CHAPTER 3

Idea Collection (Don’t Let the Good Ones Go)

Staff members should be coming up with ideas on an ongoing basis. There is not a creative season, where ideas flourish for only a part of the year. Rather, the ideas should be flowing like water.

And the ideas are continually flowing. Human beings are creative individuals by nature. As children, we are always asking “why?” and continuously trying new things. When my son was four years old, the sun was still out, but the moon was also visible in the sky. He turned to me and asked why the moon was out during the day. I didn’t really know the answer. I tried my best to explain the scientific reason for reflection of the sunrays, but by the time I had considered and delivered an answer, his mind had wandered to another curiosity. As adults, we should still seek out our curious side.

In the workforce, there is a tendency toward pushing this creativity toward a certain goal: making a widget, writing a software program, filing, and so on. But the simplest day-to-day tasks require creativity. How to get to work and how to get home can cause people to adapt. Buses can be early or late. Car accidents can occur on the road. Bike lanes can be blocked by nature. In each case, human beings need to find creative ways to adapt on a random basis.

On the job, workers get sick or leave the company. Priorities of senior management change. Nature, such as snow storms or tornados, may cause havoc on what should be a normal workday. Shipments of materials may be delayed. The human mind is often being asked to adapt and be creative at work, even in the most mundane jobs.

Early in my career, I was working at a start-up that had just sold its largest supply of fingerprint scanners to a company with its headquarters in New York. A celebration was held later that day in the office. As we were celebrating, the president got a phone call. The truck delivering the scanners veered off the road and into a water-filled ditch. Most of the scanners were rendered useless! The celebration was short-lived since no one had filed insurance on the delivery. We all adapted though.

Figure 3.1 Infectious innovation process funnel

So staff members are, for the most part, often called on for creative solutions to problems, which are sometimes random and sometimes predictable.

In Chapter 2, there were many ideas on how to turn that creativity into business innovation ideas. What happens, however, at many companies is that many employees have ideas. Some of these ideas are complex, while some are simple. Either simple or complex ideas could lead to a dramatic increase of revenues. Senior management, however, needs to know about them, or they will be lost.

In order to ensure ideas are captured, this chapter discusses how to collect the ideas, which is the top rung of our Infectious Innovation Process (see Figure 3.1).

The Twenty-First-Century Suggestion Box

In the twentieth century, employees were encouraged to submit their ideas for improving the company into a suggestion box. They would write down their idea on paper, and then place it into the suggestion box, which was often locked to help contributors to stay anonymous. That is, no one could follow them, open the box, and read their suggestion without the contributor knowing.

I have had clients that continue to have a similar suggestion box well into the twenty-first century. It is placed near the elevator or stairs so that it is clearly visible to those who wish to submit an idea. Those clients, however, are few and far between. The suggestion box has mostly been replaced by one of the following methods to collect ideas.

Electronic Collection

Every large business, and pretty well every small and medium-sized business, has collected large amounts of information on many topics, and has structures in place to store and retrieve information of many types. As a result, there are often people already involved with the company’s information management. Adding a structure for ideas on business innovation is a natural progression to a business’s information management structure, and selecting the people to oversee the collection is usually a straightforward process.

An electronic collection of employee ideas on business innovation has many advantages. It allows for employees from any office to contribute, regardless of the location of the employee. Another advantage is that employees can elect to contribute anonymously or with credit. Similarly, an electronic collection system allows online sharing to encourage augmentation and improvement of ideas. When two employees come up with similar ideas, an electronic collection system can time-stamp ideas, so incentives can be handed out to the original submission. Similarly, an electronic system could be upgraded to advise submitters when similar ideas have been submitted in the past, thus avoiding duplication of ideas.

Innovation Contests

Many companies hold contests where employees can submit ideas to help the company innovate. A deadline is chosen for all employees to present ideas by, and employees are advised they may submit ideas either as individuals or as teams. Sometimes, there are guidelines in place, such as minimum revenue targets.

An advantage of this type of collection mechanism is that there is often a format for submissions, which makes it easier for the competition committee to compare ideas. Another advantage is that there is no need for constant reminders to people to submit ideas. This is usually an annual event that allows people to focus for a short time, thus internal marketing of the innovation campaign is restricted in length of time.

This is particularly useful where businesses have a large base of employees who have been with the company for a long time. There is often a history of management reportedly not listening to employee ideas, so employees are not up for a continual submission of ideas. Once a year seems ideal for the ones that still want to share their ideas, no matter how jaded they have become.

A disadvantage of this collection mechanism is that lightning may strike at any time. Often, a week or two after the deadline, employees will have great ideas that have to wait for the next contest. Another disadvantage is that employees are not encouraged the rest of the year to come up with revenue-increasing innovations.

Hackathon

Having been involved with computer software since I joined the Carleton University High School Computer Science Club in 1977, I have heard hacking used in many areas of software. Predominantly there are two meanings of hacking. The first commonly accepted definition of hacking is to break into a secure environment with software. This was popularized in 1984 in the movie War Games where Matthew Broderick was able to break into the U.S. defense systems when he thought he had found a new video game. A second commonly accepted definition of hacking is to create inelegant, inefficient software that does the job it’s intended to.

A hackathon is based on the second definition, namely creating an inelegant and inefficient software solution. Hackathons in businesses can last anywhere from a day to a week. The intention of a hackathon is to gather a group of software development staff (which may include coders, project managers, product managers, etc.) to create a quick and dirty solution that can lead to business innovation for the company. Similar to a jam session among musicians, different staff members will throw out ideas, and coders will try to create quick, often inelegant, solutions to see what’s possible.

As different ideas are discussed and experimented with, business innovation may occur. An advantage of this method to collect ideas is that there are many collaborators together at once to add synergy to the discussion. Another advantage is that it often results in a working, although preliminary, prototype.

A disadvantage of this method for idea collection is that it is more costly for non-software companies. This, however, can be quite effective if a non-software company is committed to the prototyping of a new product in a short period of time, and will invest the money in various resources. An example would be a beverage company that is looking for new product ideas. If they invest in a wide arrangement of possible ingredients, and in a large assortment of different packaging ideas, they could “hack” out a new product idea in a short period of time.

Innovation Brainstorming Sessions

Some companies like to gather various subsets of employees every so often to sit down and generate new product and service ideas for the company. A facilitator will be chosen to help the assembled staff to generate and document their ideas. The ideas may be recorded on handwritten sheets, a computer, a Smart board or a recording device (video or audio). When this is a company’s strategy to collect ideas for business innovation, there are normally several subsets of staff gathered, and all the ideas are collected and entered into an information management structure that may or may not be accessible to all employees.

An advantage of this technique is that everyone, in theory, has the right to speak up and present their idea. It is especially useful if employees have individually gone through the steps in Chapter 2 first. There is often a synergy that occurs when one person presents an idea, and others are encouraged to add on to it.

A disadvantage of this technique may be team dynamics. Although everyone is encouraged to speak, outgoing people may take much of the discussion, whereas a creative person in the corner may not want to present an idea in a group setting. The person may fear their idea is not good enough or worth considering in a group setting, but would otherwise contribute to an electronic bulletin board.

Another disadvantage of this technique is that this often occurs no more than once a year.

Employees may come up with dramatic revenue-improvement business innovation ideas at any time. If employees are following the steps suggested in Chapter 2, they will be exercising their business innovation creativity muscles on a weekly basis. So an electronic collection of ideas should always be available to capture these ideas. In order to enhance the electronic collection of ideas, the last three collection methods (innovation contests, hackathons, and innovation meetings ) should be added to the mix to improve the ideas.

Incentives

Incentives are not compulsory in order to collect employee ideas. Many employees will gladly offer their ideas and will have no problem sharing them with colleagues. Most organizations believe that management, in particular, should be continually looking to raise the bar within the company. As a result, they should be continually submitting ideas for growth.

If ideas are being collected through brainstorming sessions, it is rare that people expect a prize or reward for contributing ideas. With an innovation contest, however, expectations are much higher for some sort of prize.

Financial Incentives

Financial incentives may be offered in a number of ways. There could be a fixed or variable award made to the person or people who contributed to an idea that is followed and has an effect on the bottom line. A decision should be made and publicized on what happens when more than one person submits the same profitable idea. Will the first person to submit the idea be awarded the incentive? Will anyone who submitted the idea be awarded the incentive? Or will the incentive be shared among all contributors with the same idea?

For example, if an incentive of $1,000 is given to all ideas that make it to the revenue-generating or cost-cutting phase and, let’s say, four people submitted the same idea, then, either the first person to submit it wins $1,000 or all four of them win $1,000 each. Or the $1,000 is split among the four, and each submitter would receive $250.

The size of the incentive may be fixed or variable. There could be a decision to give out a fixed amount no matter what the size of the innovation. Or, there could be an increasing scale of incentive based on the effect of the innovation.

The downside of financial incentives is that there may be less sharing of ideas. That is, if an employee feels they have a good idea, and there is an incentive on the line, they may be less inclined to discuss the idea with others before submitting the idea. This lack of sharing may cause dilution of the idea.

I ventured on my own in 2001. At the time, I met with many other local entrepreneurs and would discuss investors. Some of the “vulture capitalists,” as they were called by less respectful entrepreneurs, would only invest in a young company if they could get a large percentage of the company. Some entrepreneurs were very skeptical, while others encouraged the investment. A typical question asked in entrepreneur circles is, “Would you rather own 100 percent of a million dollar company, or 20 percent of a billion dollar company?”

While many entrepreneurs appreciate outside investment for growth, internal idea contributors should be shown the value of sharing their idea to strengthen its value. Would they rather win 50 percent of the incentive for a strong idea, or 100 percent of no incentive for a not-as-strong idea?

Nonfinancial Incentives

Over the years, my clients have offered numerous nonfinancial incentives for superior performance. These ideas could be used as well as financial incentives for innovative ideas that have an effect on the bottom line of the company.

One of my clients reserved parking spots close to the building for special occasions. Several of my clients recognize outstanding performers at department assemblies or all-staff meetings. Other clients recognize outstanding performers in a company newsletter. One company I worked at early in my career gave out necklaces with carrots on them for all team members on projects that were successful. On the first day of each month, everyone with carrots would parade around the office with all the carrots they had accumulated over the years. Any of these incentives could be used as incentives for winners of innovation contests, or for employees who had submitted ideas that turned into profit-increasing products, services, or processes.

Raising Hope

As innovation becomes more a piece of the fabric of many successful organizations, there are more and more opportunities for employees to submit ideas on innovation. With increasing amounts of opportunity, there may be increasing frustration for many employees that their fantastic ideas are not being heard.

The success of the Infectious Innovation Process depends on ideas continually being contributed. This will not happen if all employees feel jaded rather than hopeful.

Some business leaders are more passionate about hope than others. Frank O’Dea is a serial entrepreneur who has founded several successful organizations in different industries. When you see premium coffee shops on every major street corner, it’s hard to believe there was ever a time when premium coffee shops were few and far between. In 1975, however, there was no premium coffee industry in Canada, until Frank O’Dea created one with his chain of Second Cup stores.

After creating an industry that became successful internationally (with stores in 13 countries), Frank then created an international paper shredding industry with his second successful business, Proshred.

When I interviewed Frank for a blog with Fast Company magazine, he mentioned that the success of any organization comes down to hope, vision, and action. He felt it is absolutely imperative that staff members at all levels of an organization have hope in the company’s future, and that all staff members are aware of and embrace the organization’s vision statement. Action will then follow if success is to be had.

Hope alone doesn’t fill the suggestion box. If the number of ideas being submitted is dwindling, an organization might want to consider switching up idea collection mechanisms. Nothing gets the creative juices flowing more than a little change in routine.

If the twenty-first-century suggestion box is drying up, gather cross functional teams for some innovation brainstorming sessions. Or hold an innovation contest to limit the time that people are expected to think about ideas for new products, services, or processes. It’s also possible to use different schemes with different divisions or locations. Have the Chicago office run an innovation contest while the New York office has innovation brainstorming sessions. If different techniques are being used throughout the organization, then the ideas should be recorded with the source. Did it come from a suggestion box, innovation contest, brainstorming session, or a hackathon? By collecting this information with the ideas, an organization can determine if some collection mechanisms are more, or less, successful than other mechanisms.

Remote and Colocated Offices

Many employees these days work from home offices or work in departments that are located in several cities and/or countries. Collecting ideas from such work environments presents its own problems.

Technology exists to help the collection of ideas from every location in the world, but it does not necessarily enable the collection of ideas if staff are unfamiliar with or unaware of it.

Electronic Collection

This is probably the most straightforward mechanism to collect ideas from remote and colocated offices. An e-mail is typically sent out that lets employees know the process for submitting ideas. Remote and colocated staff usually have access to digital repositories, but this needs to be verified. When ideas are generated, the remote and colocated staff submit their ideas to the digital repository.

Innovation Contest

This is also a fairly straightforward method to collect ideas from employees working in remote and colocated offices. Rules of the contest are usually sent out, and they will tell the employees how and where to submit their ideas online. As long as the remote and colocated staff have access to the necessary repositories, ideas may be submitted to the aforementioned repository when generated.

Hackathon

This collection method can work for hackathons of software solutions, but the organization’s technology needs to be more advanced. Instead of just submitting ideas, remote and colocated employees will have to be able to work with ideas in progress as software is created and modified in real time. Two-way communication is needed, and audio-visual feeds are recommended to see what is happening at headquarters while the hackathon is in progress.

If the hackathon is intended to create prototypes for hardware solutions or other tangible goods, such as beverages, it is extremely hard to include remote and colocated workers. The organization is much better off having all employees in the same boardroom or lab to hack out a new innovation.

Innovation Brainstorming Session

This collection mechanism can work for remote and colocated employees, but it will not be as effective if the employees are not all in the same location. There can either be an audio-visual feed connecting the participants, or there can be textual software that allows anyone to type into the conversation. In the case of an audio-visual feed, there needs to be a master of ceremonies who directs the conversation coming from multiple locations. The video feed should be fixed on the main boardroom where the brainstorming session is taking place, so everyone can see the list of ideas as they are contributed.

In the case of a textual software solution, all employees can connect to one piece of software in a central location. Employees communicate purely through the written word. The conversation consists of people typing in their sentences. All participants can see everything that is typed in. Usually there is a moderator collecting the ideas, and the moderator will direct the conversation as needed. An advantage of this solution is that the textual software allows all participants to download the entire conversation once complete.

Relevance is the New Black

Innovations that capture emotion may remain popular for a long time.

My first trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, was in 1975 when the World was much smaller, and so was I. There was a Magic Kingdom with a huge castle and clean streets. My parents purchased a variety of tickets with different values, A to E. A trip on the stagecoach was considered an A ticket, while a trip on a thrill ride like Space Mountain required an E ticket.

When I went back in 1982 as a university student, the World had grown to two theme parks. The adventure was no longer a single-day event as there was too much to do.

By the time my son was born, the World had grown to four theme parks. Instead of buying tickets of different value, there was a general admission fee that would get you on all rides.

I went back in 2017 when my son was working there, and I was surprised to see some of the same rides that were there in 1975: the Dumbo ride, the Haunted Mansion, It’s a Small World, Pirates of the Caribbean, Space Mountain, and several more rides continue to entertain children of all ages.

If innovations connect with people’s emotions, then they can endure for 40 plus years.

In addition to tapping into customers’ emotions, Disney has been able to package its value in different ways. The Pirates of the Caribbean ride had been quite popular when the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl was filmed. The success of the movie created more demand for people to go on the ride. So the innovations of the ride and the movie worked together to exponentially multiply the interest in both the movie and the theme park attraction.

In a similar vein, visitors to the Hollywood Studios are entertained by stars of Disney Junior television shows. This causes many families to investigate Disney Junior television shows when they return from their vacation. Similarly, the success of these shows creates more demand for families to visit Hollywood Studios.

Disney has been able to find cross functional methods of developing new products and services that feed off current products and services. They have proven that in the world of innovation, relevance is the new black.

With regard to relevance and the movie business, many business people were probably surprised to see Jeff Bezos, the CEO and founder of Amazon, at the Oscars in February 2017. Amazon rose to fame as an online retailer of all things, including movies. Along the way, Amazon recognized the movie industry had changed with the advent of the Internet, and previous antitrust laws were no longer relevant.

In the mid-twentieth century, there were three major components of the movie industry: content provider, distributors, and exhibitors. Movies would be produced by the content provider, distributed by a movie distributor, and then exhibited in a movie theater. The big five studios at the time saw the benefit of controlling all three links in the chain. They could control the movies they were distributing and they could control which movies were being exhibited in their theaters. The big studios loved the arrangement, but the U.S. government and small studios felt it was not fair.

In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled against the big five studios and told them they could no longer own movie theaters. This opened up competition in the movie industry, and allowed smaller studios a chance at having their movies seen.

When the Internet came along, the content provider, distributor, and exhibitor chain became less distinctive. There were lots of people producing movies, but the Internet allowed websites to exhibit the movies without a distributor. To further fog the field, the television industry worked in a different manner. Large networks would typically be the content provider and would show network-produced movies exclusively on their own network. Cable channels such as the Home Box Office (HBO) were producing and exhibiting their own movies and television shows.

Hence, with the Internet, online retailers became exhibitors with video streaming services. The problem for regulators was that the Hollywood Antitrust Case of 1948 prohibited content providers from being exhibitors, while television content providers were also exhibitors. Should video streaming follow movie rules or television rules?

As online video rentals became mainstream with Netflix, there was soon a comparison between Netflix and HBO. Who had more subscribers? Who had more revenues? In the business world, the online video rental providers were seen more as television exhibitors than movie exhibitors.

This opened the path for other content providers to become exhibitors. Netflix started producing its own content and showing it to subscribers. The model was successful globally, and other competitors got into the market, which brings us to Amazon.

Amazon started a video streaming service, and then decided to also become a content provider and distributor. It distributed Manchester by the Sea, starring Casey Affleck, and an Iranian thriller, The Salesman, both of which won Academy Awards in 2017. This made Amazon the first video streaming service to win an Oscar. In 2016, it picked up several Emmys for its television series Transparent.

Are there areas for new products and services in your organization that are relevant to current products and services your organization is offering to its customers? Can you think of ways to stimulate more interest in current products by adding relevant products and services?

Not many organizations are in the theme park and movie business, but many organizations may use this technique to grow. Consider your organization’s main strengths, and then dream up new products and services to feed off these strengths.

Take out a piece of loose leaf paper and make a list of your company’s strengths. For each strength, add two or three possible relevant products and services that may appear. Add these thoughts to your collection mechanism.

Open Collection Mechanisms

There are many examples of modern idea generation and collection mechanisms that are used for purposes beyond one organization’s desire to create new products and services. Hackathons, in particular, are being used to allow software designers to express their creativity, often for a specific purpose.

There is an event called “Music Hack Day” that brings together those interested in innovating software and hardware involved in music productions. It has been held nine times since 2009. Similarly, there are “Science Hack Days,” “Legal Tech Hack Days,” “Health Tech Hack Days,” and many other hack days dedicated to specific purposes. The number continues to grow.

These hack days are usually dedicated to a collection of software engineers who want to use their creativity to see where it will take them. They are grouped with other interested parties, such as practitioners (e.g., musicians) and policy makers where applicable.

As I am writing this, a local Hacking Health event is taking place that brings together software engineers, health care practitioners, and policy makers in an effort to create health technology innovations.

How can these open hack days help your organization? There are several ways. Because it brings together different members of a specific community, a hack day allows your software developers to hear real-world problems and meet policy makers in a somewhat informal setting. Second, it allows your staff to find out what other innovations are being looked into. This can be used to feed ideas into your own Infectious Innovation Process funnel. Third, it allows your organization to collect ideas from other creative individuals who may have great ideas but no mechanism to turn those ideas into new products or services.

The downside of all these hack days is that they are usually held during off-work hours, so getting people to attend may be a challenge.

Summary

Twenty-first-century Suggestion Box

Incentives

Raising Hope

Remote and Colocated offices

Relevance is the New Black

Open Collection Mechanisms