Are you a natural problem solver? A wellspring of ideas? Wish you had been the first person to turn a robe worn backwards into big bucks?
Innocentive, a website that “believes in the power of innovation” to solve some of the world’s “most important problems” – while providing problem-solvers with the opportunity to win the aforementioned big bucks – might be worth a click for you. Prizes go all the way up to a cool million for challenges a little, OK a whole lot more, high brow than things like The Snuggie.
The majority of the site’s challenges are geared toward the scientifically inclined. Ever ponder the alternative route to a pyridinone? (Say what?!) Didn’t think so. However along with NASA, which has their own Innocentive Innovation Pavilion, many commercial, governmental and humanitarian organizations are using this site to effectively crowdsource solutions.
Website’s designed to harness collective brainpower are nothing new to the web. Dell’s been successfully crowdsourcing product ideas on its site, IdeaStorm, since 2007. IdeaStorm’s ultimate goal is “to hear what new products or services you’d like to see Dell develop.” With 13,742 ideas submitted and 410 fully implemented, that’s quite a win-win scenario for Dell and consumers.
Companies are also engaging their employees in much the same way. From Best Buy’s Blue Shirt Nation to Motorola’s Think Tank Idea Exchange, providing a collaborative forum on a company’s intranet – a destination for employees to connect, share and innovate – is also very win-win.
Whether you work for a company that has a small number of employees, or a company with thousands in far flung locations, encouraging and managing the potential flow of ideas is no small task. In a recent profile of Bayer’s Triple-I program in Forbes, their CEO, Greg Babe, gets it right: “If we can create an environment where every idea is valued as potentially great, we can eliminate the fear of failure. That puts innovation on fast-forward.”
In today’s economy, many workers are likely to have not so unreasonable fears about sticking their neck out on an idea. Participation from the top down is a must, plus this also helps flatten the organization a bit in the process. Genuine support, encouragement and engagement from front line middle managers is also essential to success and that may involve some training.
Another way to fast-forward implementation is to develop a strait forward approach to plow through the weeds. Motorola puts the weeding of idea submissions back on their employees through a voting system. Bayer has a dedicated team of innovation experts that apply these five basic questions to each submission:
Is the idea feasible?
Is it really a new idea?
Is there a need in the market?
What is the benefit for the consumer?
Does the idea fit with the company’s focus, mission and portfolio?
Keep things interesting, collaborative and engaging in the workplace and you’ll see employees who feel stronger connections to their employer. This pearl of wisdom from Buddah further affirms why employee communication initiatives such as these are worth it, “An idea that is developed and put into action is more important than an idea that exists only as an idea.”
By allowing each and every team member the opportunity to invest in and better understand business decisions, provide ideas both large and small for the greater good of the company and celebrate each other, I’ll bet you that innovations and improvements on many levels will be the winning result.
