How do you make the innovation process simpler, more efficient and more successful? I explain it here using the term “7innovation”…
“7innovation method” focuses on making the innovation process fast and responsive to short-term goals. What makes this method unique is the recognition of the iterative access with deep scan of an organization’s capabilities (including internal innovators), as the greatest creativity source of any organization.
Setting up an innovation culture followed by performing innovation contests and/or innovation workshops can be named as the awakening phase. After that, much data is collected and the best innovators (let’s say ‘thinkers’) are selected. (Selection)
The contest is narrowly and well defined. (Contest)
Scanning ideas and using selection criterion with decision in a project’s start phase is the normal part of any innovation process. After realization, it is essential to include the storytelling phase to positively market the success story.
The starting point, or “awakening,” launches the initial contest which will “feel the pulse” of the organization and discover innovative persons. This contest could be about a broad futuristic strategy topic, which could appeal to future innovators to unleash their creativity. The competition would be open to all, and the topic-description should be simple and always visible. All entries should be visible as ideas of others could be triggers for new innovations.
At this point, the main goal is to encourage the quantity of ideas, but later on there will be several decision gates which would filter the best ideas for implementation. As in any innovation process: a successful idea must also generate a success story, which will be the generator of further innovation activities.
To make the “7innovation method” sustainable it is most important to keep innovators informed and able to select the best ideas as part of the “innovation team”.
The best innovators are not the ones who submit most ideas, but the ones who can “think differently” and present ideas whose quality can be ‘felt’…
This initial phase must be used to learn about the strong and weak parts of process and about the problems innovators or intrapreneurs have in order to get their idea prototyped or even implemented.
Find out how to set up the innovation contest, and about the later stages of the process (Evaluation, Decision, Realization and Storytelling), in the next issue of TEMPO!
