Implementing An Ideas Campaign

PUTTING YOUR INNOVATION INITIATIVE IN ORDER
- an article by Jeffrey Baumgartner of jpb

If you were to decide to launch a career in surgery, you would not start off by jumping into an operating theatre and performing open heart surgery. Likewise, if you are launching an innovation initiative in your firm, you should not start off by setting up an idea management tool and immediately trying to capture ideas. Because just as the consequences of the first scenario would likely result in a dead patient, the consequences of the second would likely result in a dead innovation initiative.

When firms do begin an innovation initiative by trying to capture ideas before laying the groundwork, the results are typically...

• Far fewer ideas captured than anticipated.

• Low levels of employee participation. Those ideas that are captured generally come from a small group of people.

• Few, if any ideas implemented.

• Belief among employees that the initiative served no real purpose and was a waste of their time and effort. Lack of implemented ideas is their strongest evidence.

• General disillusionment with corporate innovation schemes.

That's why it is important to set up your innovation initiative in the correct order.

There are six simple steps to setting up your innovation initiative. It is critical to follow them in the correct order.

1) Design your initiative
2) Establish a budget
3) Promote the initiative
4) Idea Management tool (ideally, Jenni)
5) Flow of evaluated ideas
6) Implement ideas and reap profits

Let's take a look at each of these steps.

1) Design Your Initiative

Once you have committed your firm to getting serious about innovation and implementing idea management, the first step is to actually design the initiative. One good starting place might be “The Corporate Innovation Machine”, an essay I wrote a couple of years ago which several innovation consultants have confessed they use in their training programmes. You can download this popular paper from http://www.jpb.com/innovation/

If, like a lot of managers, you follow the obsessively strict regime approach to corporate planning, you need to loosen up. Leave room to be flexible, adopt to changing circumstances and be innovative with your innovation plan. So, while planning the initiative is important, that plan must allow for change over time.

2) Budget Innovation

A lot of organisations try launching innovation initiatives without providing any budget. The result, of course, is that nothing much happens. You need to allot budget for the initiative, for tools, for promotion and for implementing the more radical ideas that are generated. A lot of managers have trouble with this last point. They shouldn't

A good innovation programme will generate some radical, transformational ideas. Such ideas have the potential to change the industry. But they might also fail completely. Transformational ideas are typically perceived as too risky by approval committees in large established organisations. And as a result are almost always implemented by small, entrepreneurial firms where decisions are made by a single, innovative entrepreneur.

However, if you allot a portion of your innovation budget for experimenting with more radical ideas, you can compete with those entrepreneurs. Even if 9 out of 10 your radical ideas fail, that 10th idea may well generate enough income to cover the costs of the failures and bring in a nice profit to boot. More importantly, transformational innovations insure you stay far ahead of your competitors.

For more information on budgeting for innovation, take a look at our partner company's newsletter Report 103

3) Promote Your Innovation Programme

When well thought out innovation initiatives don't result in innovative ideas, lack of promotion is often a chief cause. If employees do not know you want their ideas, they will not contribute any ideas. If they do not know why you want their ideas, they are unlikely to contribute ideas. And if they do not appreciate the priority of innovation in your firm, they are unlikely to prioritise the contribution of ideas over other day-to-day tasks that keep them busy. The result, of course, is not many ideas!

Thus, it is important to explain to your employees what you are doing, why you are doing it and why it is important. It should be clear that innovation is a high priority and that employees will be rewarded for contributing to the firm's innovative success.

Likewise, it is also important to communicate to your shareholders, customers, suppliers and the general public. This shows you are serious about innovation and committed to innovating.

Assuming your firm has communications experts on the payroll, this is a good time to take advantage of their expertise.

4) Idea Management and the Like

Finally, you have reached the point at which you can start generating ideas to feed your innovation initiative. Ideally, this will come from a variety of approaches including brainstorming, buying ideas from suppliers and probably the most effective approach: idea management.

Of course we believe that Jenni idea management software service (http://www.jpb.com/jenni/) is the best tool for the job. It is easy to use, yet rich in features. Best of all, you also tap into my, my colleagues' and my business partners' creativity and innovation expertise when you use Jenni.

Your idea management system should not only serve as a tool for capturing ideas, it should also provide tools for evaluating ideas. Output should be quality ideas with real potential to cut costs, increase revenue or bring other clear benefits to your firm.

You will find a lot more information about idea management on the Jenni pages (http://www.jpb.com/jenni/) on jpb.com.

5) Implement the Good Ideas

Last, but not least, you need to implement the good ideas your idea management tool delivers. This may seem obvious, but you would be surprised at how many firms fail to do this. Not implementing ideas is generally due to poor planning, risk aversion and lack of budget for implementing the more radical innovative ideas.

Indeed, what often happens is that decision makers are scared to implement radical ideas for fear of the inherent risk associated with them. However, if you have planned well, promoted the importance of innovation (making it clear that innovation is not just about generating creative ideas, but also about implementing them) and provided budget for implementing more radical ideas (see above) – implementation should not be a problem.

Once innovative ideas start generating income – some of that income can feed the innovation budget – thus making the programme sustainable.

By establishing and following an innovation plan, your initiative is far likelier to succeed than if you just start capturing ideas and ask middle managers to do innovation. If you want help in planning your innovation initiative, we'd be happy to do what we can.

Jeffrey Baumgartner January 2008

For more from Jeffrey see the JPB website on: http://www.jpb.com/innovation/index.php

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