Have you identified your Opportunity Platforms?

Many people simply approach innovation as brainstorming exercises - with the principle of 'the more ideas the better'. If you use this approach you might be lucky and come up with some winners... however, most often you come up with a list of me-too loosers or uninspiring and fast forgotten line extensions...
I believe that efficient innovation comes from structured AND creative innovation exercises against well-defined opportunity platforms. And the more you know about your identified opportunity platforms the better. Some questions you need to ask yourself include e.g. if you know the market size of the platform, if you have estimated its future sales potential (based on current sales and emerging trends), if you know your competition and their strenghts and weaknesses and if you really do understand the consumer / customer? So, there's certainly a lot of analysis to do before actually embarking on the more creative elements of idea generation such as various brainstorming exercises! I will certainly write more about this topic some other day!