Deep Ideation
Session 0, eighteen masterclasses in six parts, a lab at the end of each part, eleven optional lectures, and four destination sessions. Every class fills named boxes on the invention pack sheet, and every lab runs on your own idea.
The arc
The brainstorm puts the idea together well enough to explain how it works and why anyone would want it. The gate decides whether it becomes a project. The project grounds it, defines it, grades it, and takes it somewhere.
Session 0
What an invention is, and where one can go. Forty-five minutes.
Parts 1 to 3
Classes 1 to 8: start and expand, consult, visualise.
Class 9
Go, loop or pivot, with the reason on the record.
Parts 4 to 6
Classes 10 to 18: ground, define, evaluate and take it somewhere.
Sessions 2 to 5
Own it, keep it, give it away, or build on it.
Two entry points. A brainstorm starts at class 1. A documented start, a spec, a prototype, a current product or a patent, is read into the sheet in classes 1 and 2 and can go straight to the gate.
Session 0 · 45 minutes
The intro runs before Session 1 and is reused at the front of every later session.
| Block | What you learn |
|---|---|
| Start with the idea | One idea, on the way in and on the way out, and the three things that make it an invention: new, useful, not obvious. |
| The frames, and where they stop | Blue Ocean, design thinking, SCAMPER, TRIZ, jobs to be done and six hats: what each one is unmatched at, and the point past which none of them go. |
| What one person can now do | What AI is good at, what it is bad at, what only you can put in, and the four ways in. |
| The premise | Evidence first, decisions second, money last. |
| Where it can go | Prior art and the four questions patent systems ask, the four rights and the trade secret, and what showing it in public costs. Taught once, as a core concept. |
Session 1 · the eighteen masterclasses
One technique per class, under its industry name. Each part closes with a lab on your own idea, and the lab sheet's fields are the boxes of the invention pack.
| # | Masterclass | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Brainstorm · Part 1: Start and expand · outcome: a sentence a stranger understands, a full concept, and the questions it raises | ||
| 1 | Altitude, the honest sentence, intent and kind | Find the workable middle between an aspiration and a mechanism, discover the problem when you started from a solution, and declare what you want out of this and what kind of thing you are inventing. |
| 2 | Expanding with AI, and steering it | Read your own documents in first, grow the sentence into the anatomy of a concept, steer it narrower and wider, curate rather than hoard, and write the research plan in the first hour. |
| 3 | Lenses, methods and themes | Frames that expand and frames that judge, fifteen methods that deepen one section, and the tensions where one criterion fights another, kept with what you decided and why. |
| Lab 1 | The committed concept | Your honest sentence, the expansion curated, the ledger started, the research plan written, and the paragraph you arrived with kept for the reveal. Classes 1 to 3, 90 minutes. |
| Brainstorm · Part 2: Consult · outcome: the concerns of people who know things you do not, each with what would resolve it | ||
| 4 | The expert perspective and structured critique | Ask one discipline's questions at a time, rank what comes back on a fixed rubric by impact, and keep going with other disciplines until the idea is captured in writing. |
| 5 | The anticipated customer, then the real one | Model the objections before the conversation, then run customer discovery that cannot flatter you. |
| 6 | The stress test and the debate | Name the load-bearing assumptions and the failure modes, choose a check for each from nine verification methods, and argue both cases at full strength. |
| Lab 2 | The consultation log | The concerns register, what would resolve each one, the strongest element in a line, and the one thing to do next. Classes 4 to 6, 60 to 90 minutes. |
| Brainstorm · Part 3: Visualise, and the gate · outcome: an object you can put in front of a person, and a decision on whether it becomes a project | ||
| 7 | Drawing to think, drawing to find | Mind map, concept map with a verb on every arrow, affinity sort, fishbone, what-if, and the storyboard that finds the step nobody designed. |
| 8 | From function to form | Read concept images as decisions, derive the structured physical description, and choose the picture kind that explains, sells or files. |
| 9 | From brainstorm to project | Read the scorecard lane by lane, make both assessments, complete and good, name who is on this, and decide go, loop or pivot with the reason on the record. |
| Lab 3 | The visual pack and the gate decision | A corrected drawing, an approved image with its description, the scorecard read lane by lane, and the decision with its reason. Classes 7 to 9, 60 to 90 minutes. |
| Project · Part 4: Ground · outcome: every claim cited or tested, and the closest thing that already exists, named | ||
| 10 | Research with citations | Run the research plan to the standard: a brief with success criteria and a limit, findings with their citations, and a plain statement of what research cannot settle. |
| 11 | Experimental verification of hypotheses | Turn an assumption into a prediction that could come back false, design the smallest real test, and record it, because a documented experiment is evidence of the same standing as a citation. |
| 12 | The landscape and the formal prior art search | Find what exists and what has been tried, including doing nothing, then run the formal search and read claims, family and expiry. |
| Lab 4 | The evidence | Findings with citations, one experiment designed and recorded, and the closest existing thing named. Classes 10 to 12, 60 to 90 minutes. |
| Project · Part 5: Define · outcome: a description someone skilled could build from, and three statements of what is new | ||
| 13 | The enabling description | Write to the sufficiency standard: mechanism, features, parameters, actors, sequence, results and limitations, with embodiments and variations, and every gap named as a decision. |
| 14 | The novelty statement and the market test | Write new, unique and not obvious, each against the closest thing and from your own design rationale, then show the sheet to a real person and record what they said. |
| Lab 5 | The enabling description | The description with its variations and open items, and the three novelty statements shown to one real person. Classes 13 and 14, 60 to 90 minutes. |
| Project · Part 6: Evaluate, and take it somewhere · outcome: an honest reading of where it is strong and where it is exposed, and a destination chosen on a fact | ||
| 15 | Signals, not scores | Give every value driver and risk factor an evidence sentence, read eight dimensions one at a time, and keep three numbers that never blend. |
| 16 | Readiness levels | Take the technology readiness level you can show evidence for, read the manufacturing one beside it, name the requirement that blocks the next level, and write the de-risking roadmap. |
| 17 | Ownership, novelty, and the second gate | Settle who owns it and who could block it with evidence, read detectability and the gap analysis against the novelty statement, and decide go, loop or pivot. |
| 18 | Handover, disclosure, and the door | Assemble the documents by audience and the binder you bring to a professional, count what showing it costs by door, and choose the destination on a fact. |
| Lab 6 | The invention pack, complete | The signal audit, the readiness reading, the ownership answer, and the door chosen with the fact that decided it. Classes 15 to 18, 90 minutes, the capstone. |
Every lab sheet ships in two forms: one that names the IPGuru surface for each step, and one that needs nothing but the sheet and whatever assistant you already use. Download the lab sheets.
Optional lectures
Each is the length of a masterclass and is built to the same standard. The core arc runs end to end without them, and the class that uses one carries a single reference slide saying what it is and when to reach for it.
| Lecture | Family | Referenced in | What it teaches in full |
|---|---|---|---|
| Interrogating an idea | Method | Class 3 | The map of useful questions, the two dials of context and lens, going where the idea is weakest, and what the map is bad at. |
| Running a project through gates | Method | Class 9 | What a gate is, what evidence each one reads, go, loop and pivot as the three answers, and the stage-gate literature it comes from. |
| The structured restart | Method | Classes 9 and 17 | The pause assessment, verifying by must, should, could and won't, and changing course with the lineage kept. A restart against a repair. |
| Methods on the mechanism | Method set | Class 3 | Follow the chain of cause and effect, reduce to first principles, break it into parts, find what fights it, state what must be true, borrow from elsewhere, resolve the contradiction, deepen the problem. |
| Methods on the criteria | Method set | Class 3 | Say what good looks like, lift one criterion, find the trade-off, name the claimed outcome, walk it as a user would, design for the edge, and compare with what is done today. |
| TRIZ: contradictions and the inventive principles | Frame | Class 3 | Altshuller's claim, the contradiction matrix, the forty principles at introductory depth, and the empirical record for and against. |
| SCAMPER and morphological analysis | Frame | Class 3 | The two systematic expanders, and when each produces variants the inventor would not have reached. |
| Jobs to be done and the four actions | Frame | Class 3 | The job the customer hires a product for, and eliminate, reduce, raise and create. What each asks that the others do not. |
| SWOT, PESTLE and 5W1H | Frame | Class 3 | The three judging and orienting frames, their coverage, and what each one never asks. |
| Design thinking, six hats and first principles | Frame | Class 3 | The three process frames, design thinking's steps mapped onto the arc, the hats as a discussion discipline, and first principles as decomposition. |
| Theme alignment | Theme | Class 3 | Context as the setting an idea lives in, the aspects a context demands, the same idea read in two contexts, and the neutral context. |
Sessions 2 to 5
Each is half a day, each opens from your invention pack, and each is independent of the others. Take one, take all four, or take none and build.
Session 2
Having against owning, the three tests in plain English, what prior art decides, the invention disclosure record, what protection costs in time and money, and the decision made with evidence.
Session 3
Detectability as the deciding question, the process owner's natural moat, reasonable measures and the four risks, secret and patent together, and the know-how half.
Session 4
Open as a chosen destination, defensive publication, licence families in plain language, community as a moat, and business models around open.
Session 5
The startup destination and the intrapreneurial variant, the venture picture, launch as public disclosure, reading a platform's terms, and the moat stack.
Nothing here is legal advice. Protection is taught as a set of design questions, and names, scope and terms differ by country.
How a class runs
Fifteen to twenty minutes of lecture, four to eight of worked example, then the seminar question and the lab. Recorded classes carry check questions with answers.
One
A positive statement of what this class gives you, with what you gain and how you will know it is working.
Two
Something checkable, with its source and its sample size said aloud, never a rule that is only true inside the course.
Three
Taught under its industry name, with what it is good at and how it is applied, step by step.
Four
The strongest argument against the claim, answered at full strength, conceding where it is right.
Five
What the technique is bad at, the trap people fall into, and what that trap costs.
Six
A question with no settled answer, for twenty to thirty minutes of discussion in a live class.
Seven
Two to four sources with links, so the argument can be checked outside the room.
Eight
One invention run on screen, showing the inventor's decision and why, not only the output.
Nine
The same record before the technique and after it, so the change is visible rather than asserted.
A class stays in the course only if it states a checkable fact, carries a claim that could be wrong, answers the strongest objection, and fills at least one box on the invention pack sheet.
Next
Who it is for, what you walk out with, the four doors, what is included, and the formats.
Recorded sessions as they are published, and where the course is being taught.
Tell us the class, term, workshop or event you have in mind and we will show you the materials.