Arthur D. Little’s 2013 Innovation Excellence Survey found a correlation between capability in innovation measurement and success. Yet less than 20% of companies believe they have a good idea management measurement capability. If you run a search on the web, you find many different approaches and models to do it … however you might be neglecting much of the real value of your initiative if you look only for tangible outcomes.
TIP: What to do when you lack measurable returns
No returns, no investment. This is an obvious leadership decision and, as such, many in progress idea management programmes have been shut down. The corporate cemetery is full of initiatives that failed; their ghosts haunting the same corporations whenever someone wants to relaunch. So how do you make sure that your innovation initiative does not wither?
You need masters, as well as idea management practitioners
We’ve seen that you need a constituency inside your company to provide needed support throughout different phases of the innovation process. Together with one of our clients, we worked to design and develop a solution that promotes a cadre of innovation pivots. We called it ‘Innovation Sigma’.
The idea management foot soldiers
Idea management software – functioning as an ‘idea market’ – has proven to be highly effective at unleashing your people’s hidden innovation potential. Geared to reaching goals, this gets each person to engage and participate more over time, whether you’re seeking to improve performance, find new products and methods or develop a widespread, collaborative culture of innovation.
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Cross-border innovation initiatives: 10 best practices
‘To make your idea management initiatives thrive across countries, you need high levels of engagement, as well as process efficiency to manage this engagement and its outputs’, said Pedro do Carmo Costa. Exago’s director spoke at the Innovation Management.se Channel One Roundtable Discussion, sharing field-tested best practices to ensure international companies succeed in their innovation efforts.
Back to basics: Define appropriate goals
In previous posts, we’ve made the case for purpose-led innovation. However, it’s also true that, in some cases, the ‘job to be done’ can entail ‘softer’ ambitions, namely, creating an innovation culture and embedding an innovation capability.
Back to basics: What is your purpose?
As we’ve seen, the challenge for innovation pioneers came when a more adverse economic climate infected the corporate world. Innovation became a secondary concern, even seen as the cause of the sudden climate change. It had distracted us from our core values.
Back to basics: Why are we doing this, really?
Behind, they have left the familiar territory of ‘quality’, that delivered almost guaranteed (yet limited) improvements. Ahead, ‘innovation’ offers an exciting journey, where you can’t see the end from the beginning. But this demands a leap of faith. And, as we know, matters requiring faith tend to stay at the door of the boardroom.
Four tips to keep idea management initiatives alive
We have seen that when the innovation outcome seems irrelevant, so too seems the entire idea management initiative. Then how…