A crucial part of the planning process is reaching deep to find the best ideas. Many companies already have a process in place, but if you are looking for inspiration, consider the following six-step approach.

Six Steps to the Big Idea

1.       Do Your Homework (Immersion): Study the situation, visit competitors, read new research, talk to customers, interview employees, attend a conference, or poll your customer base.

2.       Optimize the Environment: Clear away any constraints to thinking, go off site, stockpile the food and coffee, play music. Do whatever it takes to let your brains run free.

3.       Rattle the Brain: Do “thinking exercises” to limber up the brain before tackling your specific problem (see Jump Start Your Brain by Dave Hall for 37 exercises).

4.       Generate Idea Nuggets (free form): Think of every possible crazy solution to the problem, write them down as you go, but make no judgments or justifications at this time.

5.       Assemble Into Strategies and Tactics: Put each nugget on a 3 x 5 card and arrange the cards into bigger concepts and ideas.

6.       Be Bold: Don’t immediately dismiss strategies that seem too big for your budget; winners could be shopped to the venture capital community and/or strategic investors for additional funding.

Source: Adapted from Jump Start Your Brain by consultant Dave Hall, Warner Books, 1995.

Do Your Homework

To see potential opportunities in a new light, look beyond your normal circle of peers, subordinates, and other industry sources.

Launch a Personal Fact-Finding Mission: Find out how consumers currently use online financial services and observe how the services could be improved. For example:

• have a broad-based conversation with a key vendor
• arange for a classroom of MBA students to debate the pros and cons of online financial services
• attend an in-person customer focus group on Internet financial services
• hire a consultant for a brainstorm session
  (OBR’s Margaret Quinn, formerly a senior product manager at U.S. Bancorp, is available for a limited number of engagements, contact consulting@onlinebankingreport.com )
• sponsor focus groups of branch and call center staff to discuss serving/selling customers online
• arrange online focus groups (users meet online in a moderated chat environment)
• post a quick questionnaire on your Web and have each answer forwarded to your email address
• issue RFPs (request for proposals) from Web development companies or consultants to design a “next-generation” Net offering

Attend an industry Conference: Away from the daily grind, surrounded by the latest technology, and bombarded by new ideas: a perfect prescription for breakthrough thinking. Following is the latest conference schedule.

If you can only get to one conference this year, BAI’s Retail Delivery is by far the biggest. Nearly 10,0000 attendees and exhibitors from around the world will converge on New Orleans the first week of December.

2000 Thinking Exercise:
Person-to-Person Payments

If you’ve subscribed to OBR for long, you’ve read a lot about P2P payments However, if you haven’t already used one of the services, the light bulb still may not have gone off. Your assignment is to sign-up for a P2P account and then use it to buy something on eBay. We recommend using PayPal  www.paypal.com because it’s the most widely accepted alternative on eBay.

After enabling your PayPal account, head over to eBay and search on something you can use or is dirt cheap (or preferably both). Buy two items from two different sellers. Make sure one accepts PayPal for payment.

After winning the bids, pay for one item the old-fashioned way with pen, paper, and stamps. Pay the other with PayPal. Get out a sheet of paper, draw a line down the center, and compare and contrast the two approaches.  Think about the implications for consumer usage of bill payment once it’s as easy to pay your electric bill with PayPal as it is to buy a Beanie Baby at eBay.

eBay’s in-house payment system, BillPoint, added an important new feature called Instant Purchase. It provides buyers with the option of settling winning bids by simply clicking on a Pay Now link in the email sent to all winning bidders. Users can also pay immediately by clicking on a Pay Now button displayed with the lot description. It’s similar to Amazon’s One-Click payment system.

Read a Research Report Cover-to-Cover. We know this is going to hurt, but plunk down a couple grand for the latest online banking research, clear a half-day on your calendar, and really read the whole report, not just the executive summary. Even if you don’t believe the conclusions, think about the implications for your company were they to come true. It might help you see things in a new light.

Companies with Online Banking Research

Source: Online Banking Report, 6/00

Notes: (1) eBilling only, refer to enclosed prospectus

(2) Gartner Group acquired Mentis

(3) Jupiter is being acquired by Media Metrix

(4) good coverage of European and other international markets

Conduct your Own Research: Research culled from your own customers and in-market prospects is infinitely more believable than national studies. If research budgets are nil, you can still post a short survey on your Web for next to nothing and have results tomorrow. The data won’t be projectable to your entire customer base, but it might provide a number of good ideas and insights. Or if you’d prefer to take quick reading of consumer sentiment without tipping your hand to the competition, consider tapping into the pre-assembled panels of Web research companies.

At InsightExpress  www.insightexpress.com developed by NFO Worldwide, you can ask 150 consumers what they think of your idea for an out-of-pocket expense of $850. The questionnaire can be completely composed online using templates from the research companies. Another source of similar research is Greenfield Online  www.greenfieldonline.com