Divergent Innovation: Fostering and Managing the Fuzzy Front End of Innovation

Early phases of innovation are hardly ever being addressed in a systematic way. We tend to assume that ideas fall like raindrops from the sky. Within the concept of open innovation the number of input channels has been increased, but the assumption remains that new ideas pop up by chance or brainstorming. The process of generating new ideas in engineering, science and design is usually considered ill-defined, or even random. In contrast to this view we describe approaches of divergent innovation and search field analysis and three alternative methods that may be applied within: (1) futures-oriented approaches, (2) contextual approaches and (3) the resource-oriented derivation of product attributes from value propositions. We exemplify a divergent approach by showing a project to allocate potentially disruptive innovation for the telecommunication industry. Finally, we derive implications and guidelines for future market research within a divergent innovation approach.