Idea Management -Sourcing, Capturing and Implementing Innovations
Innovation is the key to success in every sphere of business. In today’s world of cut-throat competition, enterprises need to innovate regularly to stay ahead of their competitors. However, innovative ideas and creative thoughts may not be everyone’s cup of tea.
But to and gain a strong foothold in the market organization need to come up with what is called the wow factor to stand out in the crowd and meet the expectation of the customer. If you look at brands like Apple and Google, there is a positive synergy between innovation and brand. These companies are regularly innovating their brand but are innovative technologically also. When asked how does Google think about its brand, according to Google’s brand manager “The honest answer is that the first thing we think about is our products. First and foremost, we’re always thinking about what’s best for the user. We have a true north that’s always easy to touch back to.”
The best way get creative and innovative Ideas are from the customers and employees. Customer surveys, feedback and open innovation forums and crowd sourcing competitions, have the capacity for idea generation. The solutions lies in engaging creative consumers, because unlike common consumers who are good at telling brands what they need, and what problems they face; creative consumers are good at creating innovative solutions.
Crowd sourcing software are used for involving distributed group of people of varying knowledge, heterogeneity, via a flexible open call for a voluntary undertaking of a task that pave way for idea capture of creative and innovative solutions.
As organizations grow globally, they face a number of challenges. When DHL expanded their grounds across geographical locations, seeking to optimize the logistics and transport activities in urban areas with traffic congestion, environmental factors and energy consumption was a major hurdle. To stay ahead in competition, DHL invited consumer’s perspective about greener urban living and efficient transport system. With academicians, IT experts, public authorities, citizens and others with an interest in developing the concept of City Logistics, sent in their thoughts into the open innovation competition. DHL now had their hands full with ideas such as ‘Collaborative Logistics Hubs’, ‘Earn as you save’ – for optimal vehicle usage for the drivers and ‘DHL-GRAB a SLAB a smart phone apps for the new age customers facilitating the last mile delivery.
With crowd having a permanently loud presence in today’s technologically enabled world, large corporates and even small and medium businesses today have understood the power of crowdsourcing software and are using it for creative and innovative business ideas.
The ideas which are brainstormed by the employees or the participants are developed into pilot projects and prototypes. Sony Corporation in partnership with World Wildlife Fund posed the question of making technology work better for a greener environment and this resulted in the idea of the “Green Book” which will make use of cutting edge social technologies to motivate people.
Irrespective of the ideas generated, to successfully implement these ideas requires a good idea management system which will help develop new product through the stages of idea generation, idea screening, development and testing.
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