The Key to Getting More Ideas for an Innovation Program

Why Do Ideas Matter?

According to research, 81% of respondents from digitally mature businesses consider innovation a strength of their company. Yet, there is a direct link between an innovation program's effectiveness and the frequency of ideas produced.

Without a steady flow of ideas, there is a far less likely chance of encountering an idea worth pursuing. Moreover, it becomes difficult to analyze individual ideas and determine which are worth pursuing. Besides, once you have created a culture of innovation where great ideas become a regularity, a snowball effect is very likely. 

So, how can you ensure your innovation program produces more ideas?

6 Tips to Create an Innovation Program that Works

1. Identify Innovation Goals

Before asking employees to generate ideas, they must understand the overarching goal of the organizations innovation program and strategy. The top drivers for innovation are improved customer experience, revenue growth, and product development. However, you also need to consider the feasibility and viability of innovations as well as the demand that exists for them in the market. Whether your company is seeking  for incremental, disruptive, or radical innovations, clear parameters will lead your employees to better outcomes. 

2. Encourage a Company-wide Buy-in

Company-wide buy-in can be fostered by actively including employees in the innovation process right from the start. Consider organizing concept competitions, innovation seminars, or brainstorming sessions which are open to all organizational levels. Provide venues or online resources where people can collaborate and submit ideas while maintaining accessibility and inclusivity.

Additionally, celebrating and acknowledging creative contributions will encourage employee involvement. Be sure to maintain open lines of communication so that team members are confident enough to offer suggestions and criticism without worrying about backlash.

Encouraging a bottom-up approach to innovation and appreciating different viewpoints will help you foster a sense of pride and excitement throughout the entire organization.

3. Make Innovation Accessible

Innovation needs to be accessible if you want intrapreneurs to be creative. A scalable and data-driven innovation program not only sets the framework and important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs but also guides employees through the process. Crucially, you must adopt a mindset in which employees are able to work on ideas without disruption or having to seek approval from multiple senior figures before starting out.

4. Evaluate Ideas Stringently While Supporting Intrapreneurs

The key to successful innovation revolves around identifying and killing bad ideas right away. An error culture requires fairness, feedback, and trust to ensure that all ideas are thoroughly scrutinized regardless of who presented them. While it’s great to be harsh on ideas, there should be no negativity towards the employee. Otherwise, they will stop innovating and contributing to developing new solutions. 

5. Collaborate

If you wish to acquire more ideas, you must be open to different ways of generating them. Collaboration can be a very helpful mechanism. For starters, employees can bounce ideas off of each other or build upon the positive elements of a previous innovation that didn’t quite work. From an external perspective, several companies have also shown that actively collaborating with customers can be a great option, as well as cross-corporate collaborations between companies.

6. Be Open to Failure

Embracing failure as part of the innovation journey is essential for fostering a culture of continuous improvement and resilience. Take, for example, the story of James Dyson, who famously created over 5,000 prototypes before successfully inventing the bagless vacuum cleaner. Despite numerous setbacks, each one of his iterations provided valuable insights that eventually led to his breakthrough innovation.

By sharing such examples of perseverance and resilience in the face of failure, organizations can inspire employees to persist in their creative pursuits, knowing that each setback brings them one step closer to success.