Showing posts with label employee innovation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label employee innovation. Show all posts

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Employee co-creation: an elevator pitch


Employee CO-CREATION is an act of innovating with the help of talent which is primarily NOT employed as INNOVATORS in your enterprise.

Be it the culture, the education, the upbringing or the personal interest - sheer DIVERSITY of talent available within the enterprise has huge untapped potential, and this latent talent is more than willing to collaborate and make a difference for the enterprise.

We are used to executing the given task as a project, where we apply control and a kind of PUSH to get things done. When it comes to creativity, the exact opposite works. Co-creation works on the principles of a PULL, where one creates a right challenge and puts in a right incentive for someone to provide the solution. The solvers (employees or non employees) are NOT hard pressed to deliver; in fact it is a voluntary act on their side, is done with far more willingness, with a passion to make a difference, and for intellectual satisfaction.

Today innovation is no longer a geek thing happening somewhere behind the closed doors. Now every individual gets excited by a new idea, and is in search of an avenue to share it. Small could be the idea, but the pride it delivers remain high.

‘But in our business we don’t need to innovate a lot’ is fast becoming the thought from the previous decade. Fundamental reason for this shift is the emerging knowledge from WITHIN which tells the enterprises that innovation has given them good returns, dollars has been made or dollars has been saved, brand has a better positioning and employee morale has seen a boost. Best part is - these benefits come from small, incremental and continuous innovation, not from a rare path breaking one.

Enterprises are deriving several ways to leverage this newly discovered POWER OF COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION. Be it through an innovation competition, seeking new service lines to enhance the revenue, cost cutting, productivity improvement, employee satisfaction & retention, for co-creating with customers or even for a latest trend around corporate social responsibility (CSR). The list ends only where the imagination ends!

Employee co-creation is one of those few LOW hanging phenomenon where it’s a WIN-WIN for both employers and employees.

ideaken enables enterprises when they need to collaborate to innovate with employees, and optionally with customers, research vendors, academia or with the global pool of talent. Enterprises can run ideaken platform with their own branding accessible only to their employees, and optionally and selectively open up to outside world.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Why won’t Joe solve my problem?


You might assign the problem to someone, but chances of you asking Joe is real slim.

You may have estimated the effort this solution might require, some of that already used up, but you may not know when you will get a solution or if you will get a solution.  You have a bad problem in hand, but worse is Joe who has a solution for your problem won’t solve it for you.

Here is why - Joe works for a different division!  Joe won’t solve it for you because you won’t ask him, and sure enough Joe won’t get to know that you have such a problem.

Is it possible to find how much an elastic band will stretch without actually stretching it?  Probably yes, a good guess could get you close enough.

Is it possible to find out by how much harder an employee can work for you? May be yes, at least you would know the limitations & boundaries.

But is it possible to find out what your people can solve for you in addition to the work you pay them for? Bit tough, may be you can’t.

In an attempt to leverage this untapped potential - enterprises are now creating a two way specialized pipe within the enterprise, for example a pipe for collaborative innovation. You broadcast your problem to all including Joe via this pipe. All, including Joe tune into this pipe for the challenges the enterprise is seeking solutions for.

Joe is happy to share the solution, provided someone asks for it, a reward of fully paid two nights vacation only makes him happier! 

So is this the end of all innovation challenges enterprise face? maybe not. But if Joe exists somewhere out there, then you will surely not miss out on Joe’s solution.

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ideaken enables enterprises when they need to collaborate to innovate, with employees, customers, research vendors, academia or with global pool of talent.

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Negative capability

People innovate, a process or a system doesn’t.
People are your positive capability; not enabling your people is your negative capability.

Fortunately enabling your workforce is quite in your control, and can help reduce the negative capability to great extent. Ways to enable your people is only limited to your imagination.

Enable it by giving employees their own time in the area of their interest.
Have on the spot reward at the assembly line
Create an inclusive mindset; flat structure which retains the ideas
This could become a long list ...
But what matters is - your own means of enabling on the ground. To have an enablement plan in place, obvious place to start is to look out for non-enablers, the road-blocks.

a) First and foremost - have you established a channel, a way of reaching out to your talent sources? Sending an email or putting up a blog is an option but this unstructured approach may not get you very far. Pull, in other words self-service and volunteered effort works the best.

b) Have you figured out ways to motivate a potential contributor? Certificates are good, but unfortunately it does not excite the real talent. Most like recognition and nobody says no for dollars. Most importantly map the motivation to the intellectual satisfaction.

c) Have you decentralized innovation? Do you have a team that innovates or do you have a team that innovates & coordinates the innovations of all employees across your enterprise, check out this big difference.

Figuring out your own set of enablers and keeping them fresh fosters your innovation journey.

Give man an assignment to innovate for days. Or Enable your workforce to innovate anytime, anywhere - self served.

“Give man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” - Lao Tzu.