In larger companies, it is common and beneficial to have more than one innovation program. In fact, I have seen situations where there are close to 100 different programs or teams looking for ideas in large companies. The challenge comes with how you stop each one doing the same thing and defining the boundaries of the day to day operational groups. This post will look at one way you can try to bring some harmony to all the possible activities within your company.
A critical factor to a strong innovation program is creating a blended approach to innovation, ensuring that…
The fundamental part of the ideation process is the selection of ideas. Too many people see innovation programs as idea blockers killing ideas by applying “Toll Gates” at various stages of the process. We look at how you can change that view and provide a balanced approach to idea selection.
I liked the description provided by a colleague (whose name escapes me at the moment) who described the process and Idea Farming. I evaluated each idea you are looking for the best you have to take to market at that time, other ideas need more time to grow.
Ideation is…
Collecting ideas is a fundamental part of any innovation program, and how you do it makes a big difference to the results you will see. Here are 5 things you should think about and ensure you have a well-defined ideation process:
1. Set a deadline
I know we want to collect ideas all the time, however, an open-ended ideation process will get forgotten about very quickly and is more of a suggestion box than a focused way to get input. Therefore set a deadline for ideas to be submitted, allow people to change their ideas before the date and be strict about stopping collecting…
When looking at the idea collection process as part of an innovation program, it is easy to think that you will never get the number of ideas that you want. In the Ideation activities I have run, the majority of the ideas are submitted in the final week. Here are some statistics to help you understand the typical process and why it is not a bad thing to get last minute submissions.
The final week is golden
As can be seen with the feature graphic the last week of this example ideation activity we collected over 80% of all ideas. With the final 2 days…
Everybody wants to innovate or drive innovation, however, it seems very difficult for us to come to a common definition or set of terms when describing it. Innovation is not a thing, it is a process, and typically people describe abstract processes differently and use terminology that comes from other activities. In this post, I want to create a framework for innovation terminology to help people new to the topic understand how these terms relate to each other.
To start with let me be clear what I am NOT trying to do:
- I am not trying to define a universal…
I care about innovation because I think that innovation is needed for a society to develop. I know people think that innovation is for companies only but in many cases, the benefactor of truly new ideas are the everyday people like you and me.
For me, this is a topic I love. I am always looking to improve my understanding of how best to bring new products and services to people. I have been very fortunate in my career to invent new software products and also worked for companies creating and running innovation programs. …
Over a normal lunchtime I search for some Sushi and wander off to eat it in a quiet corner. In the same way for many years I rip open the packet of chopsticks and get stuck in.
When clearing up I look at the packet and wonder if we really need instructions for chopsticks anymore. …
Peter Briscoe
A techie that likes good design and asking why?
