Companies must strive to be innovative in order to maintain a competitive advantage over others in the same or similar field. Propelling a company forward takes more than just great ideas, it requires an innovation strategy to ensure the right ideas are identified, developed and implemented quickly and efficiently.
Innovation within an organization cannot be achieved on an individual level – it is a collective process that requires planning, goals, collaborative creativity and teamwork. Whether it’s finding a solution to a problem, improving a service or developing a new product, it’s crucial that you establish an innovation process model if you want results.
The Bain Innovation Performance survey (2013) found that organizations that use formal innovation programs not only outperform as it relates to daily operational effectiveness but also grow at a faster rate than companies without structured management processes in place. Innovation management processes will help you set objectives and deadlines, keep track of ideas, assign objective ownership, create idea campaigns, find, evaluate, test and effectively implement the best innovation ideas.
Your organization’s innovation management processes will dictate your ability to innovate. Here are 3 tips to help you create innovation management mechanisms tailored to your needs.
Tip #1 – Use your innovation management software to your advantage: make it your system of record for all innovation activity
Your organization should establish a policy that no one can work on or even consider an idea unless it is first recorded in your innovation management system.
This should be an essential requirement since great ideas go often unnoticed or forgotten. By ensuring your employees enter an idea in the organization’s idea management system, you will be able to identify which ideas are worth exploring and developing.
We’ve all heard of company that had thought of the next great invention but never acted on it… only to let a startup or another company snatch up the idea and experience overwhelming success. Don’t let this happen to your organization. Ideas should be stored in a safe place so they can grow and you can track them and report on them.
Tip #2 – Plan for continuous campaigns and activity based on different focus areas and diversity & inclusion attributes
Recruit as many challenge owners as you can to plan and launch new crowdsourced innovation campaigns. Some of these challenges can focus on disruptive innovation while others can help you achieve incremental improvements.
Some diversity and inclusion idea campaigns can have the goal of increasing employee engagement or improving the company’s innovation culture. Crowdsourcing innovation ideas among your employees is one of the most effective ways for a company to build a sustainable competitive edge. It should be part of your overall innovation management processes and strategy.
Software such as Planbox offers easy-to-use event management and contest tools that empowers you to plan various business innovation challenges. It has been proven that organizations with engaged employees actually perform better than those who don’t by 202%. Employees that are engaged in the company’s innovation strategy will lead your organization to a higher rate of success on every initiative they take on.
Tip #3 – Streamline, automate and eliminate administrative processes as much as possible
Innovation management systems include an array of advanced search, AI, automatically triggered business rules and integration automation capabilities. Your innovation and IT teams should plan on leveraging these features to eliminate any administrative and repetitive tasks that can be automated by the system. The automation of recurring or routine tasks will allow you to spend more time on identifying the best ideas and experimentation.
It’s highly recommended that you automate and streamline your innovation management processes in a phased approach. Do not attempt to do it all and rollout a new system on day one as you may face too many unanticipated obstacles and issues that are not easily mitigated.
To sum it up…
In a nutshell, if you want to implement effective innovation management processes within your organization, there are 3 things you must take into account. First, you need to ensure that all your employees, customers, business partners and anyone else who participates in an innovation activity or has suggestions enter all ideas in your innovation management software. This will ensure the next great idea will not go unnoticed during the idea discovery and development phases.
Second, you should plan for continuous campaigns and activities based on different focus areas and diversity attributes. The more eyes you have on a product, process or service, the better you can improve it. This will also increase employee engagement, which will reflect in your company’s overall performance.
Finally, automate administrative processes as much as possible to eliminate recurring tasks for you and your team. This will allow you to focus on identifying, developing and testing the most promising ideas.
Managing a full cycle innovation process does come with its set of difficulties. Most organizations face these challenges regularly. With the right innovation management strategy, a collaborative team effort and innovation management software that meets your needs, you can reach your goals with overwhelming success.
