Ideation & Co-creation
Vision One Research: Ideation & Co-Creation Workshops for Innovation
It’s impossible to create a product or service without an idea, so why not generate them in a productive setting with creative, like-minded people under our expert guidance?
Introduction to ideation and why it unlocks better ideas
Ideation and co-creation workshops at Vision One are energetic, collaborative sessions designed to spark fresh thinking and unlock new opportunities. By bringing together customers, stakeholders, and our experienced researchers, we create a space where ideas are explored, challenged, and refined — turning early thinking into concepts with real potential.
Ideation Workshops
Vision One’s ideation workshops inspire new ideas and uncover opportunities for innovation. Using structured creative techniques and insight-led frameworks, we explore customer needs, category challenges, and emerging trends to generate a wide range of ideas. The result is fresh thinking grounded in real market insight.
Co-Creation Workshops
Our co-creation workshops bring customers directly into the innovation process. Rather than simply reacting to ideas, participants actively help shape and refine concepts, propositions, and experiences. Guided by Vision One’s expert facilitators, these sessions ensure ideas are built around genuine customer needs, making them more relevant, compelling, and commercially viable.
Together, these workshops help businesses transform customer insight into powerful ideas that drive meaningful innovation.
How do ideation and co-creation agencies help?
The best ideas should focus on optimising market gaps, new opportunities enabled by technology, or addressing unmet customer needs or current/future trends.
How ideation sessions work
Ideation workshops involve recruiting specially selected members of the public, experts and stakeholders into the development forum to add realism and focus on customer needs.
The workshops tend to be full-day. It is important to have time to go beyond the obvious and dig deep, which should help develop the most groundbreaking ideas. Overall, the goal is to combine insights and spark innovation through lateral thinking and a wide array of enabling techniques.
Creating successful new products and services is one of the most challenging problems a brand faces; our goal is to enable brands to generate, evaluate and importantly, implement their New Product Development plans.
Planning and exercises
The talking points are carefully planned by one of our qualitative experts. Each task opens participants’ minds, revealing information such as whether they need the product or service to be easier or faster to use, and whether it needs to be cheaper or more effective in its current form.
Each workshop is custom-designed using a range of well-established techniques, such as SCAMPER. The success of any Ideation workshop isn’t just down to the stimulus, though… it is equally about which participants have been selected to take part. We have developed a unique approach to recruiting for idea generation, which we like to keep secret (sorry!). But it is fair to say we believe it is important to include some of the target audience, to ensure that ideas are relevant and focused on addressing both real and emotional needs.
Here’s a short Ted Talk video on 4 simple ways to create an idea worth spreading
Award- Winning Agency
Three-time winner of The Drum’s ‘Best Market Research Agency’
How ideation sparks innovation
Ideation workshops do not have a set time limit; they can last several hours or even days. It all depends on the objectives and required outcomes. Ideation is often fun and highly rewarding for everyone involved. It allows those who lead the innovation process to explore their own and other people’s thoughts and ideas. Other benefits include:
The number of ideas you generate isn’t limited; you could walk out with one really well thought-out idea that you wish to pursue, but equally, emerge with a bank of a dozen other ideas that could develop in the future.
Challenge your own mindset! In most consumer markets, it is important to recognise there are segments – being mindful of these segments is often more successful than assuming one size fits all.
By targeting a wider audience, you increase the variety of opinions and perspectives in Co-creation sessions. Ultimately, this means you are more likely to think outside the box and explore new ideas.
Innovate through Ideation
Why wait around when your business could be creating the newest product or service to add to your arsenal? Speak with our team of experts with over 22 years of experience to guide you and maximise your potential.
Latest client testimonials
The team were a pleasure to work with. They went above & beyond to deliver an answer to our business issue with tight deadlines and an even tighter budget! I look forward to working with them again!
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I’ve worked with Vision One on a range of research, from advertising to U&A studies. They deliver valuable insights that lead to concrete actionable steps. Our collaboration has gained international scope.
Their insights and expertise greatly enhanced our performance and understanding of our brand health; Vision One are WONDERFUL to work with. Their communication, time management and dedication to question-solving are excellent!
We appreciate the great work your team has done, and it really helped us understand EV users in the UK
Thank you for all the work you have done on this project, it was a really interesting report with some insights that I think will add fantastic value to the bid. It’s been great working with you
Vision One’s BrandVision has given us new and powerful insights – helping us understand our brand health and shape our strategic decisions going forward.
Your co-creation questions answered (FAQs)
Co-creation is often used to explore opportunities for new products, services, brand propositions, or customer experiences. It can also help businesses rethink existing offerings, identify unmet needs within a category, or respond to changing consumer behaviour.
Ideation sessions often include a mix of customers, internal stakeholders, and sometimes category experts. Bringing together different perspectives encourages fresh thinking and helps challenge assumptions, leading to ideas that are both creative and grounded in real-world insight.
Co-creation is typically conducted with customers and stakeholders
A successful ideation session generates a range of new ideas and potential opportunities. These are typically prioritised and refined after the session, helping businesses identify the most promising concepts to explore further through concept testing or development.
Traditional focus groups are typically used to gather reactions to existing ideas or concepts, but they can also be adapted to foster greater creativity. Ideation sessions are more exploratory and creative, encouraging participants to generate and develop new ideas together. While focus groups help evaluate ideas, ideation workshops are designed to create them.
Vision One combines creative facilitation with deep customer insight. Our workshops are carefully designed around your objectives and informed by prior research wherever possible. We ensure sessions are engaging, productive, and focused on generating ideas that are both innovative and commercially relevant.
We are different in that we bring ideas to the table – other research and insights which we have gleaned from all the research we do. This adds another level to the insights.
Once ideas have been generated, they need to be carefully evaluated to identify those with the strongest potential. This usually involves assessing ideas against a set of key criteria such as customer appeal, relevance, differentiation, feasibility, and commercial potential. Ideas that clearly address a customer need and stand out within the category are more likely to move forward.
In many cases, if commerially viable, the most promising ideas are then refined and tested with customers through concept testing or further qualitative research. This helps validate which ideas resonate most strongly and ensures that resources are focused on the opportunities most likely to succeed.
The cost of an ideation session depends on the scope, number of participants, and the level of preparation required. As a guide we recommend you budget £10,000 or more per day. Typically, agencies spend one to two weeks preparing for a workshop, including defining objectives, designing exercises, recruiting participants if needed, and preparing stimulus materials.
The session itself usually runs for a half day or full day, depending on the complexity of the challenge. More complex innovation projects may involve multiple workshops or follow-up sessions.
The outputs typically include a set of prioritised ideas or concepts, clear documentation of the ideas generated, and recommendations on which opportunities to explore further. In many cases, the strongest ideas are then refined and taken forward into concept development or concept testing to validate their potential with customers.
Effective ideation takes time. A full-day session allows participants to move beyond obvious ideas and explore opportunities more deeply. The process usually involves several stages — understanding the challenge, exploring customer needs, generating ideas, building on each other’s thinking, and refining the most promising concepts.
Creativity also benefits from momentum. As participants become more comfortable and inspired by others’ contributions, ideas often improve throughout the session. Allowing enough time ensures the group can move past initial thinking and develop ideas that are both creative and commercially meaningful.
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