Innovation today requires perspectives from different domains of knowledge, it is multidisciplinary. To create something new, it is necessary to combine what we already know.
Idea generation (ideation) sessions can be utilized to bring together participants from different domains, and facilitate the exchange and creation of knowledge for a specific purpose. A wealth of information is generated in these sessions, however, only a portion is kept and utilized. The advancement of information technologies enables this information to be digitally documented and reused for further knowledge creation.
Big data techniques can be used to find the most common terms and correlations between ideas. This information can be used in four moments of the collaborative idea generation process: first, to identify areas of opportunity (gaps); once a topic has been identified, it can be used as input for participants, and later to find terms were no correlation was found to enable bisociation in an iterative process, and finally as an aid for organizers to find the concepts with the most interest and obtain insights from the session. The ultimate goal of this research is to optimize the idea generation process by integrating the use of data.