Ideidea

Ideidea is a term used in discussions of ideation and idea management to refer to a structured approach for generating, organizing, and selecting ideas within teams. It is not tied to a single product; rather, it describes a family of practices that can be applied in education, business, and research settings.

Etymology: The word ideidea appears as a portmanteau of "idea" repeated or as an intentional linguistic choice to emphasize ideas as a process rather than a single notion. The term is used informally in design thinking and innovation literature to signal a focus on iterative ideation.

Concept: A typical ideidea process alternates divergent generation with convergent evaluation. Teams capture raw ideas, expand on them through brainstorming or brainwriting, and then filter them via criteria, scoring, or quick prototyping. Digital ideidea platforms often include idea submission, discussion threads, voting, and progress tracking, but the core remains structured idea refinement.

Applications: It is used in product development, strategic planning, education, and research projects to manage large volumes of ideas and turn them into feasible concepts or experiments.

Criticism: Critics argue that ideidea approaches can encourage excessive brainstorming without clear alignment to goals and may suffer from groupthink, bias in evaluation, or uneven participation. Effective governance and facilitation are commonly cited as essential.

See also: ideation, brainstorming, idea management, design thinking, innovation management.