If you want to avoid your super-duper idea capture system turning into a water-stained, particle board suggestion-box that people stuff their Snickers bars wrappers into when they cant find a bin, you must be enabled to not only ‘harvest”; you must also ‘harness’ creative output.
Even a basic Continuous Improvement (CI) framework will allow your business to benefit from staff or customer ideas. It doesn’t matter whether you apply a high-level DMAIC or a full-blown Six Sigma process to those ideas deemed to have commercial merit, without a framework to bring rigour to the management of ideas…it’s just lip service.
If you can’t ‘harness what you harvest’, any creative momentum you generate at roll-out time will be lost once idea initiators realise the business is not geared up to actually DO something with their creative efforts. And while staff might be forgiving if you fall down in this space, if you rolled this out to your customers and can’t show evidence of a commitment to even a basic CI cycle operating out back in the pumphouse, you’re unlikely to ever see their wallets again.
I’d have an ethical issue providing any innovation managent or collaboration platform without some basic tools and tips to enable even a basic level of CI capability in the business.
Tapping into Voice Of the Business & Voice Of the Customer (VOB and VOC) is a significant business commitment and done properly, you’ll not only create a creative culture of innovation for your business, but you’ll also drive the behaviour (and this is particularly evident with staff) that makes people more attuned to recognising opportunities for improvement and framing those as ideas, as distinct from recognising issues and simply complaining about them.
Build the CI capability first. Engage those parts of the business that stand to benefit from the ideas and ensure they are enabled to, where appropriate, take ideas from concept to reality.
In my next post, I want to share with you some ideas we have seen that show an idea capture system operating in its most advantageous embodiment. That will set the scene for some discussion around Reward and Recognition.
