Every successful digital product begins with a clear vision and a deep understanding of the problems worth solving. For tech founders and CTOs navigating complex product decisions, our structured ideation and discovery workshops create measurable business value - reducing development cycles by up to 30% and increasing feature adoption rates.
When our technical teams collaborate directly with stakeholders in these facilitated sessions, we transform abstract requirements into actionable specifications, eliminate costly assumption-based development, and create shared accountability for outcomes. These workshops function as strategic inflection points where technical constraints meet business objectives, producing roadmaps that align engineering reality with market opportunity.
In our experience working with over 100 founders from all over the world, our guided collaborative frameworks consistently transform uncertainty into executable plans that technical teams can immediately implement.
We structure our client ideation and discovery workshops as focused sessions where teams and stakeholders work together to generate and refine ideas. We design these as guided brainstorming meetings with specific activities that encourage open collaboration.
In the ideation phase, we focus on creating new solutions. We encourage participants to share thoughts freely, using methods that prioritize quantity and variety of ideas over immediate judgment.
Our Discovery component involves exploring the context of the problem first. We make sure to understand user needs, business constraints, and technical realities before jumping to solutions.
We integrate both parts into a single session. This approach helps us avoid assumptions and keeps ideas grounded in real challenges and opportunities.
Our client ideation workshops create an environment for quick decision-making. When we gather stakeholders in one place, discussions move faster and questions get answered in real time.
These sessions help our product teams spot risks earlier and make changes before development begins. This reduces uncertainty and prevents problems that might surface later in the project.
Key benefits we deliver:
For our clients, these workshops provide ideas based on actual user needs rather than assumptions. Clients also participate directly in the process, creating shared ownership of decisions and outcomes.
We know good workshops start with careful preparation. The work we do before the session determines whether participants leave energized or frustrated.
We host pre-workshop calls with key stakeholders to clarify expectations. We document the specific outcomes everyone wants - prioritized concepts, defined experiments, or alignment decisions. This gives everyone a clear target.
We collect existing user insights, pain points, and behavioral data. We create simple user personas and journey maps to bring real user context into the workshop. This prevents teams from designing for themselves instead of actual users.
We select participants from different roles: client stakeholders, end users, technical leads, and designers. We keep the group between six and eight people to maintain active participation and manageable dynamics.
Our ideal participant mix:
We send a detailed timeline with planned activities, expected outputs, and time limits. We include any pre-work assignments like reading materials or data reviews. This helps participants come prepared and reduces time spent explaining basics during the session.
Once the immediate next steps are defined, we rely on proven frameworks to bring structure and clarity to the discovery process, ensuring every idea is grounded in real business and user value.
Instead of relying on generic brainstorming exercises, our Discovery and Design phase applies structured, fast-paced techniques tailored to early-stage product decisions. These frameworks help validate assumptions, refine direction, and reduce ambiguity before a single line of code is written.
Different brainstorming techniques work better for different types of problems and personality types. Some other approaches you can implement to increase the chances of breakthrough thinking are outlined below.
Have each person write down ideas independently and silently for 5-10 minutes. Then everyone shares their ideas with the group. This reduces the influence of loud voices and captures input from quieter participants.
Ask participants to intentionally suggest terrible solutions to the problem. These bad ideas often reveal hidden assumptions and can lead to unexpected directions when reversed or adjusted. Sometimes the "worst" idea contains the seed of the best solution.
Arrange for six participants to each write three ideas in five minutes, then pass their sheet to the next person. This continues until everyone has contributed to each sheet. The method rapidly multiplies and evolves concepts through collaboration.
Use the SCAMPER technique to provide specific actionable prompts that help teams systematically modify existing ideas or products. This structured approach forces creative thinking beyond initial concepts and consistently produces breakthrough variations that wouldn't emerge from unstructured brainstorming:
Substitute: Swap one element for another alternative
Combine: Merge two or more elements to create something new
Adapt: Adjust existing ideas from other contexts to fit the current problem
Modify: Change the size, shape, or other characteristics
Put to other use: Find new applications for existing elements
Eliminate: Remove non-essential parts
Reverse: Consider what happens if order or roles are flipped
Not every idea can (or should) make it into the MVP. To ensure teams focus on features that deliver the highest value, we rely on prioritization frameworks that balance clarity, speed, and impact.
Moving from many ideas to a focused shortlist requires systematic evaluation. At MOP, we prefer lightweight, practical frameworks that help teams make decisions quickly and transparently reducing bias and aligning everyone on what matters most.
By tailoring the framework to the situation - MoSCoW for clarity, RICE for depth, and ICE for speed - we ensure prioritization supports both immediate alignment and long-term product success.
Remote and hybrid workshops require different tools than in-person sessions. We've found the right digital tools can actually improve collaboration by providing structure and eliminating some common facilitation challenges.
Miro AI Templates
We use pre-built templates that leverage artificial intelligence to organize and group ideas automatically. The AI-assisted clustering saves time during synthesis and helps identify patterns humans might miss.
FigJam Breakout Timers
We utilize built-in timers and breakout functions to help structure activities and keep smaller groups focused during remote working sessions.
Voting and Feedback in Small Groups
Rather than using anonymous voting apps, we focus on direct, personal feedback. In live sessions, voting happens in the room; in remote workshops, we go around the table to hear from each participant. Because our groups are intentionally small, this approach works faster and more transparently. Most importantly, it reinforces psychological safety - everyone should feel comfortable sharing their view openly, otherwise the workshops lose their purpose.
Butter for Energy and Breaks
We incorporate engagement tools like music, reactions, and planned energizer activities. Structured breaks prevent participant fatigue during longer design sprint sessions.
Every group has different personalities and communication styles. Our skilled facilitators recognize these patterns and adjust their approach to ensure productive collaboration.
When dominant personalities take over conversations, we acknowledge their contributions, set time limits for speaking turns, and use structured rounds so everyone gets equal airtime.
For quiet participants who may prefer listening or hesitate to share ideas aloud, we create opportunities for silent idea generation, use round-robin formats where each person speaks in turn, or provide anonymous input methods like digital voting.
When off-topic discussions threaten to derail workshop momentum, we acknowledge interesting points, record them visibly on a "parking lot" board, and assign specific time to revisit these ideas later. This maintains focus while ensuring all contributions get documented.
Our workshops generate lots of ideas, sketches, and notes. We create real value by turning these materials into actionable plans that development teams can execute.
We document all decisions made during the workshop. We consolidate artifacts like sticky notes, sketches, and digital boards in one accessible location. We transform top ideas into user stories with clear acceptance criteria that define when each story is complete.
We create validation experiments to test ideas before building full products. These might include rapid prototypes, concierge tests where team members manually deliver the service, or Wizard-of-Oz tests where parts of the experience are simulated to observe user reactions.
We establish clear handoffs to development teams with assigned owners, specific deadlines, and milestone tracking. We define governance structures to guide decision-making as products move from concept to delivery.
So: ready to transform your product vision?
Our most effective sessions run four to six hours with structured breaks every 90 minutes. This timeframe supports both generating diverse ideas and narrowing them down to priorities while preventing participant fatigue.
We aim for groups of six to eight participants for idea exploration workshops. This size provides diverse perspectives while maintaining an environment where everyone can actively contribute to discussions.
When workshops don't immediately produce implementable ideas, we still extract important insights about user needs, technical constraints, or market realities. These learnings frequently lead to breakthrough solutions in follow-up sessions or different approaches to the original problem.