Last Tuesday Wichert van Engelen from ING presented a book he and his people wrote. It is titled “ideeën genoeg” (which translates to “enough ideas”).
In his interesting and entertaining presentation he stated that they chose not to implement idea management because they focus on radical innovation with the promise of significant revenues. In their opinion idea management is more suited for incremental innovation. Furthermore, it fragments energy to many diverse ideas, ideas are never completely new, and there are ownership issues.
Lately one of our clients, that did implement idea management, told us they aim for 5 ideas that deliver over 100 million Euros and were rethinking the added value of idea management in this pursuit.
I cannot see why idea management could be in the way of getting the radical ideas. Furthermore, most arguments against idea management can be lead back to unsuccessful experiences and In many organizations there just is not enough commitment to the process to make it successful.
Insufficient commitment results in a decline in the number of ideas and more importantly a decline in the quality of the ideas. This result then convinces management that idea management does not work.
We saw this happen in the old days with the idea boxes in the cantina and it happens today with highly advanced web-based idea management platforms.
Successful idea management needs attention and hard work!
I’m planning to write about using idea management as a change catalyst to move toward a more innovative organization. And of course I’m interested to further discuss why the big radical innovation cannot come from idea management. Your comments and insights would be most valuable.
Making the leap from idea collection to evaluation, implementation and review is why the entire process of corporate innovation has to be perfected. Gathering the ideas and encouraging participation is just the front end.
As with most corporate “euphemisms” or movements (TQM, JIT, Six Sigma), the organizations that embrace change and execute well see the benefits — those who make loud noises about their new initiatives or re-engineering, often do so just to ride the wave.
-David Wallace
Imaginatik Research
The Corporate Innovation blog – imaginatikresearch.blogspot.com
July 9th, 2007 by David Wallace
Large organisations should not opt for either radical innovation or incremental innovation. In my view a combined strategy would be better since:
1. having an idea-management system in place nurtures and stimulates free-thinking within the organisation, provides a basis to prevent ownership issues and rewards people who are sincerely interested in improving the company’s existing service or product offering;
2. idea-management is also highly suited for providing a foundation for in-house generated radical innovations by non-specialists that have no direct access to or influence with the involved department heads;
3. it is hard to force innovation, meaning that more innovations just result from a ’spark’ than are actually achieved during a formal brainstorm sessions amongst colleagues. Organisations should have the infrastructure in place to catch any promising idea out there.
I’m very much for radical innovation, but that also requires entrepreneurs… The question should therefore maybe be; how large established organisations can attract and retain (a group of) entrepreneurs/visionaries that generate and execute these radical ideas? Assuming that that is nearly impossible, to which extent is radical innovation even possible within these organisations or do they just use their financial power to purchase promising ideas/companies?
When talking about radical innovation a distinction should be made between autonomous radical innovation and radical innovation through takeovers.
July 16th, 2007 by multimind
@Multimind: I very much agree with you.
Considering your last comment “When talking about radical innovation a distinction should be made between autonomous radical innovation and radical innovation through takeovers.” the underlying question is: Can companies execute innovation themselves? If the answer is no an idea management infrastructure can still prove useful. If an idea is posted that seems very promising, you can go out and shop for the company that did execute the idea.
Hence, an Idea management infrastructure is useful no matter if you’re a maker or a buyer.
July 20th, 2007 by Jaap Linssen