It is often said that all innovation starts with an idea. But what is an idea for innovation? What actually constitutes a new idea is seldom reflected upon by idea management literature. The lack of a unified understanding of what constitutes an idea might result in potentially good ideas being rejected due to not being elaborated enough to receive a fair assessment. Furthermore, the lack of solid definition of an idea has implications for research on idea management, as empirical studies on ideation and idea evaluation are difficult to compare when the studied object – the idea – is not defined. Based on a synthesis of psychology and management research, this paper contributes with a conceptual model of the idea construct. It identifies the need for ideas to possess a degree of completion before being assessed. The model assists a greater understanding of when an idea is ready to be assessed. We further discuss the models’ implications for idea management in the early phases of the idea management process with respect to two different aspects of idea nurturing. The idea definition presented in this paper has implications for reorganising the idea assessment process to incorporate value adding activates such as idea nurturing.