Report 103
A weekly newsletter on creativity, ideas, innovation and invention.

Tuesday, 24 August 2004
Issue 31

Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your weekly newsletter on Creativity, ideas, innovation and invention.

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

OPEN VERSUS CLOSED IDEA MANAGEMENT

There are basically two structures for idea management systems.

CLOSED IDEA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS are essentially suggestion box systems. Ideas are submitted into a box, via e-mail or otherwise. Only the person submitting the idea and the IdeaMaster (the person who manages the system) sees the idea until it is either evaluated or implemented. At this time, experts are usually brought into evaluate and implement.

OPEN IDEA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS are built so that submitted ideas are visible to everyone from the beginning. Moreover, most open idea management systems also allow collaboration of some kind. For example, Jenni – our idea management system - permits anyone in the organisation to add collaborative comments and feedback to ideas that have been submitted. In addition, Jenni allows all users to rate ideas on a scale of zero to five light-bulbs – five representing a brilliant idea and zero, a useless one.

There are also partially open systems. For example, several idea management solutions allow the person submitting an idea to invite other individuals to collaborate on her idea. However, only invitees may see and collaborate.

In many companies, the first step to idea management is an ad hoc closed system in which users submit ideas, via e-mail or in the form of printed documents, to an IdeaMaster who takes responsibility for reviewing and implementing ideas.

Indeed, closed systems do offer the advantage that such an ad hoc system is quick and inexpensive to set up. Over the long run, however, closed systems are inefficient, more costly to run and generally do not provide such high quality ideas as open systems.

Firstly, as anyone who has managed a closed idea management system will know, many people in an organisation can have similar ideas simultaneously. Most likely this is the result of some outside stimulus that similarly inspires people or a glaring flaw in the operations of the organisation – a flaw which staff are all anxious to fix.

In a closed system, the result will be the same idea being submitted over and over again, each time by a different person. In an organisation of several thousand people, this can lead to a huge amount of work for the IdeaMaster.

In a well designed open system, staff can see ideas and collaborate on ideas. Rather than resubmitting an idea they have already found on the system, most people will add their input to the idea. The result is not only fewer submissions of similar ideas, but the ideas submitted are of higher quality owing to feedback provided by numerous colleagues. (Recall also last week's article on groups being more creative than individuals – http://www.creativejeffrey.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20040817; from a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item.jhtml?id=4318&t=leadership&nl=y.)

Moreover, an open idea management system creates a brainstorming effect in which staff can see and be inspired by the ideas of their colleagues and, as a result, submit more and more creative ideas. The brainstorming effect – in an idea management system - has the added beneficial value in that it promotes a culture of innovation within an organisation.

An informal rating system – such as Jenni's light-bulb rating – should not be considered a formal evaluation tool. Jenni, and other quality products with a similar informal rating systems, inevitably provide a more powerful evaluation tool (See the article evaluating ideas in the 20 July 2004 issue of Report 103: http://www.creativejeffrey.com/report103/archive.php?issue_no=20040720).

However an informal rating system in an open idea management system provides two benefits. First, it fosters involvement in the system – further encouraging staff to read and submit ideas. Second, it provides an indicator, to the IdeaMaster, that an idea may be a hidden gem.

In some cases, management do not recognise an idea's potential. This is particularly the case when management are removed from some aspects of the business, such as the factory floor or retail outlets. If the IdeaMaster sees that an idea, that she thought had little value, receives a high light-bulb rating from colleagues – especially those who would be affected by the idea – she can and should opt to put the idea through a formal evaluation.

Hence, an open idea management system ensures that ideas with potential are highly likely to be evaluated. This is something that closed systems cannot do.

Clearly, an open idea management, although probably more expensive to implement than a closed system, will be more cost effective in the long run thanks to producing more and higher quality ideas, promoting an innovation culture and reducing the number of duplicated ideas submitted.

In this article, I have focused on our idea management web application: Jenni. However, it is clear that aspects of open and closed idea management systems are relevant with all quality idea management systems.

For more information about Jenni, please visit http://www.creativejeffrey.com/jenni/.

INTERNAL INNOVATION NETWORKS

Networking tools have become all the rage these days, with services like LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com), friendster (www.friendster.com) and ecademy (www.ecademy.com). These tools allow you to expand your network of contacts by exploiting the networks of the people in your network. (Incidentally, I belong to LinkedIn and Ecademy – feel free to add me to your network, but remind me that you know me via Report 103).

These networking tools are designed to help people make contacts with people in other organisations in order to expand their own businesses. But, if you have ever worked in a large organisation, you will know it is also necessary to create internal networks of contacts. And, if you want to contact someone you do not know, particularly a superior, the best way to do it is via a colleague who does know the target contact.

One of the advantages of an open idea management system (see article above) is that it allows users to create internal innovative networks of colleagues.

If you see that a colleague, whom you do not know, has been submitting interesting ideas to the idea management system, you can contact that colleague, compliment her on her innovative thinking (flattery is a great opening for establishing a friendly relationship!) and establish a professional relationship.

Internal innovation networks are useful to participants in three ways.

First: innovation networks allow people to create innovative teams for focusing on specific issues, such as brainstorming, developing new products and services or tackling problems.

Second: you can tap into your innovative network to solve specific problems. For instance, if you are in product development and you want some feedback on how clients might react to a new feature, your contact in sales would be a good place to start for initial feedback and ideas.

Third: if your contacts do not have the background necessary to help you solve a problem, it is nevertheless likely that one of their contacts does have the appropriate background.

Innovative networks also benefit the enterprise as a whole. Innovative networks allow individuals to readily tap into the cumulative innovative power of the entire enterprise. Moreover, by knowing who to contact in order to accomplish a particular task, employees can complete tasks faster and better.

For this reason, we have built an optional innovation networking module for Jenni idea management web application. The networking module, integrates with Jenni's existing Genius Directory (a listing of every user of Jenni together with information about each one).

The networking module allows every user to build innovation networks of colleagues, to see their contacts' innovation networks and use their contacts to develop new contacts. In theory, it gives every employee a route of contacts – usually just two or three – to every other employee.

Unlike most other networking tool, Jenni allows users to make public notes and private notes about each member of their network, such as “she is good at solving operational problems”, “he has great product ideas” and so on. Public notes are seen by everyone in the network. Private notes are available to your self. These are likely to be quirky reminders that help you identify a contact.

Interested? Let me know via the web, or ring me on my cell phone +32 478 549 428). We are keen to try out the networking module with clients like you.

USP – THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT INNOVATION FOR SMALL TO MEDIUM FIRMS

Many of the articles in this newsletter focus on big companies. Here is one for small start-ups and established companies!

Years ago, there was a saying: “no one ever got fired for buying from IBM.” The point being that IBM was such a big, well established and complete services company, that there was no risk in buying from them. They would not go bust, their products would work and they would provide support. That was great for IBM, but less than ideal for IBM's competitors.

It is particularly un-great for small start-ups which lack the global presence of a big company like IBM. Indeed, the only way a company can compete with the likes of IBM is by offering something that IBM cannot.

This, as everyone who has ever read a marketing book will know, is a unique selling point (USP): the unique feature of your business that makes you better than the competition; that makes you the best choice for prospective customers.

As big businesses are taking over so many sectors (software, retailing, processed food, professional services, etc), it is critical for small businesses to focus their creative energy on devising a unique selling point that is not only unique, but which will remain unique for some time to come. There is no point in establishing a USP that your competitors can copy over night.

When devising a USP, you should not focus on what is unique about your business now. Rather, you should focus on what you would like to be unique about your business. For example, I started a marketing communications business in the early 1990s. With the growing popularity of the Internet and world wide web in the mid 1990s, I decided we could go on being another good full services marketing communications company; or we could aim to be the country's best web and multimedia production company. I chose the latter. Although it meant initially losing some business, we soon became established as an Internet pioneer in Thailand, were frequently cited by the press, were featured on a popular IT television programme and created the business model that subsequent web development companies followed. We were even recognised internationally.

As you can see, I did not look for a USP in my existing business. Rather, I looked for an appealing and special USP and then reorganised my business so that the USP would become true for us.

You should do the same. Day dream. Think about where you want your company to go. Think about that article Fortune magazine will write about your company in five years' time: what will it be about?

Once the USP becomes clear in your mind and you are sure it will work, make it happen.

Then you need to communicate it as much as possible. When people think about your company, they should think about your USP. When customers want to benefit from your USP, they need to know your company is the only one that can do it for them.

Now if that is not worth your full creative thinking ability, I do not know what is.

Happy thinking

Jeffrey Baumgartner

 

 

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