Idea Flow
In medium to large organisations, idea flow is critical to innovation.
Every firm has a number of highly creative individuals and many more moderately
creative individuals. With optimal idea flow, their good ideas will be
recognised and implemented relatively quickly and cost efficiently. With
lousy idea flow, those ideas will mostly be lost. The quality of idea
flow in most companies, of course, falls somewhere in the middle.
In order to best envision idea flow, it is useful to think about motion
in dimensional space.
Zero dimensional idea flow is the worst kind of idea flow. Zero dimensions,
as you will recall, is a single point from which there can be no motion.
Likewise, in highly hierarchical companies that are not open to receiving
ideas from staff, ideas do not go anywhere. If one of the staff has an
idea, she might discuss it with her colleagues in a “Wouldn't it
be great if our company were to...” sort of way. But the idea goes
no further. Only when a decision maker – usually the CEO - has an
idea is it implemented.
One dimensional idea flow is better. One dimensional space is linear
and comprises points along a line. In firms which have begun to respect
ideas, idea flow becomes linear. When an employee has an idea, she is
invited to share it with someone responsible for ideas, such as her superior
or an innovation manager. If the idea seems promising, the innovation
manager may discuss it with the originator, send it to an expert for evaluation
or send it to her superior for approval. Each of these people can be seen
as points on the line of idea flow.
The more easily ideas move back and forth along the line; and the more
lines of idea flow there are, the more innovative a company is likely
to be.
Surprisingly, a number of companies providing idea management solutions,
base their solutions on one dimensional idea flow. This is a pity, because
once a company gets locked into a tool that pushes them into one dimensional
idea flow, it is hard to expand into two or three dimensions.
Two dimension defines a plane or flat surface. Two dimensional idea flow
means that ideas flow in all directions across the organisation. Anyone
can see what ideas other people are proposing, propose their own ideas
and collaborate on other people's ideas.
Likewise, when ideas are implemented, they are done so transparently,
for the entire enterprise to monitor.
Two dimensional idea flow is clearly a big step up from one dimensional
idea flow. Everyone participates at every level; collaboration builds
upon good ideas, turning them into great ideas and transparent communication
from management shows support for innovation which encourages further
innovation.
Indeed, you may be forgiven for wondering what three dimensional innovation
might look like and how it could improve upon two dimensional innovation.
Three dimensions define a cube or space as we know it. Three dimensional
idea flow goes beyond the firm and brings in your customers, suppliers,
consultants and business partners; perhaps even the general public in
some instances. These people all have ideas about how an organisation
can improve their products, services and image.
In particular, products for which customers have strong emotional attachments
will certainly attract well thought out ideas from customers.
By bringing everyone from employees to suppliers to customers into the
idea flow, an organisation is truly maximising its potential to innovate
as well as demonstrating to everyone in the supply, production and distribution
chains the value the organisation places in innovation.
Of course bringing outsiders into the idea flow is trickier than bringing
employees in. For competitive reasons, most companies need to keep information,
particularly about innovative new products and services, confidential
during the development phase. Moreover, unscrupulous people (such as angry
customers or nasty competitors) could attempt to sabotage the idea flow
by introducing bad ideas into the system. Hence structures need to be
built to allow different levels of idea flow between different parts of
the three dimensional space.
About our product..
Jenni enterprise idea management permits
three-dimensional idea flow by allowing anyone you permit to participate
in proposing, collaborating on and evaluating ideas. Moreover, Jenni allows
multiple access levels, so you can give trusted employees the highest
level of access, while giving suppliers and customers a lower level of
access, preventing them from accessing confidential or highly sensitive
information.
Based on an article (by Jeffrey Baumgartner) published
in Report103,
2 March 2004 issue
© 2004 Jeffrey Baumgartner
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