How to get ideas that are not 'a dime a dozen'?

Today, every enterprise has or plans to have some sort of an idea management initiative to capture the ideas of their employees and customers.  This could be because of a very strategic vision or the result of the hype about tapping into the wisdom of employees & customers. Some have mastered the art, but the rest end up being me too. Throughputs - some get as many as 150,000 ideas in a year and some just 15 from the same number of employees and customers. The effectiveness is equally extreme; some making real money from it and it becoming a main stream process for them, while others are completely clueless about the direction to navigate into.

Question is how organizations get hold of ideas that can elevate them to the next level, help them create a service or a product that could define a new market. In other words how do organizations harvest ideas which can make substantial & positive difference to the organizations’ objectives?

Part of  the answer lies in following two strategies, this is with an assumption that all other operational aspects are taken care.

Before you ask for ideas

• Shift your pitch from “Do you have an idea  ... “ to “Do you have an idea FOR  ...” Basically shift your pitch from generally asking for any idea to asking for an idea for a given challenge.
• If you can’t think of a challenge then run a challenge to find a challenge, you will be surprised how many you unearth!
• Stop behaving like you have the right to ask for ideas, instead create an atmosphere of co-creation.
• If you do not genuinely intend to read each of the ideas received and try to figure out the intent behind each idea then stop right here (It saves your time, yes theirs too!). Often the intent of the idea provider will lead you to the ideas you are after. 

After you get the ideas

• Lookout for the possibility of combining two not so good ideas to get the good one out of it. Or pick up the clue to make the not so good one, a really good one.
• Make the review team a mix of someone who could see the bigger picture and also someone who may not. 
• Refrain from judging the idea on the basis of how easy or difficult it is to implement it.
• Look at the act of rewarding the person with a good idea as an act of encouraging the innovation spirit and not as an act of buying out the idea.

In short addressing the points relevant to your enterprise from list above, a well defined challenge with an incentive and a committed evaluation team could fetch you ideas which are not a dime dozen.

"Good" & "Bad" of being "Part-Time" creative

Parallelism – is the “in” thing, enabled by the technology, connectivity and the evolution of human brain which has progressively learned how to switch off from the previous task and focus on the next.  Over the years this switch-overs has sped up, so much that it has attained parallelism. The best of the parallelism is applied in being creative. Never under estimate the idea you end up getting in a shower! 

If you love chocolate ice-cream the most, and if you are thinking of trying a new flavor today, ‘you are being creative’ even if you end up having a chocolate one in the end. Creativity is all about thinking differently, only criteria is being truthfully spontaneous!, no point thinking of a strawberry  flavor for the sake of it.

You either know that you are creative or you do not know it yet, there is no such thing as not being creative.  You either have the right audience who appreciates your creativity or you do not have it yet, it is not possible that such an audience does not exist. 

You may not be creative, between two of your creative spells. ‘Part-time creative’ - that’s how most of us are.

If you are wondering what could be the “Bad” of being part-time creative, then you are wondering for the right, there isn’t any “Bad” in being part-time creative, as long as you are capitalizing on it.

Best Time, Team and Technique for Innovation …

... do they exist?

Time …

I get some of my best ideas when I am not trying to get one, while not at my desk, during a casual walk. One probably does not innovate on 25th Avenue, at 3:00 p.m. Sometimes, the harder one tries to sleep, more difficult it becomes, same with ideas.

However, on a broader level, if one does not have an innovation agenda, innovation probably doesn’t happen. So it is a good idea to create a placeholder for innovation, meet to take stock; meet to elaborate the ideas.

Time boxing does not help in innovating; however the other extreme - time pressure gets amazing output, sometimes!

Team …

Focus groups, Innovation councils, R&D teams, Centre of Excellences, apart from doing innovation are better suited for doing equally important tasks of managing innovation. They are better equipped to provide the anchor for an organization’s innovation agenda, anchor for ideas from across the organization and optionally from outside the organization.

There is no such thing as idea team, there shouldn’t be.

Techniques …

Six Thinking Hats, or TRIZ are great techniques to ideate and innovate, however I believe that if one has a Six Thinking Hats or TRIZ mindset then it is far more productive than having a round table discussion for innovation using these techniques.

I read that some people are successful in submitting their problems to their mind, sleeping over it, and the subconscious mind coming up with clues, if not the solution the next morning.
I believe in something similar – our minds have an incredible capability in parallel imagination for the problems we have at hand. Leverage this, submit the problem to yourself, don’t start working on it.

Organizations should have capability to manage ideas and innovations just like an ERP manages inventory or General Ledger.

Don’t ignore non-techniques like gut feeling and intuition.

One old fashioned thing, record your ideas, however stupid or great. Instead of remembering idea, sometimes I only remember that I had a good one!

In a nutshell … ideas during after hours, at a lab, in the bathroom or on a treadmill … Innovation teams more as an anchor across and beyond organization … Innovation techniques with processes diluted … is probably the best time, team and technique for the innovation.