Developing a culture of innovation and idea sharing Harnessing collective thought

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Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

“ Good ideation is more than just about new ideas and the value those may drive. It’s also about an organisation’s desire to be innovative, and how this enhances the quality of the working environment for its employees, and the company’s reputation as innovators.”Steve DonaghyDirector of Programs, Business Innovation Centre, Europe

Developing a culture of innovation and idea sharing

Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

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Giving innovation life

Business strives for innovation. It’s the lifeblood for survival and growth. It’s how companies adapt, re-invent and create new products and services. The panacea for success. And like most significant goals, the answers often lie within.

The challenge is how to surface the answers, and once they’ve surfaced, managing them effectively, when at the same time, the day-to-day must be taken care of. It’s little wonder innovation is talked about as some magical, unattainable thing, and why fortunes are spent on external help. The reality is a little less magical, a lot more practical, and equally challenging. It’s one thing to talk about innovation. It’s another thing to do it.

Innovation involves the power of many. A key component is ideation – the creative process of generating, developing and communicating new ideas. Ideation creates value but is often dealt with in an overly complex fashion or without enough drive to ensure real success. Ideation is a simple concept: gather ideas towards a specified end goal from a selected audience; review, select and act. However, good ideation practices make all the difference, not just in the quality of the output, but in increasing customer engagement, boosting employee satisfaction, helping the business save and invigorating business development. Too frequently organisations fail to invest enough time and energy, sometimes paying lip-service, sometimes with real intent. Often with outcomes that are not as productive as they might otherwise be.

The open-ended desire to gather ideas without strong direction, executive sponsorship or appropriate funding, can so easily fail.

Effective ideation needs a robust process and a clear set of guiding principles. It’s supported as a way of doing business. It becomes a way of working and part of the innovation environment.

Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

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Developing the environment

Companies focus on idea generation for different reasons.

— It might be to feed the business pipeline, to enter a new market, or simply to cut costs.

— It might be to boost customer engagement through involving them in early stage new product development ideation, which is what Konica Minolta is now doing from within its Business Innovation Centres across the world.

— It could be to recruit the brightest and best by establishing an industry award, as Philips do with their annual student-entrepreneur innovation award.

— It might be to continually reinforce and support a

corporate purpose. Think Ecomagination, GE’s lens through which everyone works and contributes to reducing its environmental impact.

— It could be a combination of many reasons.

InvestThe key thing that all innovative companies have in common is that they invest in creating the right environment for collective idea generation.

This is about an organisation’s culture and its determination to continuously improve. It requires top-level buy-in and continuous drive, through good times and bad. It’s about mandating the innovation agenda.

Many studies have shown that it is those organisations that continue to drive the efforts into innovation during the downtimes, that come out of such times ahead of the competition.

Keep it simple The one other thing they have in common is simplicity. Ideation should be simple, but it’s sometimes hard to achieve. It requires discipline and single-mindedness. For instance, if your objective is to encourage a culture of good ideation where new ideas are implemented, then focus on that alone. Don’t be distracted by tools that try to link ideation into project management processes. Consider the ease of set-up, the costs involved and the processes involved. Easy to use and easy to start means it is more likely to happen and form part of your overall environment.

Konica Minolta’s Ideation Platform makes idea generation a simple task. It takes one minute to set up and makes it easy to gather, filter and bring ideas to life from around the world.

Understand the challenge aheadBefore embarking on good ideation, you first need to understand why you need to innovate, what’s the best means of gathering ideas, and what your innovation agenda is.

Our paper on Innovation Management and your Innovation Agenda is on the way.

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Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

How innovative are you?Many organisations will say they are innovative, perhaps more so than they truly are.

See how you compare to some of the world’s most innovative companies at: www.forbes.com/innovative-companies/listwww.fortune.com/2015/12/02/50-most-innovative-companies/www.fastcompany.com/most-innovative-companies

You need to understand if you are truly innovative.

Find out if anyone owns innovation in your company.

Ask your employees, partners, suppliers and customers for their views.

Is it measured? Why and how?

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1. Executive sponsorship2. The campaign3. The target audience4. Appropriate champions5. Resource allocation6. Activity, enjoyment and interaction7. Reward and recognition8. Investment in ideas9. Feedback and communication

Best practice ideation

Ideation is a simple process. You gather ideas towards a specfic goal, review them, select the most viable, then act accordingly. To do this effectively involves nine key steps.

Each step is essential and continuously enhances the real potential of developing a culture of innovation.

Developing a culture of innovation and idea sharing

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Executive sponsorship is central to success. It sets the agenda and creates the environment for success.

And like all effective engagement initiatives, sponsorship means more than agreeing to something in principle. It relies on communication, investment and goals.

1.1 CommunicationIt’s the responsibility of senior executives to share the vision for the company and why a culture of ideation is essential to get there. It indicates the company is serious and committed to making a real difference. It gives line managers the permission to free up their staff to get involved.

1.2 InvestmentResource must be allocated to make ideation work. Leaders, champions, decision makers, and team members need to be allocated and given time to drive change. They should be incentivised and rewarded for the difference they create. This must be visible to the whole company, indicating a clear statement of intent. And most of all, innovation activities must be treated as

In 2013 Konica Minolta launched Business Innovation Centres (BIC) across five global regions in response to intensified competition and rapid diversification of customer needs. By decentralising innovation, ICT experts are collaborating directly with clients, local start-ups, universities and partner firms to speed up the development of new services and solutions.

“ The BICs are all about changing technology and product-oriented companies into market-oriented companies.”

Mr Shoei Yamana - CEO Konica Minolta

part of the everyday core business, and not an extra or peripheral initiative – other operational needs must not get in the way; cater for the potential bandwidth increase and recruit specialised skills if size and budget allows.

1.3 Goal settingEstablishing measurable corporate strategic goals will help. It will demonstrate ideation is not a spare-time activity but a part of business as usual. Track progress and act accordingly; both successes and failures. Whilst rewarding success is key, recognising all ideas and activity, including those that don’t get implemented, will encourage your workforce (and allow you to measure some very interesting ideation stats regarding workforce effort to implementation value, number of ideas needed for success etc).

1. Executive sponsorship

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Campaigns are the bedrock of good ideation. They define the aim of activity, the specific objectives, and the parameters that will determine success.

2.1 Clarify the objectivesThink about wording the objectives clearly, as this will form the basis of the campaign. Be open and positive so as not to constrain innovative thinking. Don’t tell your audience how to think, rather set the tone for open, free thinking – the adage ‘that no idea is a bad idea’ holds true. Ideas shared, however far-fetched, may well generate further conversations and spark other ideas and thinking.

2.2 Measureable goalsAgree upfront with the executive sponsors what they are looking for: purpose and scale of outcomes.

Set a timeframe for your campaign. Be specific about needing outcome orientated ideas – tangible ideas with recognisable change. Avoid high level concepts that are too vague.

Be clear on the timescales and stages of the process. Time-boxing between gathering ideas, reviewing and selecting ensures ideation doesn’t drift, whilst reinforcing a culture of action-orientated innovation. You can always re-visit new ideas at a later stage.

2. The campaign

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Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

Feeling creative?Creativity can be deliberate or accidental, and can come from any source.

www.bbc.com/future/story/20140314-learn-to-be-creative

Creativity can’t be forced. If you’re not feeling creative, 2 minutes of activity in something non-creative is more likely to generate a refreshed creative mind than no activity at all or continuously slogging away at the creative task at hand.

Activities such as these can be fun to include in team events or workshops, may boost results, and will certainly help to continuously send the message that the organisation values creativity and innovation.

Make new connectionsTake an idea from one area and transfer it to another. The creativity is in spotting a new connection or relationship.

Trust your instinctsIf you have an intuitive belief in where the answers may lie, then follow it.

Suspend disbeliefThink of a problem from a new perspective.

Have courageIt’s easy to kill a new idea. Give it a chance to breathe. Encourage others to share your point of view.

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Start with the thought of ‘go wide.’ For instance, it might be a campaign where anyone could contribute, is public and therefore open to all employees. It might however be a campaign that will only mean something to some and so is closed to a specific audience. Regardless, ensure your audience spends time coming up with new ideas or reviewing others’ new ideas and feeding back. That act will likely create further innovation from the minds of those who otherwise might have never considered such thinking as part of their role. Create an organisation where everyone feels it is their job to think this way. Encourage it. At the very least you get more and more feedback on the new ideas being generated by some. But more likely you will be encouraging a workforce that develops their own ability to be more and more creative every day.

Executive sponsorship is one thing. Ensuring you have the appropriate champion for each goal of each campaign is essential.

How often have we seen champions who are so senior they do not have the time to prioritise or, alternatively, champions who are available and keen but not positioned to empower real change? You need, in your champion, both. Find the champion who is energetic about the objective, expert in the goals, can position the campaign and can also gain investment for change. (It may be, in smaller organisations, the executive sponsor, champion and review ‘team’ are one and the same person.) They must have this in their top priority list.

This person will need to have a good handle on the company and know what constitutes good ideation. They will understand the best audience to target; understand any security, image or PR considerations; understand the innovation environment; know how to message and get the best from participants; has the time to continuously interact and drive all of the above. An innovation champion must have strong experience in the business goal.

3. The target audience

4. Appropriate champions

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The executive sponsors set the mandate. They commit to company resources and the direction of the innovation culture. Management at a local level allocate the resources to make this a reality – people’s time.

This is far easier said than done and takes commitment.

Every organisation has the ‘day job’ and their ‘core business goals’ to consider. This is the ultimate test of an organisation’s ‘innovation DNA’. Is it part and parcel of your people’s time that they have freedom to consider new ideas, be creative, interact with others on such subjects? Or, as is often the case, is the activity of so-called ‘innovation’ considered to be something out-of-the-norm? Something extra, over-and-above ‘core business’? If it is the latter then the chances are you will struggle to create an innovative organisation.

Over and above the simple activity of crowdsourcing views on best ideas you are also creating a fun environment for your people to work (and play).

Often generating new ideas creates new and entertaining subject matters. Having your employees (and others) chat and share views on such subjects is an enjoyable and energising activity, that frequently breeds newer ideas. This is your innovation playtime. Enjoy it and its usefulness.

Keep the environment very open (where you can); encourage interaction; use peer reviews and ranking systems (be aware, in some countries work councils may take issue with such), chat streams; whatever your systems allow. Keep it simple so that all can see the views of the many. Allow your review teams to thereafter choose using such feedback and their own expert knowledge on what may be appropriate for selection and implementation.

5. Resource allocation

6.Activity, enjoyment and interaction

Good campaigns Vague campaigns

Clear objectives and tangible outputs: If objectives are vague, if there isn’t a target audience, or where simply getting in a room together may be easier, clarify if an ideation campaign is needed:

Process improvement Cost saving New business ideas New product or service development Product extensions New markets

Strategy diversification Sensitive issue resolution Target audience is too small

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Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

Rewarding consumers for their engagement with brands is nothing new. The principles of technology-enabled gamification have made it easy, and they are filtering into the workplace. Before moving to community-based platforms, Best Buy established Twelpforce – an army of 3,000 employees competing against each other to provide the best answer to customers’ technical questions via Twitter.

Cisco teaches social media skills to its employees and contractors through a multi-level training programme that lets learners advance through the ranks to obtain the ultimate title of social media “master”.

Gamification in the workplace

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Reward and recognition ensures audiences continue to contribute ideas. Recognising ideas is simply about publically acknowledging contributors, and thanking the individuals whose ideas are selected. Being thanked personally from the executive sponsor and champion makes sense. Use your internal channels wisely.

Rewarding doesn’t have to be financial. Indeed, it can set an unhealthy precedence. Simply seeing your ideas implemented is often sufficient.

Rewarding could simply be the public recognition via a town hall or team meeting. It might be more of a gesture – a team lunch, a family evening out, a certificate, attendance on a development course, etc. Rewards don’t need to be specified in the campaign brief, but clearly stating a good reward will encourage participation.

Having engaged the workforce or wider stakeholder audience, and achieved a positive interaction and some useful ideas, you need to act. Not only because they are good ideas and will deliver real business change, but to indicate that you value input. If you don’t, then you can’t expect your audience to get involved next time.

How much to invest will depend on how much has been planned and earmarked. However, getting to this isn’t an exact science and will require flexibility. You don’t know upfront what ideas you will encounter and therefore what and how much to invest.

The executive sponsor or champion will have a view on the value of potential change for any given campaign. This allows for an implementation budget of an appropriate scale.

If the quality of the feedback is so overwhelming and good such that the potential implementation costs outweigh the planned expectations, then a judgement call based on the business case will be required (which

is a very positive challenge to have).

9. Feedback and communication

This is a theme that runs through every step; encouragement reaps rewards.

Communication is the job of the campaign management team and demands a fine balance between being single-minded on the end goal whilst not stymying open minded and potentially risky contributions. Always communicate positively, with encouragement, and with the occasional steer if the focus drifts in the wrong direction. Sing loud and wide about the successes as you go, internally and externally.

7. Reward and recognition

8.Investment in ideas

Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

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Ideation isn’t rocket science. It should be a simple process, but all too often lacks commitment and effective management. It takes time to perfect and must be underpinned by a broader innovation agenda. Indeed, focusing on good ideation helps foster a good innovation culture, where the benefits of increased satisfaction, cost saving and business development become self-sustaining.

The nine steps may seem like common sense, but they are best practice rules. It’s what leading companies invest in and do as part of normal business, and why they are renowned for innovation.

1. Executive sponsorship

2. The campaign

3. The target audience

4. Appropriate champions

5. Resource allocation

6. Activity, enjoyment and interaction

7. Reward and recognition

8. Investment in ideas

9. Feedback and communication

Invest in these steps and you too will reap the rewards.

Keep an eye out for Konica Minolta’s paper on Innovation Management as we share some thoughts on our own innovation development approaches.

Conclusion

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Konica Minolta | Harnessing collective thought

Konica Minolta’s Ideation Platform makes it easy for organisations to gather, filter and bring ideas to life. It’s a simple platform for all innovation goals that enhances the power of collective thinking.

Targeted audiences connect and contribute to a specific campaign from any device. The ability to share, comment and ‘like’ ideas, promotes open dialogue and reinforces the sense of involvement and inclusion.

Liked ideas automatically filter to the surface, making it easier to focus on what’s worthy of being developed to the next level.

www.ideation-platform.eu

Konica Minolta Ideation Platform

Talk to us

Konica Minolta believes in the power of digital innovation to deliver better business and a better world for everyone. It’s why we focus on giving shape to ideas that create new value for people and society, and why we are defining the workplace of tomorrow.

Steve Donaghy, Director of Programs, Business Innovation Centre, Europesteve.donaghy@konicaminolta.euinnovation@konicaminolta.eu

© 2017 Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH

Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe GmbH,Europaallee 17,D-30855,Langenhagen,Germany

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