The first key of success when wanting to capture everyone’s innovative ideas is to establish the space where the open innovation process will take place and where it will flourish. This space needs to be safe, transparent and promoted. It needs to be easily accessible and enable collaboration from everyone.
The second key of success is to ensure open innovation management within the company by structuring meetings on a daily or regular basis through communities of practice or events such as hackathons. Your activities can also come to life outside the company as within the framework of innovation labs. In reality, the spectrum of business practices that open up in the innovation process is wide. Some companies may want to connect widely to external sources, others will do their own research and some will acquire most of their technology from outside their walls.
The third key of success consists of identifying different topics that will guide the generation of ideas. These subjects should be clear, precise and of interest to whomever is generating ideas. Consider the following questions when thinking about topics :
What do the engagement surveys reveal as shortcomings in the way we work ?
What are the concerns of my colleagues ?
What are the priorities of my organization ?
What behaviors do you wish to develop ?
The fourth and final key of success to structure your open innovation is to identify the different participants that will become your innovators. You may include people from one department, multiples departments or even people from outside your organization.
The trick is to start small but be convincing.
Several innovation tools force participants to complete long forms. Others may prefer not to collect technological innovation ideas.
All of these barriers can discourage many people and miss good opportunities.
Several technological tools offer you to complete challenges to collect ideas. This is the case with crowdsourcing tools or ideas forums. They allow voting, classifying ideas and collecting comments.
Interesting at first, but beware. All your colleagues lose interest in the process if it does not lead to concrete results.
Open innovation seeks to facilitate collaboration between individuals who would not otherwise have the opportunity to exchange ideas with each other. Beware of those who would like to recreate organizational silos in your innovation tool.
Having more people around the table is an opportunity to invite all these individuals to play a role in the process.
Some will be comfortable coming up with new ideas, others will prefer to add to a colleague’s perspective on an idea, and finally, some will be key players in the implementation of ideas.
Beyond the number of ideas, the trap is not understanding the different roles and responsibilities that surround an open innovation process.
