Idea Management- Develop Sustainable Competence
Innovation is everyone’s responsibility – not just R&D
This holds true in today’s environment. Most big successful businesses have started with a small idea. The idea of Band-Aids one of the most heralded brands in the world from the coffers of Johnsons & Johnsons, came from a small time cotton buyer from J&J way back in 1917. His young wife kept cutting her finger while cooking and tying thick bandages on her hand would hinder her work. He fixed sterile gauge to strips of surgical tape and Viola! It really helped. He showed his invention to Johnsons who were intrigued by the idea and out came the bandage laden surgical tapes which failed but J&J’s persistence with the brand innovation made Band-Aids one of most heralded brands by 1961.
Another major brand today is Google, showing the true nature of business at its best. It’s a marvel of Web brilliance. But in reality it’s a company growing with cutting edge ideas with relentless attention to detail. They are continuously innovating with feedback and ideas not only from their employees but from partners and users also. They thrive on response from the people because Google wants to see how people react. It wants feedback and ideas helping them to improve every day.
In today’s fast paced life, without technology life would probably come to a standstill. Skype is another innovation that has brought people closer. For disparate groups, situated around the globe, team building could have been a challenge! Skype has proven to be a boon. Humor, wit, and business everything gets done, just like it would if you were in one location.
Every organization looks for ideas to improve their product and services. In today’s highly competitive environment of cut throat competition, innovation is the key to stay ahead. Employee motivation has to be high on the scale for every organization. Without a reward system in place, employees are least interested to come up with ideas. Even when such a system is in place organizations still at times fail to identify the best idea out of thousands of ideas they receive. The idea one person finds useless maybe brilliant. Surveys can help to a certain extent.
Startling statistics from American Management Association indicates that (out of 1356 managers interviewed):
– 48% “don’t have a standard policy for evaluating ideas.”
– 17% use an “independent review and evaluation process.”
– 15% said “ideas were evaluated by the unit manager where the idea was proposed.”
Improper evaluation mechanisms will also lead to lack of enthusiasm and trust within the participants. Idea and Innovation management product can bring valuable benefits. Untapped markets, ideas, customers, are always present. The need of the hour is to find the right idea and introduce it at the right time in the right market. In short, you need to have your hand on the pulse of your both present as well as future employees and customers. Innovation management platforms blend the strengths of all these along with various feedback mechanisms to encourage idea generation. This results in the best idea that is most likely to succeed in the market. Ideas are discussed in open forums, right from grading the idea to garnering expert support to floating it in the marketplace, before a final decision is reached
An environment that is conducive to idea and knowledge sharing can help achieve this and much more. Innovative idea management systems help organization to create such an ambiance, blending employee creativity with decision making that expedite innovation. Manage the full lifecycle of idea management from idea inception all the way through development and implementation.
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