I’ve spent much of my life working on ideas that required knowledge and abilities I didn’t have when I started. I had to learn unfamiliar subjects, ask questions, involve people with different experience, and make adjustments as my understanding grew.

You may be facing something similar.

Perhaps God has drawn your attention to an invention, a product or service, a ministry assignment, or a challenge affecting your community. You can see something that could be different, but you may not yet understand what it will take to develop it.

Which questions need answers? Who could help? How do you evaluate the possibilities, test what you’re developing, and decide what to do next?

The 7i Innovation Framework gives you a practical, research-backed process for working through those questions.

The Framework’s creator drew on more than 25 years of innovation research, observation, and practical work with more than 80 clients. His work included nine inventions and ten industry innovations and helped six clients generate more than $6 billion in new revenue.

In this FREE PDF overview, I explain how the seven elements work together, how you can use them with a team, and how to recognize what needs attention as an idea develops.

The Framework brings together Illuminate, Investigate, Incubate, Imagine, Interpret, Interact, and Ignite.

Each element helps you recognize a different kind of work the idea may need: clarifying the problem, gathering information, allowing insights to connect, developing possibilities, evaluating approaches, learning through feedback and testing, and organizing implementation.

You can return to these elements as your understanding grows. A conversation may reveal a need you hadn’t considered. Testing may send you back to investigate an assumption. Experience during implementation may suggest another application.

That gives you a way to keep developing the idea as new questions and possibilities emerge.

An idea may lead to a better service, a new business, or a different way to address a ministry or community need. It could also become an invention that changes an industry and improves lives across nations.

The overview follows a hypothetical energy storage invention through research, design, prototypes, testing, manufacturing, and use. It shows how the seven elements can work together as the team encounters difficulties, learns more, and develops the invention.

The potential effects extend beyond the equipment itself. Dependable electricity could help hospitals continue operating, support food preservation, and make production more reliable. Manufacturing, installation, training, and maintenance could create work in the communities using the technology.

What begins with one insight may eventually involve many people and serve needs far beyond what you first understood.

Someone may understand the need. Another person may recognize a useful connection from a different field. Others may know how to develop a design, organize resources, test an approach, or prepare people to use what’s being created.

As those contributions come together, the team can recognize possibilities that no one could see alone.

The 7i Innovation Framework gives people a shared process for doing that work. It can help a business, ministry, or community bring different abilities together around an assignment. It can also support collaboration across organizations, cities, and nations.

One group may be investigating a question while another develops possible approaches and another gathers feedback. The Framework helps those contributions inform one another as the team decides what needs attention next.

Within Co-Creating with GOD: Spirit-Led Innovation, the Framework works alongside the Spirit-Led Co-Creation Pathway.

The Pathway helps you recognize, discern, and respond to God’s direction. The Framework helps you investigate what you need to understand, develop and test possibilities, and put what you create into practice.

Prayer, Scripture, wise counsel, and dependence on the Holy Spirit remain part of the work throughout.

God may help you recognize a connection you’ve overlooked, reconsider an assumption, involve someone whose experience is needed, or understand when to move forward. He can also use the journey to renew your thinking, develop your abilities, and deepen your trust in Him.

The 7i Innovation Framework overview explains the practical work of developing ideas and bringing them to fruition. Two related overviews help you connect that process with Spirit-Led discernment and the complete training.

Spirit-Led Co-Creation Pathway — An Overview revisits the same hypothetical energy storage invention through the spiritual journey. It considers the purpose of the assignment, your part in the work, wise counsel, and the commitments ahead as the idea develops.

Co-Creating with GOD: Spirit-Led Innovation — An Overview shows the Pathway and Framework working together through a hypothetical water purification example. It also explains the complete training, how to apply the teaching with others, and how learning and participation connect with the larger vision.

All three overviews are FREE. Bring the same idea or challenge into your reading so you can consider both God’s direction and the work needed to move forward.

The 7i Innovation Framework — An Overview explains: