The Money-Making Filter: How to transform your business ideas into actual market winners

A talented business owner of a popular cafe had a classic entrepreneurial problem. She had notebooks filled with potential innovations for her business seasonal menus, loyalty programs, community events, subscription services, but felt paralysed when it came to deciding which ideas to pursue. With limited time and resources, she couldn't implement everything, and choosing the wrong concept could waste months of effort.

This abundance of ideas isn't uncommon for business owners. In fact, most entrepreneurs I've worked with don't struggle with generating ideas; they struggle with filtering them. They have dozens of potential innovations but lack a systematic way to identify which ones are truly worth pursuing.

The cost of this filtering failure can be enormous. I've seen businesses invest months and thousands of pounds developing concepts that customers ultimately didn't want, while their most promising ideas remained undeveloped in a notebook somewhere. Even worse, I've watched some teams waste time arguing over which ideas "feel right" rather than gathering evidence about which ones would actually work.

But I've also seen the opposite approach succeed brilliantly. Tom Kerwin, author of Innovation Tactics created a three-part system called Idea Filter for rapidly filtering their ideas before significant investment. Teams using this framework would first solidify vague concepts into something tangible, then assess each idea's coherence through simple narrative exercises, and finally test promising concepts with potential customers. 

In this guide, I'll share with you Tom's three-part filtering system that can help you identify your most promising business ideas with far greater accuracy than gut instinct alone. These tactics will help you transform your idea evaluation process from one based on intuition to one based on evidence, dramatically increasing your chances of developing innovations that your customers will actually embrace.

The Idea Filtering System: Three Tactics That Reveal Your Best Business Ideas

The following three tactics from Innovation Tactics provide a framework for filtering your innovation ideas to identify those with the greatest potential:

1. Box Clever: Transform vague concepts into tangible offerings that force clarity and specificity
2. Solve for Distribution: Create coherent stories that test whether your idea will be both chosen and used
3. Pitch Provocations: Get raw feedback from potential customers to reveal which ideas truly resonate

We'll explore each tactic with practical examples from a café that used these approaches to identify their most promising innovation opportunities. Whether you're a small business owner or part of a larger innovation team, these tactics can help you avoid costly missteps and focus your limited resources on ideas with genuine potential.

1. Box Clever: Making Your Ideas Tangible

The first step in filtering your ideas is making them concrete enough to evaluate properly. The Box Clever tactic transforms vague concepts into tangible offerings by asking you to design the packaging your innovation would be sold in, forcing clarity and specificity.

Why it works

Many promising business ideas remain perpetually fuzzy, existing as general concepts rather than specific offerings. This vagueness makes proper evaluation impossible and execution challenging. By imagining your idea as a packaged product on a retail shelf, you're forced to clarify exactly what you're offering, who it's for, and why they should care.

The physical constraints of packaging require brutal prioritisation. Just as product packaging can only feature the most compelling selling points, this exercise forces you to identify the heart of your idea and what makes it distinctive. This clarity is essential for both evaluation and eventual marketing.

How to use the Box Clever tactic

1. Gather your raw ideas
   • Identify the innovations or opportunities you're considering
   • Note which ideas generate the most enthusiasm
   • Consider which customers might care about each idea
   • List the potential benefits for those customers
2. Design your product box
   • Imagine your idea as a physical or digital product on a retail shelf
   • Create the packaging that would sell this innovation to customers
   • Focus on what would grab a customer's attention
   • Highlight the essence of your product and its key benefits
3. Pitch your packaged idea
   • Present your product box to colleagues as if pitching to retailers
   • Explain why customers would choose your product over alternatives
   • Notice which benefits you emphasise during your verbal pitch
   • Pay attention to which ideas generate genuine excitement

Practical application

The management team at Pip's Café had been discussing various ways to enhance their customer experience. One concept that had been mentioned in several meetings was offering personalised coffee consultations, but the details remained vague. Using the Box Clever tactic, they transformed this general idea into a specific offering.

They began by noting:

• The idea: Personalised Coffee Consultations at Pip's Café
• Target customers: Coffee enthusiasts seeking expert advice and novices looking for guidance
• Potential benefits: Tailored recommendations, deeper understanding of coffee preferences, stronger connection with the café

Next, they designed a product box for this service:

The packaging featured:

• A clear title: "Unlock Your Perfect Brew"
• Visual elements showing a coffee expert guiding a customer
• Key selling points: "Expert guidance tailored to your taste"
• Target audience statement: "Whether you're a coffee enthusiast or new to the world of coffee"
• Core promise: "Elevate your coffee experience"

When presenting their box to colleagues, the team found themselves naturally emphasising the emotional benefits of the service—the feeling of discovery and connection—rather than just the technical aspects of coffee education. This highlighted the true appeal of their idea and helped them understand how to position it effectively.

The Box Clever exercise transformed their vague concept into a specific offering with clear benefits and target customers. This clarity not only made evaluation easier but also provided language they could use in their marketing if they decided to move forward with the idea.

2. Solve for Distribution: Testing Your Idea's Coherence

Once you've clarified your ideas, the next step is testing whether they make sense as complete experiences. The Solve for Distribution tactic helps you assess each idea's coherence by creating simple stories about how people would discover, choose, and use your innovation.

Why it works

History is filled with "better" products that lost to technically inferior rivals. Your innovation doesn't need to be perfect—it needs to fit naturally into people's lives and be the obvious solution when they encounter a specific problem or desire.

By crafting detailed stories about how someone would use your innovation (the Product Story) and how they would discover and choose it over alternatives (the Distribution Story), you can identify disconnects or issues before investing significant resources. If you struggle to tell either story convincingly, that's a crucial warning sign about your idea's viability.

How to use the Solve for Distribution tactic

1. Create your Product Story
   • Describe a specific person with a specific struggle
   • Explain how they've already tried to solve this problem
   • Clarify why their current solutions aren't sufficient
   • Show how your idea fits naturally into their life
   • Illustrate how their life improves thanks to your innovation
2. Create your Distribution Story
   • Identify when your customer becomes aware of their struggle
   • Detail how and where they look for solutions
   • Explain how they discover your innovation
   • List the alternatives they consider alongside your offering
   • Clarify why they ultimately choose your solution
   • Describe how they justify this choice to others
3. Evaluate and compare
   • Review each paired story for coherence and believability
   • Look for gaps or moments that feel forced or unrealistic
   • Compare different ideas to identify those with the strongest narratives
   • Select the most promising concepts for further development

Practical application

The Pip's Café team created detailed stories for their Personalised Coffee Consultations concept:

Product Story (the 'Use it' Story):

Meet Sarah, a 32-year-old marketing professional who loves coffee but finds her daily coffee routine lacks variety and depth. She has experimented with different store-bought coffee brands, but the results have often left her unsatisfied. Her current approach doesn't allow her to explore the diverse world of coffee flavours and brewing methods, leaving her feeling disconnected from her daily coffee ritual.

Sarah discovers Pip's Café and their Personalised Coffee Consultations service, providing her with expert guidance and a personalised approach to exploring coffee. Thanks to Pip's Café, Sarah's coffee experience is transformed as she learns about coffee origins, flavour profiles, and brewing methods, making her daily routine a source of joy and connection.

Distribution Story (the 'Choose it' Story):

Sarah is aware of her coffee struggle every morning when she takes that first uninspiring sip of her routine coffee. She seeks solutions through conversations with friends, in online coffee forums and by reading articles. Sarah discovers Pip's Cafe Personalised Coffee Consultations through a glowing recommendation on a coffee enthusiast forum.

Sarah contemplates joining coffee subscription services, attending generic coffee workshops, or experimenting with different store-bought brands. She selects Pip's Café Personalised Coffee Consultations due to their personalised guidance and deep coffee knowledge, reinforced by a positive online testimonial. Sarah justifies her choice by explaining that Pip's Café offers expert guidance tailored to her taste and citing the positive testimonial, believing it will enhance her daily coffee ritual.

Through this exercise, the team identified several strengths in their concept, particularly how it addressed a specific pain point (uninspiring daily coffee) with a personalised solution. However, they also spotted potential issues with their distribution story—specifically, they needed to ensure their service would be visible in the places where people like Sarah would be looking for solutions.

The team compared this narrative with stories they created for other ideas and found that the Personalised Coffee Consultations concept had one of the most coherent and convincing narratives. This gave them confidence to move it forward to the next stage of evaluation.

3. Pitch Provocations: Getting Real Customer Feedback

The final and most crucial filter is testing how potential customers respond to your ideas. The Pitch Provocations tactic helps you gather genuine feedback by presenting concept pitches to potential customers and observing their reactions.

Why it works

Internal evaluation can only take you so far. Eventually, you need real customer reactions to tell you whether your idea has genuine appeal. The Pitch Provocations tactic creates a structured way to gather this feedback before you've invested heavily in development.

By presenting multiple ideas in a simple, consistent format, you can identify which concepts genuinely resonate with your target audience and which only sound good in team meetings. This approach also reveals unexpected interpretations of your ideas, which can sometimes lead to even better innovations than you originally conceived.

How to use the Pitch Provocations tactic

1. Create your concept pitches
   • Develop simple, clear descriptions of your most promising ideas
   • Keep each pitch concise and focused (one or two paragraphs)
   • Ensure each concept is distinct from the others
   • Use insights from your Box Clever and Solve for Distribution exercises
2. Prepare your testing approach
   • Identify 5-10 potential customers to interview individually
   • Select 6-8 varied concepts to present
   • Arrange one-hour sessions with each participant
   • Create a standard set of questions to ask about each pitch
3. Conduct your feedback sessions
   • Show each pitch without additional explanation
   • Ask participants to share their thoughts as they interpret it
   • Note both verbal feedback and emotional reactions
   • Explore misunderstandings as potential opportunities
   • Have participants compare all concepts at the end
4. Analyse patterns and insights
   • Look for concepts that consistently generated positive reactions
   • Identify common misunderstandings or concerns
   • Note unexpected interpretations that might suggest new directions
   • Select the most promising 1-3 ideas for further development

Practical application

The Pip's Café team prepared a series of concept pitches, including one for their Personalised Coffee Consultations idea:

"Personalised Coffee Consultation: Sarah, a daily coffee enthusiast, discovered Pip's Cafe Personalised Coffee Consultations after struggling with her routine brew, and she chose this personalised coffee adventure for expert guidance, unlocking a world of flavours, and transforming her daily ritual."

They created similar pitches for seven other potential innovations, including a coffee subscription service, a brewing equipment rental program, and specialty seasonal menus.

The team arranged sessions with eight regular and potential customers, showing them each concept and asking questions like:

• "In your own words, what do you think this is?"
• "What already exists that does something like this?"
• "What might you be able to do differently if you had this?"
• "Imagine you tried this and it was disappointing. What went wrong?"

The feedback revealed several important insights:

• The Personalised Coffee Consultations concept consistently generated the most enthusiastic reactions, with several participants leaning forward and showing genuine interest when reading the pitch.
• Some participants initially misunderstood the concept as a take-home product rather than an in-café experience, suggesting the need for clearer communication.
• When asked about potential disappointments, several mentioned concerns about feeling pressured to buy expensive coffee or equipment, highlighting an important consideration for implementation.
• Compared to the other concepts presented, the consultation idea was rated as the most distinctive and appealing by six of the eight participants.

Based on this feedback, the Pip's Café team decided to prioritise the development of their Personalised Coffee Consultations service, with modifications to address the concerns and misunderstandings that emerged during testing. They also identified elements of their coffee subscription concept that could potentially be integrated with the consultation service in the future.

Ways to Use This Idea Filtering System

There are several approaches to implementing these tactics depending on your timeline and the nature of your innovation challenges:

• 10-minute challenge: Choose the tactic that seems most relevant to your current situation and try it with a single idea. Don't overthink it! If you're not sure where to start, Box Clever is often the most accessible entry point.
• The complete loop: Conduct separate sessions for each of the three tactics over an extended period. This allows for reflection between stages and deeper exploration of each technique.
• Full-day experience: Do it all in one go! Spend a day moving through all three tactics, with breaks in between. This intensive approach works well for teams with limited time who need to make decisions quickly.

Additional Tips for Successful Idea Filtering

• Don't make it hard. Take small, bold steps rather than trying to perfect every detail of the process. The goal is better decisions, not process perfection.
• Embrace mistakes as learning opportunities. Pay careful attention to failures as they often contain valuable insights about what customers truly need.
• Separate yourself from your ideas. Remember that you are not your work—the goal isn't to prove you're right but to find what will truly work for your customers.

From Many Ideas to Your Best Innovations

When used together, these three tactics create a powerful progression that transforms your idea evaluation process:

1. Box Clever turns vague concepts into tangible offerings with clear benefits
2. Solve for Distribution tests whether these offerings make sense as complete customer experiences
3. Pitch Provocations reveals which ideas genuinely resonate with your target audience

This integrated approach addresses the three main challenges of idea evaluation: lack of clarity, missing coherence, and absence of customer validation. By systematically tackling each of these challenges, you dramatically increase your chances of identifying and developing innovations with genuine market potential.

Addressing Common Objections

"We don't have time for this much customer research"

Consider the cost of developing the wrong idea. The time invested in these filtering tactics is minuscule compared to the resources required to fully develop and launch an innovation. One day of structured evaluation can save months of wasted development effort.

"Our customers don't know what they want"

While it's true that customers can't always articulate their desires for entirely new concepts, they are remarkably good at reacting to specific ideas presented to them. These tactics don't ask customers to design your innovations; they ask for reactions to possibilities you've already created.

"We need to move quickly in our market"

Speed to market matters, but speed in the wrong direction is worse than useless. These tactics can be completed in as little as a day and significantly increase your odds of choosing directions worth pursuing quickly.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Skipping straight to customer feedback without first clarifying your concepts
2. Presenting only one idea rather than a range of possibilities
3. Defending your ideas instead of genuinely listening to feedback
4. Ignoring negative reactions or rationalising them away
5. Failing to look for patterns across multiple customer interactions

The most common pitfall is becoming too attached to your own ideas. Remember that the goal is not to prove your initial concepts were brilliant but to discover which innovations will truly add value for your customers.

Enhancing Your Idea Evaluation with AI Tools

While the three-part filtering system above provides a strong foundation for identifying your best ideas, modern AI tools can complement these tactics and potentially accelerate your process. Here's how you can incorporate AI into each stage of your idea evaluation:

1. AI-Assisted Idea Clarification

When using the Box Clever tactic, AI can help you articulate and refine your initial concepts:

• Use AI writing assistants to help draft multiple variations of your product description, forcing clarity from different angles
  
  
• Generate visual mockups of your product packaging using AI image generation tools, allowing you to visualize different positioning approaches
  
  
• Analyze the language patterns in your descriptions to identify which benefits and features you're emphasizing most consistently

For example, the Pip's Café team used an AI tool to generate several different packaging concepts for their Personalised Coffee Consultations idea, each emphasising different aspects of the service—education, personalisation, discovery, or community—to help identify which positioning resonated most strongly with their team.

2. AI-Enhanced Story Development

For the Solve for Distribution tactic, AI can help develop more nuanced customer narratives:

• Generate diverse customer personas based on your target demographic information
  
  
• Expand your distribution stories with additional touchpoints or variations
  
  
• Identify potential plot holes or inconsistencies in your customer journey narratives

Pip's Café could have used AI to develop several different customer profiles beyond "Sarah" and generate unique journey stories for each, helping them identify which customer segments might have the strongest connection to their offering and whether the concept would appeal broadly or to specific niches.

3. AI for Preliminary Feedback Analysis

While AI cannot replace real customer feedback in the Pitch Provocations tactic, it can help analyse and organise the feedback you receive:

• Transcribe and analyze customer interviews to identify patterns and recurring themes
• Simulate initial reactions to your pitches before testing with real customers
• Compare your concepts against existing market offerings to identify unique positioning opportunities

After conducting their customer interviews, Pip's Café could have used AI to analyze transcripts, identifying common themes, concerns, and positive reactions across different participants, helping them spot patterns they might have missed in their manual analysis.

Important Limitations to Consider

While AI can be valuable in your idea filtering process, it's important to recognize its limitations:

1. AI cannot replace real customer feedback — Always validate your ideas with actual potential customers
2. AI responses reflect existing patterns — AI may struggle with truly novel or disruptive concepts
3. AI lacks contextual business understanding — You'll need to provide sufficient background information
4. AI can amplify existing biases — Be mindful of how your prompts might steer responses

The most effective approach is to use AI as a complement to the human-centered tactics described above, not as a replacement. Let AI help you prepare, analyse, and refine, while keeping real customers at the center of your final decision-making process.

Transform Your Innovation Process

Ready to filter your business ideas more effectively? These tactics are just the beginning of what's possible when you approach innovation as a systematic process rather than a random search for inspiration.

For a complete toolkit of innovation practices, Innovation Tactics by Tom Kerwin gives you 54 practical innovation tools in a beautiful card deck. From generating fresh ideas to testing concepts with customers, each card provides clear instructions and examples you can apply immediately to your next innovation challenge.

Developed through work with hundreds of businesses across industries, these tactics have helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovation teams transform how they develop and launch new offerings, creating genuine market impact rather than just internal excitement.

Get Innovation Tactics →

The difference between businesses that repeatedly launch successful innovations and those that waste resources on ideas that never resonate isn't about creativity or inspiration—it's about having a reliable system for filtering ideas and identifying those with genuine potential.

Based on tactics from Innovation Tactics by Pip Decks.

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