31. THE POTENTIAL PYRAMID
* The Potential Pyramid is very useful for grouping a large number of ideas into broad groups to get an initial feel for volume and potential.
* You can choose your own language, but for the purposes of this first sweep, I have selected promising, possible, and poor.
* Promising means that everyone agrees the idea has potential, albeit the details are unlikely to be clear yet. This doesn’t matter.
* Possible means there are some reservations, but the view is that further investigation to prove/disprove potential would nevertheless be time well spent.
* Poor means there is significant doubt about whether to bother. Many ideas seem great when first generated, but on reflection they don’t hold up under scrutiny.
* Write the number of ideas in each layer. If there is just one in the promising layer, this may be enough. If there are none, then look to the possible layer and be more specific about what to spend more time on.
* If there is enough potential in either of those, then drop everything in the bottom layer.
EXERCISE: Spread out all the ideas generated. What is the total number? How many each in the three categories? If there are no promising ones, look to the possible section. If there is enough potential in both top layers, discard all the rest and concentrate resource in the right place.