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Idea Management – How to Inspire, Gather, Develop and Manage Innovation

By robbeachy | February 27, 2008

Ideas are essential. That being said, you just can’t generate ideas in a vacuum; throwing ideas up against the wall that are not aligned with the organization’s vision, mission, and values.  Generating a constant flow of ideas cannot succeed in a random way. They need to be created within an on-going consistent process.

ideas.jpgWithout a constant stream of ideas for new products, productivity, quality, and process improvement most organizations decline rapidly. But few organizations have well documented and refined processes in place for managing ideas.

What is Idea Management?
Project management and product management are familiar terms, but few organizations practice Idea Management, which is a systematic process for…

Before you can have good ideas we need three essentials:

1). A format or best a form and process for gathering, reviewing and giving feedback to new ideas.

2). We need a system, where we can post the ideas for others to view, review and “build” on these ideas.

3). We need to provide direction about what we need ideas for, a literal laundry list of the knowns in our business from cost improvement to new to the business products.

To keep ideas flowing we need a process that not only collects, directs and builds upon ideas, but gets those ideas to the product managers or other responsible parties to evaluate, prioritize and implement them.

Many companies have suggestion boxes for manufacturing and office improvements but few, except market leaders have a formal process and system for gathering sharing and developing ideas in viable products and services.

Having a Place for Ideas to Go and Be Documented
Having a place can be a mail stop or a computer database. Tailor it to your company with as much sophistication and structure as required.

The best inspiration for new ideas is asking people for them, having an easy process to enter their ideas and giving them timely feedback.

Giving Direction to the Types of Ideas Needed
As simple as posting, emailing or having an intranet page with guides to areas your business really needs ideas or suggestions. When properly done, you are now brainstorming 24/7, in as many sites and countries as your business may have.

Collecting Ideas
Mail box, email, or computer database, it doesn’t matter as long as it works for you.

It is important however that we have basic criteria that must be met including:

1). The submitter. This is important for communication and intellectual property rights. There is the occasion when some idea submitters want to remain anonymous and that can be accommodated by monikers and secret names.

2). New product or service concept definition: Describe the concept as best you can. Add drawings, explanations, pictures and any other information to better describe your concept. Attach whatever you feel is pertinent to explain your concept for a new service or new product. What other Similar Product or Service is on the Market already?

3). Required Product Attributes, Features and Benefit: How will the end user benefit from this product or service? Uniqueness? Patentability? How big, small, how many, what color, what material, etc. How will this make us more valued by our existing or new customers?

4). Unique Selling Proposition: The WOW, what makes this product or service unique. How is it different from other products? Why will someone buy this versus the competition or alternative solution?

5). Target Market: Who would use or buy this product or service?

6). Required Pricing or Cost factors: What price or cost must be achieved to make this concept viable? Can the price be higher than competition, does it have to be lower or is there no competitive product or service on the market?

7). Potential Volumes/Sales: How many or how much could be sold? 500 units a year, $200,000 a year?

8). Initial Feasibility: Is this something we do or can do?

Communicating Ideas to the Right People
This is as simple as circulating the idea to the person in charge of the product or service.

Building Upon Ideas
You have to post ideas, electronically or on bulletin boards. We have seen pinned ideas on billion dollar food companies or simple Idea Manager Software on line. Too many cooks spoil the broth, well maybe in cooking, but not with ideas.

Building Ideas into Concepts
An idea is a notion, a concept has features, benefits, attributes and science

Classifying Concepts
What area, is it new to the company, a line extension, etc.

Prioritizing Concepts
How important is the concept to the company? The best companies use objective screening tools to ensure they are working on projects or concepts with the most value.

Storing Ideas and Concepts
Storing old concepts or new is critical. There are some concepts you will never consider because they are not on strategy or the market or technology is not there yet, but rather than recreate the wheel or work on the never ending project, list them!

Tracking Ideas from Start Through Implementation
Who, what, when, where how. Tracking is important to understand the history of the project to repeat and learn from the successes as well as the failures and the root causes of each.

Reporting on Ideas and Giving Feedback to the Submitter
People need feedback and the surest way to kill an Idea process is to not tell the submitter what became of their idea, regardless of the outcome. Idea processes need encouragement and some offer rewards, the best offer profit sharing for the best ideas.

Idea management can be as simple as an Idea bulletin board in the lunch room to sophisticated software such as Idea Manager, but make sure it is a continuous process that everyone knows, understands, trusts and participates in.

Topics: New Product Development Best Practices |

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