This article is part 2 of a 5 part series where we take a deep dive into the 5 common challenge to innovation that an organization faces. This article focuses on the common complaint that organizations don’t have any idea worthy of their investment.
Billion Dollar Ideas Don’t Fall From the Sky
Is something that I can say I’m fairly confident in. As someone now in his mid-thirties, and who has spent the better part of the last two decades kicking around all kinds of ideas with his cousin. From the mildly interesting with no way to pursue (who couldn’t use a punching bag for the inside of their car while stuck in traffic?) to the absurd buy funny (ask me sometime about my idea for the Toddler Diet…at a minimum, it should be a Funny or Die video). None of our ideas ever had the potential to turn us into instant billionaires.
But while it works for me as a running joke and a way to keep in touch with family, lack of ideas can be severely detrimental to organizations. And organizations can suffer not only from lack of overall ideas, but lack of idea sources. In this post, we’ll delve into both of those topics.
We Want to Invest, but We Don’t Know Where
Ideas can be a fickle thing. I don’t think that I’m alone when I say that my best ideas seem to strike at the most inopportune times.
Whether I’m running on a treadmill, taking a shower, on a date night with the wife or playing the back 9 on a sunny Sunday afternoon, my best ideas hit me when I’m not in a position to immediately act on them. And after having many an epiphany float on by never to be seen or heard from again, I took action.
What I did personally is setup an app on my phone to quickly capture ideas in just a few taps, and set a reminder to revisit on Monday morning. This way, the idea is captured without completely taking me out of whatever I was doing. But, it wasn’t forgotten either.
And that works…for Steve the person. But that doesn’t work for us here at Ever Evolving at the corporate level, and it might not work for your organization either. Organizations need to establish that basic “capture and review” cycle, but it needs to be beefed up for enterprise use.
But “beefed up for enterprise” doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be overly expensive or complicated. It can be something as simple as setting up an email filter or creating a survey. If you are looking for something more sophisticated, it may be worth your time to look into a company like IdeaScale who makes an intriguing idea management platform for larger organizations.
The number of ways to do this is staggering. And however you choose to implement it, the goal is to be ready to capture those ideas when they strike, and establish a set of resources and a rhythm to review them. Because, when companies tell me that they don’t know where to invest their funds, normally the reason they don’t have ideas to invest in is because they don’t have the infrastructure in place to capture them.
Turning on the Idea Faucet
At one point in history, there was a business structure that was to be respected at all times.
The people at the top made the rules.
They made the rules because they had the money or they had the experience or they were someone’s second cousin twice removed or whatever. And when you got to the top, however you got to the top, you were then designated as the chosen idea generator. And your ideas were infinitely wise and couldn’t be questioned without the employee being tar and feathered.
Ideas at your Finger Tips
Luckily for most rank and file employees, that style of management went out of style when Don Draper left Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. The current thinking is much more in line with the famous Steve Jobs quote…
It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
– Steve Jobs
The successful companies are beginning to empower their employees and lean on them as a means to identify new product and process improvements. The folks at the top still get to set the direction, but instead of generating all of the new ideas, they pull those from their employees who are doing the day-to-day operations and those who work directly with their clients.
Toyota may be the most famous example of a company that has benefited from this approach. As any MBAer from the past dozen years can attest, there are probably thousands of articles about how they pull ideas from their employees for great success. For the purposes of this article, I’ll just provide one example.
Toyota’s managers focus on strategy. They focus on their market. They focus on where they need to take the company to maximize success. And then they look to their employees for ideas on how to get there.
An Outsiders Perspective
While Toyota was revolutionary in pulling their ideas from their employees and applying them at scale, we coach our partners to even take it a step farther and also solicit ideas from those outside of their organization. The goal here is to escape the “groupthink” mentality and challenge the status quo.
When we talk to our customers about this, they immediately think of customer feedback. Which we is ONE key aspects to this, but it isn’t the only outsider opinion that we want to capture. We also advocate for capturing opinions from non-customers.
Why do non-customers matter? Simple. You want to grow right? If you want to expand beyond your current sphere of influence, then you need to know what is preventing those customers from purchasing what you are selling.
It Is A Collection of Smaller Ideas That Ultimately Drive You Forward
I started out by saying that I’m convinced that billion dollar ideas don’t fall from the sky. And while I stand by that, it doesn’t give a company the right to NOT continually look for them. This study by the should be enough to scare any firm that is thinking about sticking to the status quo.
What I am suggesting, and what we work with our partners on, is the realization that corporate innovation is everyone’s job. And, by putting in place a framework to capture ideas from both internal and external sources, the company will be positioned to continually evolve how they do business.
It may not be in leaps and bounds. But, by placing one foot in front of the other, you will find your earnings and prestige far surpassing your closest competitors who are stuck standing still.