Guffipedia
Lucy Kellaway’s dictionary of business jargon and corporate nonsense
Ideation
Translation into plain English Whatever you want it to mean
Perpetrator Outblaze Ideas, 50Folds and many others
Usage example “Outblaze Ideas is the innovation and ideation division of Outblaze” - spotted by Robert. “We [50Folds] build startups at two stages: ideation (Incubation) and pre-seed (acceleration)” - spotted by Daniel Green.
Lucy’s commentary The late fictional character, Martin Lukes, would approve of ideation, though he got there 15 years earlier by coining the term creovation. The beauty of a hybrid is that it means whatever you want it to mean, and so it is helpful that the second example offers a translation. But if ideation means incubation, why didn’t they say that in the first place?
