The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the Ideation Process

The growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has important implications for business in general and innovation in particular. Ideation is the start of the innovation process. The authors review three fields of AI in ideation: identification and analysis of new opportunities, idea generation, and idea screening and idea selection. The results of the review are as follows. First, whereas in the past researchers highlighted the importance of industry characteristics and market stability, the authors now emphasize the importance of firm culture in driving innovation. AI will mediate this relationship. Second, across all stages, AI will improve efficiency, speed, and cost of ideation. Third, in opportunity identification, considerable progress has occurred in analyzing text and image; research on video and audio is relatively scarce. Fourth, in idea generation, AI increases the average creativity of ideas; however, the effect of AI on the generation of top ideas is conflicting. Fifth, AI assists very well in idea screening, but does not do a good job yet in idea selection. Sixth and most importantly, research remains in the early stages and will rapidly improve in the future. Thus, AI has the potential to radically transform ideation.