Ideation with AI Agents

Day 2 - Block 1

R&D ➡️ Academia 1

flowchart LR
  A[Domain Exploration] --> B[Domain Selection]
  B --> C[Domain Immersion]
  C --> D[Research Question Selection]
  D --> E[Idea Napkin]

Projects in ChatGPT / Claude

We can define “projects” (folders) in ChatGPT / Claude

The resources and chats in here reference each other

A “canvas” to ideate (also with collaborators!)

Domain exploration

  • What skills do you and your collaborators have?
  • What is the state of the world?
  • …

Domain exploration

In light of your contstraints, what domains should we explore?

Domain selection

For example, by scoring ideation domains (Stremersch 2024):

Domain Interest Feasibility Timeliness
GenAI as Market Actor 5 5 5
AI Business Models 4 4 5
Sustainability 3 4 4

Caveat: AI scoring is not solved yet

Domain immersion

After selecting a domain, we need to create more context for it:

  • Deep research (e.g. with agents)
  • Pulling in resources (e.g. papers, datasets, news, …)

More sophisticated things are possible (e.g. RAG, …)

Ideation in this domain

Adapted from Stremersch (2024)
Dimension AI
Source Isolate → Immerse Deep Research
Scope Few & narrow → Many & wide Meincke et al. (2024)
Share Late → Early Sparring with AI
Select Unstructured & slow → Structured & fast Canvas & Prototyping

⚠️ IP and HARKING 1

  • IP is messy: Shield is Human-AI collaboration!
  • Researcher obligation (Blanchard et al. 2025)
  • What does it mean to do preliminary analysis with AI? (e.g. for HARKING)

Hybrid is the key!

References

Arora, Neeraj, Ishita Chakraborty, and Yohei Nishimura. 2025. “AI–Human Hybrids for Marketing Research: Leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) as Collaborators.” Journal of Marketing 89 (2): 43–70. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429241276529.
Blanchard, Simon J., Nofar Duani, Aaron M. Garvey, Oded Netzer, and Travis Tae Oh. 2025. “New Tools, New Rules: A Practical Guide to Effective and Responsible Generative AI Use for Surveys and Experiments in Research.” Journal of Marketing 89 (6): 119–39. https://doi.org/10.1177/00222429251349882.
Lin, Zhicheng. 2025. “Six Fallacies in Substituting Large Language Models for Human Participants.” PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/uqxcb_v2.
Meincke, Lennart, Karan Girotra, Gideon Nave, Christian Terwiesch, and Karl T Ulrich. 2024. “Using Large Language Models for Idea Generation in Innovation.” The Wharton School Research Paper Forthcoming 9: 2024.
Stremersch, Stefan. 2024. “How Can Academics Generate Great Research Ideas? Inspiration from Ideation Practice.” Int. J. Res. Mark. 41 (1): 1–17.

TI Workshop | D2 B1