The concept of “ideas” is a very broad one. If you run a company, someone could have an idea on how to better manage it. They may have an idea for a new product. They may have come up with an idea to improve customer engagement. There are many different forms of ideas. But what brings them all together is that they are valuable and have the potential to drive your company to the next level.
To capture the biggest amount of ideas, you need idea management software. This will allow you to capture all the different ideas in an organized way, while at the same time making sure that everybody is listened to. And the more you show your staff and customers that you are listening, the more ideas they will come up with. Once you have an idea, you need to make sure that it is handled properly as well. But first, you need to know how to make sure the collective intelligence of your staff and stakeholders is captured properly. Let’s take a look at 10 best practice ideas.
10 Top Tips
- Make sure you have innovation and idea management software in place, and that it is accessible to everybody, everywhere. This should be an online, cloud based program, therefore, so that people can enter their ideas when they are at work, but also from home or any other location that they are in when an idea strikes them.
- Make sure everybody is involved. Unfortunately, as much as organizations are trying to get rid of top down hierarchy, people don’t really trust these initiatives. Hence, you must make sure that people really know that you want to hear from them.
- Create proper conversations. Enable people to comment on ideas that have been submitted and express their views.
- Pull employees in rather than pushing them towards something. Make it attractive by offering incentives. Stay away from financial rewards, however.
- Have campaigns for targeted ideas. While there needs to be a space for ideas that come seemingly out of nowhere, you should also have a notion of a specific issue you want ideas about.
- Promote your idea management software whenever you can, to everybody.
- Use this opportunity to build team work and to engage your employees across the board. That on its own is an innovative idea.
- Always be transparent. Make sure people know what happens to their ideas, even if they won’t be implemented. And tell people how you made that decision.
- Make sure senior management leads by example. They should encourage their teams to use the software, and use it themselves.
- Recognize those who submit ideas, particularly any idea that is implemented, but also those that simply took part in the process.
The 10 steps above need to be repeated again and again. In so doing, they will quickly become part of your company culture, and you will quickly see your business grow.