The Achille’s heel in projects: how to select an inspiring idea

An excellent idea or concept is key to growing your business or increasing your chances when applying for subsidies. New business ventures rely on disruptiveness to carve their niche in a market. Similarly, to take advantage of the numerous funding opportunities for innovative concepts within Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe, you need a concept that stands out and transform evaluators from reviewers of your proposal to advocates for it. In this article, we give you a brief look inside our tried and tested methodologies for selecting excellent ideas.

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Choose ideas that are unique but rooted to a familiar element. A first step in assessing the strength of an idea is checking resources such as the CORDIS database, or performing an extensive competitive analysis. While novelty and disruptiveness are highly sought after, it is important to connect your idea to an existing one. This will make others understand your idea more easily, increasing your likelihood of success. In other words: don’t always stick to chocolate chip cookies, but don’t shred the recipe either.

Choose ideas that can be challenged from multiple angles. If you debated your idea with a group of colleagues that you can confide in and it has withstood criticism, it’s an idea worth further development.

Choose ideas that you can explain. Excellent ideas can always be explained in simple terms. If you cannot do that just yet, there are some questions that might help streamline your thought process: Have I thought enough about this idea? Do I understand all its aspects and implications? What is the value proposition of this idea? How does it compare to the value propositions of other ideas? Is my idea simple enough to be feasible (versus an overly complicated one that would require time/budget investments much larger than available)?

Just because an idea is good, it doesn’t mean it is suitable for a specific project. Always make sure that your idea fits the bigger picture. In the context of subsidies, does your idea reach all the expected impacts? Does it answer the call text? In the context of business, does your idea match the company’s short- and long-term vision? Does it complement existing products or services?

These are the key questions you should ask of each idea:

Does it meet the requirements in our problem statement?

Is it different enough from what exists to add additional value?

Do we have the budget to create this – enough to implement even partially? Can we make the necessary time investment?

Is the technology behind our idea available?

Will we be able to roll it out with our available resources?

Can we get approval from decision makers?

At Bee Granted, our consultants have the skills and experience necessary to generate the best answers to the questions above and challenging a wide variety of concepts. Get in touch with us to take your brainstorming sessions to the next level.