Company Background In the News Press Investor Relations Awards Imaginatik Events Imaginatik Communities Conferences We Attend Contact Us

Research•Technology Management - "Involve Everyone in the Innovation Process"

Involve Everyone in the Innovation Process

By Charles W. Prather and Mark C. Turrell
Volume 45 Number 5
September - October 2002

industrial research institute Challenging and involving all employees is a key requirement to establish an improved Climate For Innovation and improving the bottom line, but this has been impractical until the wide-spread adoption of corporate intranets. Using efficiencies provided by your organization’s internal computer systems for ideas management and knowledge sharing, and new streamlined processes for creating breakthrough - yet workable - solutions to especially critical problems, all employees can now be challenged and included in the innovation process with bottom line benefits.

Introduction

One of the key dimensions of the Climate For Innovation is, “Challenge and Involvement.”1, 2 Although leaders readily agree on its importance, few have been able to find effective ways to make this happen in practice because two opposing problems must be solved at the same time. They are: (1) giving everyone an opportunity to submit their ideas to meet a specific challenge without causing administrative and organizational overload, and at the same time, (2) getting truly innovative ideas that go far beyond the useful but usually ordinary ideas that are produced by employee suggestion systems.

The suggestion systems of the past were always accompanied by excessive administrative workload even if a small fraction of eligible employees submitted their ideas. On the other hand, it is simply impractical to include everyone in focused problem-solving workshops to get their best ideas. Imagine trying to involve thousands of employees in workshops on a regular basis! Thanks to the efficiencies enabled by Information Technology, this dilemma can now be easily resolved for the first time. Using your intranet, it is now possible to allow everyone to submit ideas in response to important business challenges. For those critical issues where truly breakthrough ideas are required, selected employee teams can participate in special intensive workshops to develop breakthrough yet workable ideas to especially difficult problems.

Details

The best ideas can come from any employee, any time, anywhere; people naturally think of ways to make their jobs easier, faster, and more productive. Although these words are a truism, few organizations have effective systems in place to solicit ideas and then implement the best ones. In many organizations when an employee’s idea was used, it happened because the idea creator was its strongest champion being persistent and vocal, and exerted a lot of personal energy. In the days before massive downsizing, personnel may have had the time and energy to champion their pet ideas. Not anymore. Today, under the weight of increased workload yet smaller budgets, few people feel they have the time or energy to fight such battles. As an example, the famous and effective DuPont $eed program which provided funding for employees to work on ideas that their unit was unable to fund has been curtailed, not for lack of management interest or support, but because employees stopped submitting requests for funding due to increased workloads and a general lack of time.

Having a system for employee suggestions that removes barriers and makes it easy for employees to contribute ideas increases the likelihood that good ideas will be submitted. Strong, visible support by leadership lets everyone know that individual thinking and ideas are valued, and allows everyone to be more involved with the business. This in turn sets an improved Climate For Innovation.

Perhaps you have been involved with “suggestion systems” in the past that didn’t work well. Typically, these have been instituted by leaders and kicked off with high visibility “hoopla” and eventually fall into disuse and are quietly abandoned. One company we know became so disenchanted with their system that they formally abolished it and replaced it with nothing! Suggestion systems fail most often because the human side of the system is ignored, and because the added work to administer the system becomes so burdensome that it falls under its own weight. In yet another Fortune 100 company with a highly publicized employee suggestion system focused on cost reduction, participants were paid money for their ideas. Program administrators and managers (who saw the ideas first) began stealing ideas, submitting them as their own to get the reward! Naturally this diminished cooperation among the employees, causing them to withhold their ideas from each other which squelched “Debates on the Issues,” another one of the dimensions of the Climate For Innovation. The monetary rewards fostered unhealthy competition rather than collaboration that characterizes innovative organizations. This is a classic example of the well-known “Fix That Backfires” archetype in Systems Thinking Technology3 that could have been avoided had the human issues been considered. These behaviors are not surprising to those schooled in Systems Thinking technology or in Knowledge Management and human behavior4, but came as a complete surprise to the leaders. That entire program was recently terminated, along with all the people who were required to administer it (nearly 50 people).

Another less obvious but critical human issue involves the idea evaluators. In systems where responsibility for serving on the ‘idea evaluation team’ is a never-ending task, members get worn out, they feel overworked and often resent being required to do this added task. As a result they may delay evaluating ideas, and when they get around to it, they may give it little thought, quickly rejecting every idea. Still further, many ideas are submitted to solve problems that don’t exist, and therefore have no built-in acceptance. If most ideas are rejected, people stop submitting them. Ideas need a receptive ‘home’ and yet typical idea suggestion systems aren’t set up to provide that. Many suggestion systems don’t adequately inform idea authors about what is happening with their ideas. Imagine that you are talking to a friend on the phone. If your friend stopped responding, you would eventually hang up. Likewise, employees ‘hang up’ on suggestion systems that are poorly responsive, and people just don’t use them.

Overcoming the limitations of traditional suggestion systems has been achieved by application software that can form the backbone of an effective ideas management system. The best software takes the human issues into account, as well as automates most of the administrative workload, increasing efficiency. These are far more than a computerized version of the old suggestion box concept which itself is flawed. One of the most innovative approaches used by Imaginatik in their “Idea Central” is the ‘event mode’ of soliciting and evaluating ideas. An ‘event’ is a campaign of specific length, usually 2-6 weeks, during which ideas are solicited from everyone to meet specific challenges of particular interest to leaders. Because most ideas are submitted in response to specific challenges, they are met with a receptive audience because the ideas are needed. The ideas submitted tend to be highly relevant and useful, more tactical than strategic, and more immediately practical and more easily implemented.

Beyond Employee Suggestions

However, when dealing with old problems that were never adequately resolved, ideas contributed by employees tend to be restatements of old ideas and therefore have little capacity to solve the problem. Research conducted by Imaginatik with Bristol-Myers Squibb, The Pillsbury Company, IBM and others has found that typical idea gathering events only generate 2.5 top rated ideas per 100 submitted, and over 65% of ideas are evaluated as either "poor" or "exists".

The real demand from businesses is to find breakthrough ideas that have never before been presented. In these cases an intensive problem-solving process is called for. Generically called “Creative Problem-Solving,” these workshops dig deeply to get past all the easy and obvious ideas that have already been addressed. The techniques to force thinking out of the box generate truly innovative ideas that have never been raised before.

The “Bottom Line Innovation” process consists of three major sections which are (1) Problem Identification, (2) Idea Generation, and (3) Idea Selection and Implementation Planning. This process pays special attention to clearly defining the right problem, and then goes far beyond traditional brainstorming by using “Pattern-Breaking Thinking” which creates breakthrough ideas.

Pattern-Breaking Thinking tools work better in a team or group setting than with a single person using them alone. Their power rests in highly interactive sessions in which a skillful facilitator helps the group use the thinking tools and guides discussions that lead to breakthrough ideas. The personal face-to-face interaction and constant interplay is required to get the best results.

To more easily reach consensus on the best ideas, criteria are used to make the selections. Once the very best ideas have been selected, some processes work to improve each selected idea to increase its chance of success. For each idea that makes the final cut (4-6 ideas), a project plan should be created with names of those who accept responsibility for taking the next steps and the dates expected to complete the next steps.

In summary, organizations have a tremendous opportunity to take advantage of the brainpower of their employees and create a strong Climate For Innovation, thanks to today's intranet systems for Ideas Management and Knowledge Management. Together, Employee Suggestion Systems and Creative Problem-Solving Workshops are complementary ways that together can overcome the dilemma of involving every employee in solving business problems while finding breakthrough yet workable solutions when required.

References

1. Isaksen, Scott G.; Dorval, Brian K.; and Treffinger, Donald J. Creative Approaches to Problem-Solving. Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company, 1994..

2. Prather, Charles W., and Gundry, Lisa K. Blueprints for Innovation. New York: American Management Association, 1995.

3. Anderson, Virginia and Johnson, Lauren. Systems Thinking Basics – From Concepts to Causal Loops. Cambridge, MA: Pegasus Communications, Inc. 1997

4. Kohn, Alfie, Punished by Rewards The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plan$, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993.

Biographical Sketches

Charles W. Prather is President of Bottom Line Innovation Associates, Inc. located in Annapolis, MD. He served for some 24 years in numerous R&D and management positions at DuPont and was appointed Manager of the DuPont Center for Creativity & Innovation upon its formation. He earned a Ph.D. in biochemistry from N.C. State University and has received training from some of the world's experts in creativity and innovation. More than 80,000 copies of his first book, "Blueprints for Innovation" have been sold and his second, "Blueprints for Leading Innovation," is in preparation. He can be contacted at cwprather@aol.com.

Mark C. Turrell is the CEO of Imaginatik, located in Boston, MA and Winchester, UK. Founded in 1995, Imaginatik specializes in application software for innovation management and knowledge management. He is the author of "Deployment and Beyond," an executive guide to implementing collaborative applications, and has studied at post-graduate level at The City University (London), the ESCP (Paris) and the Technical University of Berlin. He can be contacted at mark_turrell@imaginatik.com.

Table 1. Complementary Processes of Ideas Management System and Creative Problem-Solving Workshops

“Idea Central” Ideas Management “Bottom Line Innovation” Workshop

Use when… You want to involve all employees or you want ideas to solve a particular problem from a wide variety of perspectives The problem to be solved is an old one or especially difficult, the usual ideas have not worked and you believe that breakthrough ideas are required.

Potential number of participants Limited only by the number of people given access to the system; usually every employee in the organization. Limited to specific team or group with an especially difficult and challenging problem to solve.

Type of ideas generated More tactical than strategic; usually easy and fast to implement. These ideas tend to perfect the existing system yielding benefits quickly. More strategic than tactical; usually more difficult to implement and takes longer. These ideas tend to change the existing system, positioning the organization for improved performance in the future.

For success, this requires… 1. Top leadership absolutely and personally committed to improving the business by using employees’ heads as well as their hands.
2. Sustained and visible advertising from top leadership to make people aware of the system, and managers at all levels holding themselves and others strictly accountable for using the system..
3. A dedicated Employee Suggestion System administrator to help leaders set up and run events. 1. A team or group with a strong leader which has a problem that is (a) critically important, (b) has no easy or obvious solutions, (c) is specific so it can be quantified, (d) people absolutely committed to taking action, and (e) the leader MUST be a full participant in the workshop.
2. Two FULL days to develop breakthrough, workable solutions.
3. Facilitator trained and certified to lead the process.

Organizational Issues Individual-focused; individuals submit their ideas. Challenges and involves everyone, improving the Climate for Innovation. Sends the clear message that people’s ideas are needed. Everyone has the opportunity to contribute his/her ideas. Checks and balances in the system minimize the chance that the wrong people get recognized, that people get left out, or that people complain that someone got recognized for suggesting something that is a normal part of the job. Team-focused. Project teams gather to create breakthrough, workable solutions to difficult problems. Sends the message that we are committed to solving tough problems innovatively. Results need to be communicated broadly. This tool might be used after an Employee Suggestion System event has been run but yielded no really new ideas. “Credit” for ideas generated can be handled by writing initials on ideas.