Manny Gibran, fictional innovation consultant from Jack's Notebook
How do we get more companies on board to do the new dance, the Idea Management Adoption Slide? It’s Holistic!
I wrote an article two years ago that stated managers will lose their jobs, at some point, for not adopting Idea Management Systems (IMS). Those who read this blog know I’m an advocate and believer in IMS, and I’ll point you to the original article (Idea Management, the Measure of Innovation) for all the good reasons and concrete benefits. I’m not the only one who thinks this, I found a more recent blog post by Ron Shulkin, who wrote comprehensive piece on the topic.
I haven’t heard of anyone losing their job yet, and there is anecdotal evidence of more adoption of IMS. Lauchlan McKinnon (an interesting man…Buddhism, yoga, IMS, intuitive thinking, etc.) writes an astute blog that is dedicated to IMS and he’s done a market analysis that strikes me as spot on, see here. Some organizations are indeed doing the new dance.
Still, it hardly seems like it’s a “big thing” yet. Big companies like Cisco, IBM, and Pfiser, make regular use of IMS, and yet, you don’t hear many success stories from the “Misfortune 2000” — those big, but not super-big, companies that make the world go round. Nor from smaller companies. Oddly, these are the companies (small to medium sized) that have the most to gain from a more formal approach to innovation. Open Innovation, a related concept that is enabled by IMS, is another slow growth area. Companies like P&G have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt how effective the Open Innovation approach can be, and yet, there is still resistance to the concept by the majority of companies. Now, if you are a small business person, don’t let these terms intimidate you. An IMS can be as simple as a spreadsheet, and Open Innovation could mean you talk to your vendors about how you can work together better. You don’t necessarily have to buy, or rent, one of the 44 products on the market (thank you again Lauchlan!)
I have a hypothesis about why adoption of both Open Innovation and IMS hasn’t been more rapid. It has to do with organizations not having a coherent, holistic, and on-going process for innovation. Stated more simply, they don’t have an approach or theory that steers their work, or guides their thinking. Nor do they have a formal process for on-going innovation. You know that line in the dance song Electric Slide “It’s Electric”? Think of that melody and say “It’s Holistic”.
The new start-up I’m involved with, KILN, is intending to provide a solution, a system if you will, to the process question in a highly innovative way. And, even KILN is not the be all, end all, when it comes to innovation. We do provide the music to dance to!
Innovation is a complex problem, and it’s not ever going to boil down to one thing, or one factor, that if you solve it, you’ll be there. No, it’s so many factors that it’s hard to get your arms around. Organizations, many of them, make efforts to get their arms around the beast, and while wrestling with it, can’t make a decision on two very big ideas, big concepts, like Open Innovation and Idea Management. Some would have you believe that either of these, or both, are silver bullets for solving the innovation problem. They are not. They are two critical pieces of the puzzle, that if used properly, can provide enormous benefits. But puzzles are solved slowly, and until a “frame” around the bits is put in place, it’s hard to see how they fit, and why they are so important.
My solutions to framing the innovation problem is simple. First, see it as a complex problem with many factors. Second, adopt an attitude towards innovation, and put measures into place that have everyone thinking innovation at a grass roots level. And, All The Time. It’s my theory that a Holistic Approach is best, and that many things will need to be done to improve innovation efforts. Lastly, as a guide or frame for the puzzle, think about the four corners of organizational creativity (per Mel Rhodes): People, Products, Process, and Pressure (of the culture). Your efforts to wrestle the beast to the ground and achieve more innovation will accelerate when you do things that impact these four corners.
Idea Management Systems and Open Innovation address all four corners (the 4 P’s) at once, and therefore can have wide impact. So, while not the complete solution, implementing them wisely will go a long way towards accelerating your efforts. Couple IMS and Open Innovation with a Holistic Approach — I think you have a winning and holistic formula. Now, if we can only get more organizations to look at the formula! It’s time to start dancing!
13 responses to “Doing the Adoption Electric Slide, "It's Holistic"”
Interesting post Greg. As you know I am in the IMS business and can add a couple additional reasons why many companies have not adopted an idea management system.
Firstly, many have. Sort of. But their solutions have been poor at best and crap at worst. A lot of companies start off with a basic suggestion scheme system which can be as simple as an email address for ideas to a bought or home-built web application for capturing ideas.
With a bit of promotion, such tools can capture a lot of ideas. And that is also their downside. Suddenly, the poor chap put in charge of the suggestion scheme has 100s of ideas to review. Most of them are not relevant to business needs. Many are so similar they might as well be the same idea. But, at the same time, with no guidance, ideas are all over the place.
Hence the poor chap has to begin a thankless process of reviewing ideas one by one in order to identify those that have potential. If he has other work to do, it’s easy to put off this laborious process.
As a result, idea submitters do not get feedback and quickly become disillusioned. “Management doesn’t really want our ideas!” they think.
Within a period of about 12-18 months, the system goes from capturing a lot of ideas, to capturing a trickle of ideas to being abandoned.
Some senior managers realise there has to be a better way and begin actually researching the process. A number of them end up contacting my colleagues or I. Many others simply write the process off as an expensive waste of time.
Unfortunately, coding software that captures ideas is easy, and a number of new firms have set up shop offering slick looking suggestion schemes which capture ideas. But the coders do not really understand the innovation process and as a result, we see more and more poorly conceived suggestion box products on the market.
For those of us who have developed a true idea management tool based around a viable, proven process (ours is based on CPS — creative problem solving — together with business based evaluation tools), this is frustrating. While it’s nice to know a number of your competitors are incompetent, it’s frustrating that they are potentially damaging the image of your industry.
Jeffrey
Jeffrey, Thanks for your comment. It’s been ages since I’ve seen you, I hope all is well. Your comment supports my thinking that unless there is a continuous process in place, one that puts salient questions in front of people, it defaults to the pattern you’ve identified. In my view the process doesn’t need to be on all the time to be continuous. I think 4 to 8 “cycles” of innovation a year, with breaks between is doable, and really necessary.
Evaluation of ideas is hard work, and, it should be a shared load as much as possible. And, it really ought to be generative in its own right, that is, some ideas “morphed” are great ideas. They shouldn’t simply be ruled out in the quest to get the sorting done.
Hi Greg,
I need to get to London for work and pleasure one of these days. Hopefully, we’ll hook up then. Of course if you are ever in Belgium…
No doubt about it, evaluation is hard work. But it is critical. The advantage to using CPS — in our software we use the term “massive on-line brainstorms” to describe the idea generation process — is that ideas are all thematically linked to a specified business challenge. This means ideas can be combined and evaluated in batches, which makes the process a lot more efficient. Open suggestion schemes, on the other hand, require that ideas be reviewed one by one — often by the overworked innovation manager rather than a subject expert. As a result, ideas with potential are often missed.
This also brings up one of my pet peeves in suggestion schemes: voting. Voting, which identifies early popularity of ideas rather than quality, makes it particularly likely that ideas with hidden promise are passed over. Evaluation by criteria, if performed intelligently means that ideas that may at first seem absurd typically reveal themselves to meet some basic criteria and hence are more likely to be implemented. From there it is a short step to ask, “in what ways can we improve this idea so it better meets our business criteria?”
I’ll stop now, before I take over your blog!
Keep up the excellent writing!
Why did I think you were in the USA? I get over to Belgium a few times a year, so, I’ll buzz ya if that happens.
Greg,
Yikes, get out of my head! I’m half way through writing a blog entry for this week on a topic very close to yours. I may have to rethink it altogether now. 🙂
Nice piece and thank you for the mention. I think it’s “do or die” time out there. Something about the beginning of the new year, I suspect, but organizations are either marching forward or pulling the plug.
Thanks for a nice article.
Ron
Hey Ron, thanks for the comment.
Two ideas: 1. Use my post on your blog as a guest post, and use your comments to refine my ideas, or, 2. Write a post about “do or die” because I think you are quite right, the time is now. Those who officially let 2011 go by without adopting IMS and/or Open Innovation officially become laggards, and, are subject to the pink slip if they don’t get after it.
Go Bears!
Yes, Greg, way ahead of you. 🙂
http://bit.ly/hJisXH
And thanks for the Bears Cheer.
Ron
Nice post Ron, exactly what I was thinking. Tweeted a link to it this morning…
Jeffery!
If the users of the idea management system has different priveledges according to their area of expertise. And get to evaluate those ideas that are “tagged” in those areas.
-> Then we would give the evalutation away to the users and also increasing the feeling of participation.
The final selection of ideas to develope into projects can be made by a panel of invited experts depending of the focus area.
Similar ideas can be linked by users and if they are pure copys -one of them can be closed for discussion by administrators. Similar ideas are not all bad! They can lead to new ideas in the discussions.
/Miss X
(Innovation manager of a big industrial company)
Miss X, thanks so much for jumping into the discussion here, Xcellent! What you bring up are some nice strategies for making the job of sorting and evaluating ideas a bit easier, and more logical, while increasing engagement. It has me thinking about the various ranking and rating schemes most of the product contain. For instance, a simple 5 star rating system will give you some idea of what’s attracting the crowd’s interest, while, the number of comments and builds is another indicator of a concept that has “richness” and potential. I like the idea of some kind of special marker for “intriguing” — this give people a way to “vote” for ideas that are not fully formed, but have promise.
Thanks again for you comment Miss X.
Hi Miss X, nice suggestion. As it stands with our software now, the manager in charge of a massive on-line brainstorm assigns idea evaluations to a team of subject experts. However, allowing users to use company criteria to evaluate ideas by their own initiative is a smashing idea. One we will explore. Thank you! I’d love to hear other ideas you have as well — feel free to share them with me: jeffrey at-symbol jpb dot com.
Greg: it would be great to have a notification for comments on your blog. In any event, hope to see you on one side of the channel or the other soon!
Jeffrey
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