Technical jargon: What does "ideation" actually mean?

New ideas are in demand, but difficult to find, because developing them requires creativity. Especially in times when this is needed more than ever, words with the prefix crea- have a pretty hard time. Why is that? Terms like creative agencies, creative process or creative director have lost much of their former myth with the extinction of the old Swiss advertising guard from the seventies and eighties. In recent years, they have always been accompanied by a slightly negative connotation, because they are associated with attributes such as expensive and/or arrogant. Perhaps that's why this word, which actually means the same thing, is currently experiencing an enormous boom: ideation.

More than just "glatti" ideas 

Ideation means looking for ideas, finding ideas and having ideas. Since Design Thinking has now also reached management training and thus the management meetings in companies, the Double Diamond, the gem of this process, is on everyone's lips and goes like this: The first of two diamonds locates and defines the problem, the second represents the solution development. And at the beginning of this second diamond lies the ideation that our industry so urgently needs.

In the meantime, it has become clear that things can no longer go on as they were before the crisis. As is well known, crises are there to be spared or hit hard. Those who are spared run the risk of simply letting the problems stand until mold forms on them. If the latter happens, nothing is the way it used to be anyway and offers one - optimistically formulated - the opportunity to change or reinvent oneself. To do this, you have to open yourself up. And that's exactly where the problem lies, because most people close themselves off in crisis situations and thus stifle the creative process of finding ideas. But ideas are more like truffles than mold. You have to know how and, above all, where to find them. The search for the truffle "ideation" may therefore be costly, but it is a worthwhile prevention against the significantly more expensive mold treatment.