Ideation (inside the company).
Innovation is often R&D only; recently there is a focus on crowdsourcing and co-creation. Innovation managers often tend to forget that the employees of the company have good ideas too (for free!). Google, 3M let their employees develop their own projects. This is not achievable in all companies. I want to share some techniques with you.
- The zone: create an idea zone. This is a cleary separated zone where the employees can only discuss ideas. One of the things that can attract a lot of people is to serve better (free) coffee there. The people that hang out there are clearly motivated to work in the intrest of the company. The ultimate goal is that people also think about new ideas after work. It should be a room to relax, to draw and write. It’s a dynamic think-thank.
- Speeddating: cross-departemental quick discussions about recent trends.
- The CEO should stress innovation everytime he communicates.
- Meetups for people that want to work on projects. The people who are participating in this ideation phase are rewarded in a very visible manner (eg. give them free champagne at dinner) so that other employees are getting interested.
- It is important that someone tries to capture the new ideas. The people who came up with the ideas should be involved in the completion of the new ideas.
- Open wall, walls where the employees can write on and share ideas
It’s sometimes stated that the ideation phase is overrated and that concretizing is the most important part. As a matter of fact, you need a lot of ideas that surround this basic idea to be able to implement the idea/concept..