How to Choose the Best Employee-Driven Ideas to Invest in

1. Contextuality

While taking calculated risks in innovation is an important feature of an innovation culture, an idea can only evolve into a great idea if it also fits into the context of your business. There are plenty of cases where innovations have failed solely because they do not align with the company’s vision or overall strategy. As such, all innovators across the company must be aware and internalize your mission statement and understand the company’s position within the market. 

Analyzing contextuality should be at the top of your agenda when assessing employee-driven ideas. Ideas that are not aligned with the firm’s objectives run the risk of alienating audiences and distracting teams from areas where they thrive. Worse still, when following up on an idea that does not have a link to what you do, your employees may lack the skills and experience to see the vision materialize into a success story.

2. Viability

Studies show that up to 19 out of 20 product innovations fail. While there are many reasons for potential failure, a lack of long-term viability is one of the most common problems. An idea is only worth an investment of time, money, and resources if it can be shown to deliver profitability and value to the business.

3. Feasibility

It’s one thing to think of an idea that appears excellent in theory. But you also need to consider the technical possibility of transforming this idea into an actual product or service. The realities of financial and logistical limitations must be taken into account. Otherwise, you may fall into the trap of investing resources into a project that cannot reach completion or will be delayed until competitors have launched better solutions. And when analyzing feasibility becomes a key part of the early phases of your strategy, your ability to select ideas that can actively be developed will improve.

4. Desirability

Finally, it’s important to remember that other aspects will be rendered redundant if nobody is interested in the product or service. Therefore, analyzing the market desire and demand will be essential when determining which ideas are worth pursuing. 

Here it is crucial to identify early on what problem the product aims to solve and whether potential customers do in fact face the same problem. This can for example be determined by encouraging innovators to engage in problem interviews.

Finally, Who Should Make the Decisions?

Using the above blueprint will put you on the right path, but the decisions will still rely on decision-makers and leaders in your organization. While you don’t want employees to feel like they have to jump through multiple hoops just to have their voice heard, you will want several steps in place to ensure that investing in your ideas is worthwhile and that so-called 'zombie ideas' are avoided at all costs.

A helpful tip is to put together a committee including different leaders across the organization e.g. the chief strategy officer, data officer, director, and head of innovation, to evaluate incoming ideas based on the above criteria. Depending on the specific needs of your organization, you can assign different degrees of importance to the criteria. When starting out, a low threshold is advised. As more ideas are presented, you can increase the threshold so that the quality of the innovations you pursue will improve.