From promising idea to strong innovation concept

Inside a small group, this rarely feels problematic. Shared excitement smooths over differences. The idea feels coherent because everyone imagines a version of it that makes sense to them personally.

Difficulties only surface later, when the idea needs to be explained to others, evaluated by decision makers, translated into a proposal, or turned into concrete action. Suddenly questions arise that were never addressed explicitly. What problem are we really solving. For whom. Compared to what. And why this approach rather than another.

At that point, teams often respond by adding detail too late or by defending the idea instead of clarifying it. The result is frustration, slow decision making, and concepts that look strong on the surface but collapse under scrutiny.

A need describes why a problem matters to someone. It expresses what a person or organisation is trying to achieve, avoid, or improve. Needs are contextual and subjective. A problem may exist without creating a real need if the people involved have accepted it, adapted to it, or found a workable workaround.

A familiar example is a slow IT system. The problem is clear: queries take minutes to complete. Yet users may no longer experience this as a need to be solved. The waiting time becomes a moment to get a coffee, catch up with a colleague, or take a short pause. The problem remains, but the need has faded.

An ambition describes what an organisation or team wants to accomplish strategically. Ambitions are forward looking and directional. They often reflect growth goals, positioning, or long term intent rather than immediate pain.

In early innovation discussions, these three are frequently used interchangeably. A strategic ambition is presented as a problem. A technical issue is framed as a need. Agreement follows quickly, but on different underlying interpretations.

This confusion rarely causes friction at the start. It becomes visible later, when teams try to define value, scope, or success. Conversations start looping. Stakeholders talk past each other. Decisions stall because people are solving different things without realising it.

Strong innovation concepts deliberately separate problems, needs, and ambitions before attempting to connect them. This does not reduce creativity. It creates focus. It allows teams to test whether an idea addresses a real need, supports a meaningful ambition, and solves the right problem rather than an assumed one.

Value answers a different set of questions. For whom does this matter. Compared to what. And why is this better, different, or worth the effort. Without clear answers to these questions, solutions remain difficult to assess and even harder to prioritise.

Value is not an abstract notion. It can take many forms. Economic value, societal value, environmental value, or strategic value can all be valid starting points. What matters is not only identifying the type of value, but also making explicit who perceives or receives that value. Value without a clear “for whom” remains vague and contestable.

Value is also always relative. An idea is not valuable in isolation, but only compared to existing alternatives, current practices, or doing nothing at all. In some cases, the alternative is an established process. In others, it is an informal workaround that works well enough. Ignoring these reference points leads to overestimating impact and underestimating resistance.

Different stakeholders experience value differently. What creates value for a user may create risk for an operator. What excites a technical team may increase complexity for a business owner. Without making these differences explicit, teams believe they agree while they actually optimise for different outcomes.

Defining value early does not mean locking in a business case or financial model. It means articulating what improvement looks like and for whom. It creates a shared lens to evaluate ideas, compare options, and decide what to explore further.

Strong innovation concepts make value explicit before committing to solutions. This clarity allows teams to explore multiple approaches without losing direction and to let go of ideas that are interesting but not valuable enough.

The purpose of such a framework is not to reduce complexity, but to structure it. It forces teams to articulate the core elements of an innovation idea and, more importantly, to see how these elements relate to each other. Weakness in one area cannot be compensated by strength in another.

A practical way to do this is to explicitly separate four questions. What need are we addressing. What approach are we proposing. What benefits does this create and for whom. Why is this better than existing alternatives.

Taken together, these questions form a compact logic. If one of them remains vague or implicit, the entire concept becomes fragile. Teams may feel confident internally, yet struggle the moment the idea needs to convince decision makers, reviewers, or partners.

This line of reasoning is often referred to as the NABC logic, standing for Need, Approach, Benefits, and Competition. The value of NABC is not in the acronym itself, but in the discipline it enforces. It prevents teams from jumping straight to solutions, exposes hidden assumptions, and makes trade offs explicit.

Decision makers and reviewers instinctively look for this logic, even when it is not stated explicitly. Making it visible early allows teams to strengthen their concept before it is evaluated or challenged from the outside.

Used in this way, NABC is not a template to fill in, nor a canvas to complete. It is a lens to think through an idea critically and systematically, and to identify where further clarification is still needed.

Assumptions only become visible when they are violated. That usually happens late, when commitments have already been made and changing direction becomes costly. What looked like agreement turns out to be parallel interpretations.

This is especially common in collaborative settings. Partners may use the same words but mean different things. A prototype for an engineer may mean something that works under controlled conditions. For a medical doctor, it may mean something that is safe for a patient. A pilot may mean a single test installation for one partner and a limited production series for another, ranging from one to hundreds or even thousands of units depending on the context.

Assumptions also differ across roles and organisations. One partner may assume the goal is international growth, while another focuses on local market penetration. One organisation may assume bottom up decision making, another expects top down approval.

Things get even more complicated when people participate in discussions without a clear mandate. They may be engaged and constructive, creating the impression of alignment. Only later does it become clear that key decisions cannot be made or are blocked elsewhere.

When assumptions remain implicit, mistakes are made. Things are forgotten. Opportunities are missed. Discussions slow down or circle endlessly. Tension builds, often reinforced by commercial pressure and diverging interests.

Strong innovation concepts do not eliminate assumptions. They surface them deliberately. By making assumptions explicit, teams can test them, challenge them, and decide which ones are acceptable risks at a given stage.

This clarity does not reduce creativity or flexibility. It prevents avoidable friction and allows collaboration to focus on what truly matters rather than on resolving misunderstandings later.

In a fast changing landscape, this becomes even more important. Innovation ideas need to remain sufficiently open in the beginning to create room for adaptation as learning happens. Treating an early idea as if it were a final specification removes exactly the flexibility that innovation requires.

Innovation from idea to concept is not about locking everything down as early as possible. It is about discovering where the highest potential lies and adapting direction accordingly. That requires deliberate vagueness in some areas, not as a lack of thinking, but as a conscious choice to keep options open while uncertainty is still high.

It also makes little sense to demand full clarity on all dimensions at the very beginning. Doing so often leads to over investing in ideas that later turn out to be less relevant or less promising. Innovation does not progress by eliminating all uncertainty upfront, but by reducing the right uncertainties at the right moment.

There is also a more subtle risk. Asking for more detail is a socially acceptable and often well intentioned way to delay decisions. Requests for additional analyses, refinements, or clarifications can slow a concept down significantly, even when the missing details are not critical at that stage. What looks like thoroughness can easily become a mechanism to postpone commitment.

When teams aim for full clarity too early, they often fall into the engineering or perfection trap. Improvements are continuously made, edge cases are explored, and refinements create a genuine sense of progress. Yet this progress remains internal. The concept becomes increasingly polished, while the idea never truly reaches the market and the opportunity itself remains untested and unrealised.

Developing innovation ideas also takes time. By the time a concept reaches the market, the context in which it started will almost certainly have changed. Technologies evolve. User expectations shift. Regulations, competitors, or priorities move. Concepts that are too rigid early on struggle to adapt when this happens.

A strong innovation concept is therefore not the most detailed one. It is the most balanced one.

Strength can be built in different dimensions. Some uncertainties are technical. In that case, a simple feasibility check or a quick experiment may already be enough to determine whether something works in principle or not. Other uncertainties relate to users or customers. Here, strength may come from talking to a small number of relevant people and listening carefully to their reactions.

This does not require a full market study. Speaking with five potential users can already make an idea stronger. If all five find it interesting, confidence increases. If reactions are mixed or even critical, the idea also becomes stronger, because assumptions are challenged early and direction can be adjusted. In both cases, uncertainty is reduced in a meaningful way.

Teams struggle when they expect a concept to be complete too early or, conversely, when they allow key aspects to remain vague for too long. In both cases, decisions become risky because they are based on an uneven understanding of the idea.

A concept is strong enough when it allows conscious decisions at its current stage. Decision makers know what is clear, what is still uncertain, and which uncertainties are acceptable to carry forward.

At a meta level, the logic of an Innovation Funnel is straightforward. In the early stages, organisations intentionally explore many ideas with relatively small investments of time and resources. As ideas progress through the funnel, their number decreases while the investment per idea increases.

Early in the Innovation Funnel, the purpose of a concept is orientation. It helps teams explore whether an idea is worth attention at all. At this stage, maturity is not about feasibility or scale, but about relevance.

As concepts move further through the funnel, their role shifts from orientation to selection. Decision makers are no longer asking whether an idea is interesting, but whether it is preferable to other options. This requires clearer articulation of value, trade offs, and key assumptions.

Later still, concepts support commitment. Decisions now involve allocating budget, assigning people, or engaging partners. At this point, maturity means that the remaining uncertainties are understood well enough to accept the risks involved.

At this stage, strategic alignment becomes critical. Concepts that are technically interesting or locally valuable do not automatically move an organisation forward. To truly create future value, innovation concepts must connect explicitly to strategic direction and long term ambition.

Most stage gate models include some form of evaluation mechanism at each gate, often expressed through scoring systems or weighted criteria. In principle, this helps structure decision making and create comparability between ideas.

In practice, many Innovation Funnels become misaligned with strategy. Criteria may look reasonable on paper, yet still reward short term certainty over long term relevance, or technical feasibility over strategic impact.

Strategic alignment also means that scoring mechanisms are inherently organisation specific. What works in one organisation may be counterproductive in another. Copying scoring systems without sharing the same strategy leads to distorted decisions.

There is also a mathematical risk. Poorly designed scoring models can be gamed. Teams optimise for scores rather than for strategic fit, allowing weaker ideas to pass gates because they align with the scoring logic rather than with the organisation’s future.

Although stage gates are often visualised as a linear sequence, strong Innovation Funnels allow for iteration. A negative or inconclusive decision does not necessarily mean failure. It can be a signal to loop back, strengthen specific aspects of the concept, and re enter the funnel later.

Decision points also involve different actors. Early decisions may be taken bottom up. Later decisions often require top down involvement, formal mandate, or governance structures. Even in flat organisations, this transition exists.

Strong Innovation Funnels and innovation management systems make these decision points visible. They clarify what kind of decision is being asked, how it fits within the funnel, who needs to be involved, and what level of maturity is expected.

Weak or unbalanced innovation concepts carry hidden ambiguity into later stages. Assumptions remain implicit. Value is interpreted differently by different stakeholders. Strategic intent is diluted as the project moves forward. What looked like a solid start gradually turns into friction, frustration, and loss of momentum.

Strong innovation concepts reduce this risk. By making problems, needs, value, assumptions, and reasoning explicit early, they create a shared reference point that travels with the project. Teams and partners may still disagree, but they disagree about explicit choices rather than hidden interpretations.

This clarity also strengthens collaboration. When concepts are clear, partners understand why they are involved, what success means, and how their contribution connects to the whole. This reduces misalignment, limits hidden agendas, and makes it easier to address tension before it escalates.

Execution benefits as well. Strong concepts provide direction without over constraining solutions. They allow teams to adapt as learning happens, while staying anchored to strategic intent. Decisions become easier because the criteria are known, even when outcomes are uncertain.

Finally, strong concepts support adoption and impact. When value is clearly defined and validated early, solutions are less likely to be technically impressive but practically irrelevant. The path from idea to real world use becomes shorter and more robust.

Innovation does not fail because uncertainty exists. It fails when uncertainty is unmanaged and hidden. Strong innovation concepts, supported by well designed Innovation Funnels and decision points, turn uncertainty into a navigable space rather than a source of drift.