Report 103

Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business – delivered to your e-mail box on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

Tuesday, 1 August 2006
Issue 87

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your fortnightly newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.

As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.

Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.

SUGGESTION SCHEME SUICIDE: TWO STORIES

First Story

Demoness Fashion is a medium sized chain of fashion shops that makes trendy clothing targeting young women. With sales shrinking and tough competition from China pushing down prices, Demoness management realise the company must become more innovative in order to survive. Moreover, innovation must not be limited to the products themselves. Operations, logistics and production divisions all need to be more innovative in order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and ensure shops are filled with readily saleable items.

Among innovation initiatives are regular brainstorming sessions. The first one starts at 10:00 one Tuesday morning.

“Good morning ladies and gentlemen,” said the facilitator as he walked around the room handing out small stacks of Post-its, “My name is Mark and I am facilitating today's brainstorming session. Please write your ideas on the Post-its and stick them to the wall here. You may begin.” He indicated the wall at the head of the conference room.

The room was quiet as everyone looked at Mark, who was looking a touch impatient. After a painfully silent couple of minutes, Mark said, “Let's have your ideas please. We are all very busy.”

“Ideas about what?” asked one young woman.

“Anything. We are looking to improve all aspects of Demoness Fashion and we want you to participate by sharing your ideas.”

After a few more minutes, a few people in the room timidly started writing. Six people went to the front of the room and stuck their ideas to the wall. Four of the ideas were essentially the same: make boxer shorts. This was not surprising. A popular news show the night before had had a short feature about how arty boxer shorts were becoming a fashion statement in London – for young men and women. Another idea suggested outsourcing production to Thailand. The sixth idea suggested a fashion e-mail newsletter that would inform customers of new products at Demoness shops.

Mark look at the ideas. “Boxer shorts are out. We produce fashions for young women, not men,” he said while pulling the four similar ideas off the whiteboard, crumpling them up and tossing them in the rubbish bin.

“And you know it is a corporate policy not to outsource production to Asia. We are committed to producing clothes locally,” he added crumpling up idea number five.

“This newsletter idea is interesting though. Let's keep that.” He moved the idea to the right hand side of the wall where a large sticker stated: “Good Ideas”.

“More ideas, please,” said Mark, folding his arms over his chest.

Over the next half hour, a few more timid ideas were produced. A couple were related to the e-mail newsletter, but were rejected as being too costly. Another idea related to logistics. Mark confessed he knew little about logistics and promised to give the idea to the logistics manager for review.

Soon people started looking at their watches and insisted that they had important projects and meetings to get to. As the number of participants dwindled, Mark finally said, “OK, he have a couple of good ideas here. That's not a bad start. I am sure we can do better next time. I hope to see you then.”

Everyone agreed that next time would be better while telling themselves that they would be sure to be busy for next time.

And no one lived particularly happily ever after.

What Went Wrong?

Doubtless you can see several serious mistakes the facilitator made. First and foremost, running a brainstorming session without giving participants a challenge – in other words a problem or issue – to focus their ideas upon seems daft. Imagine going to a brainstorming session where you are invited to submit ideas about anything. You would probably be confused too.

Nevertheless, this is how many corporate suggestion schemes work. Employees are encouraged to submit ideas to an e-mail address, database or intranet form. However, little or no indication is given as to what kind of ideas are wanted. We call such a system a “blind suggestion scheme”.

When blind suggestion schemes are implemented, the results are similar to those of the brainstorming session. A large number of ideas may be submitted initially, but the quantity slows quickly. Ideas cover numerous unrelated issues and there are many duplicated ideas.

The second mistake the facilitator made was to begin criticising and rejecting ideas too quickly. Moreover,he did not challenge idea submitters to explain their ideas better or to find ways to make their ideas conform to company needs. The result, of course, was that participants quickly became demotivated. They not only produced fewer ideas, but those ideas were less creative and more conservative. That's because no one likes having their ideas flatly rejected. And people are certainly unlikely to propose ideas which they fear will be rejected in such a blunt fashion.

Nevertheless, quick, blunt rejection is also a common feature of many blind suggestion schemes. Ideas come in, they are reviewed once every week or two and most are rejected because they do not meet the company's needs – even though no one has communicated what the company's innovation needs are!

The facilitator made other mistakes as well. He offered no explanation of his process. He simply demanded ideas. He did not encourage participation through compliments or offers of small rewards. He did not communicate what would happen to the one idea he liked. He only indicated that it was a good idea.

Amazingly, these features are also common to many blind suggestion schemes. Thus it is not surprising that blind suggestion schemes typically fail within 12-18 months of initiation. In summary, failures are because...

• Company needs are not communicated.
• There is no focus on specific innovation challenges.
• Ideas are rejected flat out.
• There is little or positive reinforcement via compliments, small rewards or encouragement.
• There is no indication of how ideas will be developed.
• There is, in fact, no clear reason why employees should invest their valuable time in proposing and sharing ideas.

The Second Story

“Good morning boys and girls,” announces Molly. “I am here to run the first of what I hope will be a series of brainstorming sessions designed to make Demoness Fashion more innovative. Today we want to explore new product directions Demoness might take. But before I begin, tell me how you feel about our current line-up.”

Following a short discussion, Molly continues. “OK, I see we have some agreement that Demoness produces high quality products, but we are a touch behind the fashion bandwagon. Not surprisingly, management has come to the same conclusion. So, let's start with this challenge.” Molly writes: “What new directions might we take in our product line?”

“I want to hear all of your ideas, no matter how mad they might seem. As Albert Einstein once said: 'If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.' Now, shout out your ideas and I will write them on the whiteboard. Let's see how many ideas we can generate in a half hour starting... NOW!”

“Boxer shorts,” shouted a young women. A few people laughed.

“Brilliant!” shouted Molly.

“Sexy boxer shorts!” shouted an older man followed by more giggles.

“...for women” added another member of the audience.

“Great ideas. Let's push them even further!” shouted Molly.

“Matching boxer shorts and halters for young ladies” said a normally reserved receptionist who got caught up in the enthusiasm.

After 30 minutes, dozens of ideas were suggested and written on the whiteboard. Molly complimented each and every one of them.

“We've collected a lot of great ideas here.” Said Molly. “Now, I'd like each of you to choose the four or five ideas you feel are best. Bear in mind that we are looking for ideas that will make us seem more cutting edge, which would appeal to our current customer-base and which would not be difficult to implement given our present production system. Think about it for a moment, then take a marker and put a check for a good idea and two checks for a great idea.”

After the group had followed her instructions, four ideas had lots of checks after them. Six more ideas had at least two checks next to each and four more ideas each had one check next to it.

“Excellent work!” said Molly. “We've got some great ideas here. I will take all of these ideas and your ratings to a review group that will determine which ideas to take further. With so many good ideas, I doubt we will be able to implement them all in the short term, so don't feel bad if your idea is not short-listed. In any event, I will keep you informed of progress via e-mail.

“This has been a great session and I hope we'll be able to organise another one soon.”

The participants left the session feeling highly charged, excited and keen to participate in future sessions.

What Went Right?

It should be obvious. Firstly, Molly communicated a lot more background information to the participants, enabling them to understand better the company's needs and motivations for soliciting their ideas.

Secondly, and extremely importantly, Molly focused the brainstorming session on a specific innovation challenge. This made it very clear what kind of ideas she was looking for and focused participants' creativity on a very specific business need.

Thirdly, she rewarded every idea with a compliment. This not only made people feel more comfortable about sharing ideas, but also provided additional motivation: getting those compliments.

By having people shout out ideas and interact, Molly encouraged participants to build on each others' ideas. So, instead of several people submitting the same boxer shorts idea, those people worked together to build up the boxer shorts idea into a more interesting and more developed and more creative idea.

Molly reviewed all ideas only after the idea generation phase was completed and the review had a positive focus: which ideas best meet Demoness's needs, rather than a negative focus: which ideas will not work, as was the case in the first brainstorming session.

Lastly, she made it clear what the next steps in the innovation process would be. Thus participants did not feel their ideas were disappearing into a black hole – as often seems to be the case with suggestion schemes.

Your suggestion scheme – or idea management process – should be similarly structured. It must communicate to employees your goals. It should use the ideas campaign process which is based on innovation challenges. Ideas should be collaboratively developed in a transparent environment, otherwise you will get lots of duplicated ideas and lots of undeveloped ideas. Ideas should be rewarded, albeit in a small way. Ideas should be allowed to ferment and grow for a period before the review process takes place. The review process should be transparent and positive. Lastly, the idea flow process should be communicated to all participants.

By following such a model for your idea collection, review and implementation, you can ensure you get good ideas relevant to your business needs, a sustainable approach to idea generation and positively motivated employees.

What more could you ask for?

For more information on idea management and Jenni idea management software service (our ideas campaign/idea management product), please visit http://www.jpb.com/ideamanagement/ and http://www.jpb.com/jenni/ respectively. Or contact us here...

THE PC'S 25TH BIRTHDAY

The personal computer (PC) turns 25 this month. On 11 August 1981, IBM launched the first PC and slapped a very low, for the time, price of US$1,565 on it. There can be no doubt but that IBM's invention changed the world.

Interestingly, the PC as we know it came into being because IBM was willing to break some of their corporate rules in order to make it happen. And that allowed IBM engineers to be more innovative than was usually the case at that time. (It is important to point out the IBM has changed radically since then)

In fact, IBM had made several failed attempts at creating a PC before 1981. But those attempts resulted in overly expensive machines. This is largely because, at the time, IBM was a highly bureaucratic company with strict rules and endless review committees that evaluated every idea thoroughly – too thoroughly. To make matters worse, one of the main rules at the time was that only IBM parts could be used in IBM products.

So, IBM did what any large bureaucratic company should do when it wants to develop innovative products: it established a skunk-works team of engineers, gave them a goal and freed them from the corporate bureaucracy and rules.

The skunk-works team, based in Florida, reported directly to senior management, was not subject to budget review and was encouraged to think out of the box.

To keep the price of the end product reasonable, the team decided to build a component based computer using off-the-shelf parts from the most suitable suppliers. This, they reasoned, would make PCs much easier and less costly to build and maintain. Ironically, two of those suppliers became far richer from the PC than IBM ever did. They were Microsoft, who provided the operating system, and Intel, who provided the chips that powered the computer.

The team also did something that was unheard of in the computer industry at the time. They made the specifications of their PC open so that independent software developers could readily write programs for it. This also made it possible for other companies to produce their own PCs, which were often far cheaper than IBM's PCs. Prior to that, the specifications of computers were kept secret and software was largely developed in house by the companies that produced the computers.

The result, as I said, changed the world. Over a billion PCs are in use across the globe today. And the wide-spread use of common computer and operating system specifications created an environment that allowed the Internet to grow into what it is today (the Internet in fact existed before the PC, but in 1981, only a couple hundred computers were connected to it).

Imagine. If IBM had not been willing to break the rules, the world would be a very different place now.

SCARED TO SPEAK THEIR MINDS

One of the key concepts behind any suggestion scheme, idea management process or other innovation strategy that relies on capturing employee ideas is that employees will share their ideas if they are given the opportunity to do so. Unfortunately, if employees are afraid to speak their minds, their ideas will remain secret. And that is bad for innovation.

According to Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson and Penn State professor James Detert, employees are discouraged from speaking up or, worse, afraid of speaking up, in every large company they looked at. They've recently published a research paper on the topic.

You can read an interview, in which they discuss their research, at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5261.html. It's well worth reading if you want your employees to share their ideas and knowledge with you.

Incidentally, this is one reason why Jenni idea management offers anonymous idea submission. Employees can submit ideas into Jenni's public idea space with their names hidden. However, if the idea is later implemented, the name of the idea owner is revealed so she can be rewarded for her contribution. The result: anonymity during idea generation and recognition during implementation. For more information about Jenni, please visit http://www.jpb.com/jenni/

LATEST IN BUSINESS INNOVATION

If you want to keep up with the latest news in business innovation, I recommend Chuck Frey's INNOVATIONweek (http://www.innovationtools.com/News/subscribe.asp). It's the only e-newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on all of the latest innovation news, research, trends, case histories of leading companies and more. And it's the perfect complement to Report 103!

Happy thinking!

Jeffrey Baumgartner

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Report 103 is a complimentary weekly electronic newsletter from Bwiti bvba of Belgium (a jpb.com company: http://www.jpb.com). Archives and subscription information can be found at http://www.jpb.com/report103/

Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on the first and third Tuesday of every month.

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