Initiating & Managing Holistic Innovation Systems
Quick Guide for Corporates, Enterprise & Government Entities
The biggest challenge most of corporate, enterprise and Government entities are facing nowadays is to get the best disruptive ideas from their own employees and management. Ideas are always the shortest way for companies to take over the competition and move faster in the process of increasing revue stream.
The Struggle is real, most of the companies believe if they ask their own employees and management to provide great ideas, those ideas will flow automatically and being executed easily all and above the functional roles everyone is having. Here comes the real work for the Innovation Management Team.
Innovation Phases
Innovation Management like any other function should have a process flow, for me after studying and applying different workflows on different cultures and companies, here is the most successful process for applying a complete and result orient Innovation Management System:
1- Inspiration & Inception Phase
The first step in any innovation program is inspiring everyone to participate, this is done by trainings, general design thinking workshops, webinars, book reading events, knowledge sharing, newsletter or emails.
Most of organizations doesn’t do this phase, they just do the teasers campaigns which doesn’t allow people to be participating intensively.
2- Challenges Phase
Challenges should be defined in details. Asking the mass to put their ideas in general topics will give naive and general ideas. So this phase is to communicate intensively what are the challenges the organization needs in a very detailed way, through presentations, emails and so on. Usually launching an Innovation Program or Campaign works with 4 to 5 Challenges.
Examples: OPEX Reduction & Smart Spending Challenges, Late arrival of employees problem, Projects are usually not delivered on time, New Revenue sources and etc ….
For sure, a company or a team should work intensively to define those challenges according to the overall strategy. As much the challenges are detailed the resulted ideas are mature. This can be done via retreats and strategy application workshops.
3- Ideation Phase
Here it comes, the mass starts submit their ideas individually or in teams, ideas should be submitted in certain format (Not really a mature business case, but with small answers to Why? The Impact? The Novelty? etc.
This may take 1 to two weeks, activation events may take place also as trainings/ workshops and so on concurrently.
4- Crowdsourcing & Collaboration
All Ideas submitted to be presented and be open to the crowd for feedbacks and fine-tuning. This phase is an added value to the teams/ individual ideas submitted. It gives great impact to ideas, and it allows more collaboration in the organization.
5- Filtration Stage
A clear filtration process will take place, it can take place through a committee reading the ideas, no need for intensive presentations, 5% yo 10% of the ideas passess to the next phase.
6- Prototyping
During this phase, ideas and teams will work together to finalize their final presentations, wireframes, Proof of concepts (POCs), Products, Prototypes or whatever they want to present as their final Idea Stage, this can take up to two weeks as well.
7- Final Stage Presentations & Selections
Presentations will take place in that stage. Ideas should be presented in the best way according to the allocated resources of effort and time. According to the presentations; the Innovation Committee or the judging panel select the best Idea(s) according to the criteria they have (Mostly Impact +Applicability + Financial Return)
8- Celebration & Applause
Celebrations for the best, communicating the numbers, stats, thanking everyone. This phase is usually very important for the culture and momentum.
9- Execution
The most important part. Innovation Program Managers and Teams should work intensively with the execution arms to communicate the ideas in the right way, get the buy-in and then help with the planning, execution & reporting.
Pulses
Innovation Programs should work in pulses, most of the Government Entities and Companies are always busy in their day-to-day activities and very functional roles. Applying such programs increase the employee engagement and empowerment, those programs must have the special coating and being announced in the right timing. Overall, should be fun at the most.
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