Idea discovery: A scenario-based systematic approach for decision making in market innovation

A new trend of researches on knowledge discovery and chance discovery is to identify human insights through data synthesis rather than to discover facts through data analysis. In this paper, we propose a systematic approach named idea discovery which is committed to turning data into effective human insights. Idea discovery focuses on dynamic and sustainable process for high-quality ideas cultivation, construction, integration and evaluation through human–computer and human–human interaction. It mainly relies on latent information and its dynamic changes to drive ideas creation, integration and evaluation during sustainable creativity process. The process of idea discovery is in accordance with a dynamic model which contains two key components: (1) mining algorithms to turn data into scenario maps for eliciting human insights; (2) scenario-based creativity support activities towards actionable ideas generation. An intelligence system called Galaxy integrated with IdeaGraph algorithm has been developed to support the dynamic process of idea discovery. A case study in an automobile company has validated the effectiveness of proposed method and system. 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.