Ideation Training ONLINE

Aims

Good and creative research ideas are central to the success of every academic. But finding such ideas is a struggle for many researchers, especially for those early in their academic career. Moreover, many stop ideating after their first idea, missing opportunities to explore more original or impactful directions.

In our ideation workshop and bootcamp, we train academics with a structured and proven process for generating and refining research ideas. Drawing on ideation tools successfully applied for over 20 years in companies, governments, and research consortia, this training adapts them specifically to the academic context.

Participants will learn to:

• Understand a clear, step-by-step process for getting inspired, generating, and discussing research ideas.
• Explore different sources of inspiration aligned with their research goals and personal interests.
• Develop a higher amount of and more creative research ideas using hands-on tools and methods.
• Develop criteria to prioritize and select the most promising ideas.
• Involve others in the ideation process and pitch ideas to your supervisor/advisor/colleagues in a clear and coherent way.

Content

The training follows a 4-step approach focused on the “fuzzy front end” of research-where ideas first take shape. The four phases are:
1. Domain Setting - Defining and framing your research area and goals.
2. Immersion - Exploring sources of inspiration and input before generating ideas.
3. Ideation - Using structured tools and creative methods to generate diverse ideas.
4. Maturation - Selecting, developing, and communicating your most promising ideas.
For each phase we provide tools, methodologies, and examples.

The training alternates between brief theoretical input, hands-on application, and guided feedback sessions. Participants will immediately apply new tools to their own research contexts, share their experiences, and receive personalized feedback from fellow participants and the trainers. This teach-apply-reflect cycle ensures strong methodological understanding and skill mastery.

Adaptation for different research fields
The training is adapted to the disciplinary context of participants. For researchers from fundamental sciences, the approach to the immersion phase will differ from researchers from social sciences to suit their specific research environment and sources of inspiration.

Expectations and participation requirements
This training is highly interactive and practice-oriented. Participants are expected to:

• Engage actively in all exercises and discussions.
• Apply the ideation tools to their own research domains during the sessions.
• Be ready to share and discuss aspects of their research with trainers and peers to enable effective feedback and collaboration.

⚠️ Important Precondition: Since the course requires discussing your own research context, participants must be willing and able to talk about their research. Those bound by confidentiality or secrecy agreements should consult the trainers before registration to discuss possible accommodations.

Methods

We will give inspiration sessions with tools explanation. Further there will be individual and teamwork sessions, sharing and feedback sessions and case studies.

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

About the Trainer

Prof. Dr. Elke Cabooter
Elke Cabooter is an Associate Principal at MTI². She has more than a decade of experience in Consumer Behavior and Customer Insights. She has, prior to her PhD, expertise in market research at a major market research company Censydiam-Ipsos, Belgium) where she worked with clients like Heineken, and Unilever.

Elke is also an associate professor at IESEG School of Management, France, where she is part of the marketing and sales department. Elke has expertise in Market Research and Consumer Behavior. At IESEG, Elke teaches marketing strategy, pricing and market research. Elke is working on several high impact research topics, specializing consumer psychology and marketing research. Her papers are published in the Internal Journal of Research in Marketing, the Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Business Research and others.

Dr. Michiel Van Crombrugge
Michiel Van Crombrugge is an Associate Principal at MTI². In this role, Michiel leverages his retailing expertise to advise leading firms as well as start-ups in their marketing decision making across many retail industries such as FMCG, consumer electronics, toys, and entertainment.

Michiel is Associate Professor of Market Insights and Innovation at the Erasmus School of Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He earned a PhD in Business Economics from KU Leuven. His research lies at the intersection of marketing, innovation, and economics. He focuses on strategic marketing issues surrounding new business models in multichannel retail and platform markets. His research has been published in leading business journal such as the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Harvard Business Review. At the Erasmus School of Economics, Michiel teaches courses on empirical marketing and marketing analytics.

Workload

Homework, Follow-up work: 14h
Course attendance: 16h

Feature

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.