The usual practice is to create a suggestion box for new innovations and leave it open to everyone interested in the new ideas. Let us make it in a different way.
The usual practice is to create an online suggestion box for new innovations and leave it fully accessible to everyone interested in the new ideas. This seems to work well at some highly esteemed places (like here at MIX). However, innovators inside the organization often long for certain exclusivity. The full access of the non-innovative minds to the innovation ideas may inhibit further innovation submissions, especially in the long run.
Let the innovators in the organization form a club. Membership is granted for a limited time and continued membership is earned by contributing new ideas and commenting on others. Non-members have visibility of the proposed innovations to drive curiosity and interest to join the club. Additionaly, let us leverage the fact that people visiting an organization, be it for a week or just for an hour, have a different perspective compared to employees. Visitors can join innovation club and participate through an application on their smartphone.[1]
Moreover, the managed privacy strategy and other tools may be adopted for this club as well, aiming to de-risk the innovation process i.e. prevent social penalisation and unwanted "sticky finger" effects (social contamination) of the innovation ideas. For the more detailed description and comments on this tool please see the HACK: MINORITY REPORT: TOOLS TO OVERCOME THE INNOVATION DIVIDE here at MIX.
This idea encourages and drives individual involvement and fosters a permanent innovation ecology in an organization.[1].
IFS™ (OMX STO: IFS): This concept of mine was selected as the winning idea of the first IFS™ Innovation Award.
[1] WINNER OF IFS™ INNOVATION AWARD ANNOUNCED. IFS Press Release, Linkoping, Sweden, 10/15/2012.
I can see this as an App, a bit like (or attached to) Yammer, Microsoft's internal twitter like app.
Your idea reminds me about an Australian company(??) which had anonymous employee feedback near exits. Employees could leave comments, or ratings every day on issues and could rate how they were feeling on an ongoing basis... I really think this live ongoing rating system (with anonymous) options could provide valuable internal intelligence for managers. Especially since in our organisation, he who sees a problem gets responsibility to solve the problem - a cunning feedback control system.
Anonymity is important.
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Thanks for the comment, Richard. The managed privacy is not anonymity, but it preserves some of its advantages. In some cases we do not want to disclose our identity as innovators or commentators. The work with multiple nicknames enables to distinguish different commentators in the discussions. It also enables to disclose the identity in one case while still protecting the privacy in other concurrent cases, including rewarding.
In other words, it is about the depersonification of ideas and the discussions around them, but not in complete anonymity. Technology around it is just the enabler.
The strong presumption of the innovation management system is a strong position of the innovation officer - privacy protector at the C-level. People need to trust before they give their ideas. Clear rules. Simply the whole ecology around innovations needs proper care - curiosity, exclusivity, privacy, safety, trust, etc.
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