Design Thinking
Ideation: Incubation places space between an idea and a decision.
Have you ever written an angry email but stopped from sending it until the next day? When you woke up you realized that nothing you wrote was what you really wanted to say because of the consequences of your words or the reputation you wanted to maintain. That’s what people call letting an idea rest or “sleeping on it.”
Ideas need time to incubate in order for us to make more level-headed decisions about them. In the framework of the ideation process, usually it starts with some form of brainstorming. You come up with a bunch of ideas, no matter how wild or impossible they may seem, and then let them sit for a while. This is the incubation stage.
You’re not quite ready to make a decision about any of them yet, but you’re giving yourself time to mull them over. This is important because it allows you to come back to your ideas with a new perspective. After some time has passed, you can then evaluate your options more objectively and make a decision about which idea is the best to pursue.
The incubation stage is important because it allows us to take a step back from our ideas and come back to them with fresh eyes. This can help us to avoid making rash decisions that we may later regret. It also allows us to come up with better ideas…
