The traditional route to evaluating your business idea is to put together a detailed business plan but before you get buried under business plans and funding negotiations, not to mention throwing away your own money, resources and energy for the next 6 months, you need to stop and question whether your idea is compelling in the first place.

So there's consensus within your organisation that now is the time to innovate.  Competitive pressures are mounting up and more than ever you need to develop that unique solution for your customers to ensure your business continues to be a success. (…)

The importance of a good product survey cannot be underestimated in the innovation process.

Whether you are lucky enough to be armed with a product idea or you have yet to crystallize your thoughts, you'd be mad to put any serious money into the project before you had a good understanding of the market. Knowing about your chosen market environment and what makes your customers tick are vital to the product development process.

Here's a guide to some good websites that we regularly use for research.

Innovation comes from the verb "to innovate" which means to "introduce something new" or to introduce "a new idea, method, or device". But there's a lot more to innovation than the introduction of something new. So what should you know about innovation? I've done a quick sketch of what I believe illustrates the successful innovation process.