Encouraging Innovation
Where we talk about innovation and ideas management....
If I were to summarize many positions I have seen about innovation management systems, I would say that there are three major rules:
empowerment, empowerment and empowerment.
It all starts with giving people the capacity to come up with new ideas, that will be welcome in the organisation.
Then it is about giving people the power to see their idea come to life, by actively supporting its development and implementation.
Also the ones who carry the idea should be the ones who actually run the project to develop it. Who better than the ones who had it to defend an idea??
Some claim that innovation management processes should be about:
- Following through (ensuring ideas come to life)
- Discernment (making sure only the best ideas are selected)
- Agility (capacity to adapt to customers demands through innovation)
- Mistakes: they exist and one has to live with the idea that a failure can be the first step to a major succes.
- Rewards (there needs be a reward for people who willingly invest some of their time to innovate, and even more for those whose innovations have beared fruits).
- Attraction (Supportive systems will have a tendancy to attract other ideas from the outside).
All these elements are to be taken into consideration, as part of the empowerment process, (detecting, nurturing, pushing forward...)
because at the end of the day, we are humans. It is in our capacity to innovate for the organisation that we create value for our talents and our customers.
Do you have an efficient ideas management system? If not, all you risk is to see some great ideas that would have served your company end-up between desert and cofee at a family lunch: little if any use for your corporate goals...but surely entertaining for one's family.
The question then is whether your organisation allows for such ideas to be captured and developped, and if it does not, what can you do about it?
