage tests.

Mind mapping

Mind mapping is a visual technique for forming ideas and developing questions related to a particular topic. The technique involves placing your single problem or opportunity in the middle of a diagram and building an expansive structure that naturally grows from that point with additional elements and subcategories for the topic.

Mind mapping is a particularly useful method for simplifying a complex problem by breaking it down into its key parts. 

For example, mapping out a supply-chain bottleneck visually might help a team identify that long warehouse intake times are causing delays, leading them to redesign the fulfillment process for faster delivery. 

Storyboarding

Storyboarding is one of the best ideation techniques for visual thinkers (or if your ideas feel clearer once you can see them take shape). Instead of writing down bullet points or lists, you map out a rough visual sequence (a bit like a comic strip) to show how an idea or experience might play out in real life.

This technique works especially well for customer-journey moments, product experiences, or any idea that involves multiple steps and emotions, because it forces you to consider the user’s perspective, spot gaps in logic, and identify where delight or friction shows up.

You don’t need to be an artist to create a storyboard. Feel free to use stick figures and messy arrows. You’re not making the next Pixar movie, after all. You can sketch key moments (for example, a shopper landing on your site, browsing, checking out, then unboxing) and then annotate what they’re thinking and feeling along the way.

AI and software

AI-powered ideation tools and digital collaboration platforms can really help kickstart your brainstorm sessions and manage your ideas. 

AI tools shouldn’t replace human creativity, but they can help speed up the messy beginning stages by surfacing patterns, suggesting angles you might not have considered, and keeping everyone on the same page. In fact, a research paper on AI-augmented ideation found that in one experimental setting, teams using generative AI tools produced higher-quality ideas in less time, with improved idea diversity and engagement.

Modern ideation tools can:

• Enhance idea generation by suggesting prompts, expanding rough ideas, and remixing concepts.
• Spot patterns quickly, like themes in customer feedback, gaps in your product, or emerging trends.
• Make collaboration easier, especially if your team is hybrid or remote.

Some useful tools to explore:

• Miro or FigJam. Visual brainstorming boards, sticky-note style collaboration, and mapping user flows. 
• Notion + AI. Turning rough notes into structured ideas, rewriting, cross-referencing research, and building internal idea hubs.
• ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity. Prompt-based brainstorming, “what-if” explorations and basic idea generation.
• Whimsical. Flowcharts, wireframes, and fast visual concept mapping.
• Jamboard or Mural. Lightweight team sketching, digital whiteboarding, real-time idea dumping.
• Figma. Great for visual exploration if you’re designing UI or content journeys.
• Otter.ai or Fireflies. Transcribing meetings and extracting key themes/insights from team discussions.
• Glean, Grain, Dovetail. Finding patterns across user research, feedback, or call transcripts (super useful for product and CX teams).

Measuring ideation success

So, how do you actually know if your ideation efforts are working? Strong ideation actually has certain signals which you can track just like any other part of your business.

It helps to look at two buckets:

1. Engagement KPIs (Are people participating and contributing?)

These show whether your team feels energized and involved in the creative ideation process.

• Number of ideas generated per session. A healthy session usually results in dozens of ideas.
• Participation rate. How many people are actively sharing, reacting, or building on ideas?
• Diversity of input. Are ideas coming from different teams, roles, and perspectives?
• Session satisfaction and feedback. Did your ideation session help participants think differently or consider an alternative perspective? 

Think of this bucket as measuring the vibes and volume. Lots of voices + lots of ideas = good creative energy.

2. Efficiency and Impact KPIs

These KPIs help us understand whether brainstorming leads to real outcomes.

• Idea implementation rate. What percentage of ideas get selected, refined, and tested?
• Time to test or prototype. How quickly do ideas move from a sticky note to an actual real-life experiment?
• Conversion to measurable results. Track wins like increased conversions or revenue, cost savings, better customer satisfaction, higher retention or LTV. 
• ROI of implemented ideas. Measure the value created versus time/resources spent.

Tip: Don’t panic if not every session results in a genius breakthrough. Good ideation is an ongoing process. The more you and your team do it, the easier it’ll get (and the better you’ll become at it).

Common ideation mistakes

Even the smartest, most creative teams can fall into the black hole of ideation. Luckily, most of the common mistakes and challenges are easily fixable, if you’re willing to work at it. 

• Making judgements too early. It’s easy to shoot down ideas the moment they crop up. Instead, separate idea-gathering from idea-filtering so there’s a no-judgement zone early on and people feel like they can share their wildest ideas. 
• Inviting the same voices every time. It can also be tempting to let only the most vocal or senior team members drive the creativity. But you’ll get better results if you mix teams across roles and seniority. 
• Running unfocused sessions. Don’t show up with no clear prompt or goal, as this can quickly dissolve into chaos. Instead, share the reason behind the session upfront (HMW questions are particularly helpful here). 
• Treating brainstorming like a one-off event. Ideation shouldn’t be a once-a-quarter activity. It should help build creative habits, so encourage micro-brainstorms, async boards, and weekly idea sessions to keep that creativity going all year round. 
• Collecting ideas but never acting on them. If you find yourself with a graveyard of Post-its, you’re probably not doing ideation justice. To avoid this, add simple prioritization rules and assign ownership to tasks. 
• Ignoring data and customer insights. You might find you have a ton of ideas but no customer context. This is still better than nothing, but your ideas might fall flat if they’re not backed by data. Bring real feedback, shopping behavior, heat maps, and voice-of-customer notes to your sessions to give more meat to your ideas.