Guide

Test the idea

A well-described idea can still rest on weak ground. These tools look for risks, gaps and hidden assumptions. None of them gives a verdict or a single score; each gives you findings to decide on.

Signals

Drivers, risks and missing evidence

Run a signal audit on the Signals page. It reads the Idea and your goals and finds the drivers and risks, across several strategic dimensions.
Choose a dimension to read its signals. Select a signal to see why it was found and what it means.
A dimension without enough evidence shows a question mark, not a zero.
Open a suggested question to start research on a gap or a major risk.
Signals and the Idea score are separate. An idea can be well described and still lack outside evidence.
After you change your goals on Intent, run the audit again so it reads them.

Consultations

Ask the experts to review it

A consultation applies expert profiles to the current idea in one complete review. It runs on IPGuru's servers, so you can leave and come back.

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Critique

Choose up to five reviewers. Each answers once, in their own words, including questions about protecting the idea.

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Stress test

One to five advisers examine what the idea rests on across eight areas: how it works, feasibility, what it is made of, limits, problem fit, adoption, alternatives, and safety or regulation.

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Perspective, customer voice, sales view

One expert's perspective, how customers would react, and how it would sell.

Which consultations you can run depends on your membership. A lock names the level.

Findings

Decide what to do with each one

Every consultation ends with a findings board: one recommended action at the top, then each finding ranked by impact, with its type and who raised it.

Adopt puts a finding where it belongs: an improvement or risk becomes an open action, an option or trade-off a decision, a question an open question.
Send to suggestions, Park or Dismiss the rest.
Tick several findings to act on them together, or adopt the recommended action in one step.
You can also take a finding to the crew in the conversation.

Nothing is decided for you. Every status on the board is read back from the scenario record.

Expert debate: a last resort

Use a debate only when discussion, questions, research and critique have not settled an important disagreement. State the disagreement and what you have already tried, choose one proposition and two or three experts, and follow the debate. You can pause, steer or add your own point. At the end, decide what to do with each conclusion.

Coverage

The Coverage tab on the Scenario page shows which kinds of work have been done on the idea and which have not. A kind of work nothing has touched is often a better next step than running something again. It is not a checklist; you do not need to do everything.

Turn the idea into documents and pictures.