The innovative potential of many new ideas is often not realized due to a lack of understanding of how to take ideas forward after they have been generated. What happens between idea generation and implementation—during what we call the idea maturation process—has often been overlooked. To support idea generators in successfully materializing their ideas, we first define what an idea is and identify three different components which characterize the nature of an idea. Then, we propose a theory about different content- and communicative-related activities that idea generators can utilize to specify, further develop, or improve the different components of an idea in the idea maturation process.