Your customers will always be glad to share with you insights on how to improve your product. They’re probably doing it now in some way, though irregularly and outside any structured innovation management framework.
Nevertheless, if you’re looking for specific expertise or creativity focuses, you can’t expect the answers to land on your doorstep. You need to give people some kind of incentive to think ideas through, getting them to share their best contributions. ‘Why should I participate in this programme, anyway?’ is the question potential participants will certainly ask.
Which incentives should I use?
You need to opt for both self-promotional – leaderboards, reputation enhancements and community recognition events – and material incentives – money, products and experiences. This is particularly relevant if you’re running a competition or targeting the general public or consumers.
Make sure that the company you pick to help you with initiatives takes this route, providing a detailed overall plan of programme incentives and articulating which activities should be promoted and how this happens. The template model needs to accelerate decisionmaking. These elements must create clear links between incentives and rewards, aligned with programme objectives and organisational brand values.
In addition, the chosen online platform should implement a horizontal incentive scheme that covers each stage of the open innovation process. It must also integrate gamification techniques and game elements such as points, badges, leaderboards and digital currency rewards (which participants can exchange for material prizes) for each valuable interaction with your platform.
This model allows programme managers to promote the desired behaviours of targeted stakeholders or communities. Finally, you need to be able to manage your programme easily for brand awareness, quality of proposals and quantity of interactions.
(to be continued)
Pedro da Cunha, Exago’s co-founder/ pdc@exago.com
FROM THE START:
Open innovation and the fight for your audience