Following up on last month’s article, we stopped at stage #3 of the process (contest) and how to set up the innovation contest. The contest, if you remember from last issue,
is a powerful mechanism to generate new and innovative ideas.
To set up an innovation contest, we’ll first need a topic that is clearly defined. Ideally this is a “trendy” topic that has the ability to push innovators to engage in contest. The sales, marketing, management or customer teams can trigger the new topic in areas that needs new ideas from the “innovation team” we have set up. The topic needs to be linked to a good description and customer situation or dilemma. But technical details should be sparse as this could lead innovators into the wrong path. There is no need for details in this phase – general concepts are better.
The ‘contest leader’ must provide quick support to innovators in case of any questions. Transparency is very important – a simple way to do this is to create a place(intranet or web-site) where all submitted ideas are visible, so that innovators can be inspired by the ideas of others. Ideas must be explained in terms of words that are short and understandable.
In this phase quantity is also needed, so the more ideas we have, the better. Every innovator should know that.The right topic with excellent description + right people in “innovation team” should generate a good quantity of ideas that reflect quality.
When the Innovation Contest is finished with ideas on the table, a new chapter is open calledEvaluation.
So, how do you decide which ideas should be eliminated and which should be further elaborated upon? At this point it is vital to involve right people, so decision makers, market specialists and innovation/trend spotters should be among the team of evaluators. The criteria could be just “like it”/”don’t like it” or a detailed approach with values 1-5(or 1-10) for few values as “close to trends”, “alignment with portfolio” or “market need”. Of course current portfolio must be scanned in a way to see which of submitted proposals could fit it or be the part of some existing portfolio elements.
Each idea should have the same chance, and all ideas have to be presented in the same way. The organization has to know its capabilities and strategy in order to determine the fate of ideas. Only ideas that could be implemented internally should be accepted.
After screening and evaluation, the Decision has to be made on which ideas will move forward. The innovator has to be in the center of this phase even though other colleagues will join this new project.
After setting a budget, the idea will officially become a project and it will be treated as any other similar work in organization which is going to realization.
After success – the last phase should be “activation” where it is shared. Storytelling is very important for sustaining the innovation culture and for the internal marketing of the idea system in an organization.
TomislavBuljubasic is an innovation and entrepreneurship guru. He can be booked for consulting sessions via pr@brandmoxie.com.
