Recently, Brightidea engaged in a live Q&A session with Planview and Innovation SE on igniting and powering prioritization in innovation programs. As one of the lead speakers during the session, it was personally both exhilarating and fulfilling. I was extremely impressed with the diversity of the audience and their questions. Clearly, organizations of all sorts are thinking about how to incorporate innovation into their day-to-day and how to maximize the effectiveness of the process.

Of the 150 questions submitted during the session, most of the feedback led me to a fundamental point that we convey to everyone we work with, which is that innovation is a full end-to-end process that should lead to demonstrable results. Innovating and ideating without purpose won’t get you anywhere. The only results you’ll see are a group of frustrated participants and leadership knocking on your door asking why you wasted their most precious resources on a fruitless venture. For innovation to truly impact your business in a meaningful way, you must develop and maintain an end-to-end process that begins with strategic alignment and ends with implementation.

While developing a program process, everyone is faced with identifying which ideas are the most worthy of implementation. We took a poll during the live Q&A session about how comfortable the audience is with prioritizing ideas. Based on the poll results, it appears that many people struggle with establishing a documented process that utilizes metrics to identify which ideas have the most merit (30% of people go on gut alone). Why is it that so many people struggle with innovation process?

While many people believe that process and structure stifle creativity – critical to producing those big “Wow” ideas – this couldn’t be further from the truth. A solid process ensures that the venture will be meaningful to the business by generating outcomes and creating ROI.

At Brightidea, we believe that two elements are key to successful prioritization:

1. Establish your success criteria before starting a project.
2. Use an accessible tool that allows subject matter experts to produce a quantifiable assessment. We find that our multi-round scorecarding feature is really helpful to clients for this purpose.

Additionally, there are two questions you must access yourself before engaging in the endeavor. This first piece is critical. You must ask the question, is this pursuit in line with the strategic objectives of the company? Secondly you must ask, is there funding to implement the outcome of this process? If the answer to either of those questions is no, do not pass Go. You should start over with a new topic. Once the strategic foundation is laid, then you can go crazy with getting the smelly markers, post-it notes, squishy toys, and beanbag chairs for creativity sessions.

With a foundation of strategic alignment and funding in place as well as a solid process endorsed by all, your innovation process should deliver some pretty fantastic outcomes. If you have more questions about establishing your process, please reach out me to discuss further. If you'd like to view the recorded Q&A with Planview and Innovation SE, it's available here.

 (original use of photograph in this article on Inc.com: http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/11/how-to-run-a-brainstorming-session.html)

We are excited to announce that Brightidea will be joining one of our partners, Planview, for a live Ask the Expert Q&A on April 25. Planview Vice President Linda Roach will moderate as expert panelists Carrie Nauyalis, also of Planview, and Kristen Jordan Fotter, Innovation Consulting Leader with Brightidea, discuss how to collect and assess winning ideas while prioritizing the right ones against available resources. Planview’s focus on helping customers optimize their two most precious resources, people and money, paired with Brightidea’s proven innovative solutions will empower guests to fill their product development pipelines with ideas that fit their capacity and resources.

Brightidea is also proud to be sponsoring the 4th annual PIPELINE online conference taking place on Thursday, May 16th. With a focus on “Change the Game with Innovation that Works”, attendees will receive valuable insight from expert practitioners on innovation, product development, and product portfolio management. From case studies to recommendations you can implement right away, these best-in-class thought leaders will share their industry knowledge and success stories to help attendees discover ways they can implement innovation that works.

I'm so excited to announce that I've officially joined the Brightidea team as VP, Marketing. Over the course of the last few months, I've had the opportunity to work on a number of projects and have been continuously impressed not only with the caliber and integrity of the team, but also Brightidea's approach to business: Creative, methodical and data-driven. Most recently, Brightidea was named the Leader in the new era of crowdsourced large-scale innovation, by futurist and social business curator for GigaOM, Stowe Boyd.

Having practically created the category for innovation management software, Brightidea is in a unique and enviable position, the team has partnered with top global brands and built killer technology that manages the innovation process end to end. It is rare to find a "start-up" with such an established and impressive client roster, much less one with over 2 million users and that can directly attribute billions of dollars in cost savings and projected new revenue to the use of its technology. To help facilitate that kind of value is truly an amazing opportunity that I'm excited to take on in this new chapter of my career.

For over the last decade, I have worked with Silicon Valley start-ups in digital advertising, mobile and social enterprise, helping these companies bring new products to market and refining their market positioning.  Innovation is ultimately the lifeblood of Silicon Valley, what drives and motivates those that love the start-up lifestyle and mentality: that anything is possible. And innovation beyond the Valley is just as, if not more important. According to a recent Babson College study cited by Brian Solis, "over 40 percent of the companies that were at the top of the Fortune 500 in 2000 were no longer there in 2010."  Pretty clear that innovation is the only path to longevity in today's hyper competitive markets. It's really great to be part of a company that is enabling that kind of innovation through its technology.

This year promises to bring some exciting new developments to Brightidea and I'm very thankful to be part of such an amazing team.

SAP Revamps Largest Customer Co-Creation Portal in History

As one of the largest software companies in the world, SAP is in constant demand of the best ideas. Transparency, scalability, and access to feedback are all critical to continually re-envisioning products to meet and exceed customer demands. For the past few years SAP’s has used Idea Place as its main channel to collect customer feedback on SAP products and services. When SAP decided that a program revamp was in order, it decided the emphasis of the new Idea Place should be on customer co-creation and open innovation, and with the technical scalability and increased social functionality that will further entrench the voice of the customer into the product lifecycle. Powered by Brightidea software, this next generation co-creation platform gives SAP the ability to scale its efforts to continually innovate by providing customers a seamless channel to inform the product roadmap.

As the largest open innovation platform of its kind, Idea Place is an enterprise-wide system that hosts over 100 idea sessions (or “WebStorms"™ in Brightidea terms). Each idea session is focused around a specific SAP product or service, operating independently with its program owner, leveraging its own automated workflow processes, categories and navigation. Owners are typically an SAP Product Manager in charge of gaining participation and engagement for their own product.

Currently scoped around existing SAP products and services, the vision for the program extends well beyond incremental product feedback and enhancements, according to Kuhan Milroy, Director of Social Business Innovation at SAP.

“The vision of Idea Place is to provide disruptive innovation through breakthrough ideas, reaching new audiences as well as connecting audiences that SAP has traditionally not connected before,” says Milroy.

Providing transparency is something that Idea Place already does and will continue to do, and the capabilities and functionality provided by Brightidea software make that much easier. Some notables are:

• Anyone who wants to can visit and view Idea Place activity. Those who want to get involved and participate can gain access to submit and collaborate by registering through SAP’s community site SCN.
• Each campaign includes Social activity feeds and notifications that allow users to follow and collaborate on topics they care most about and connect easily with others.
• In-depth metrics and analytics on everything from idea submissions, comments, votes, evaluation statuses, to implemented enhancements are available both on an individual campaign as well as enterprise level.
• Planned integrations with product development and issue tracking tools like Jira help provide a seamless pathway to route ideas back into the product development lifecycle.

SAP realizes that in order to continually meet and exceed customer demands they simply cannot afford to ignore their customers’ feedback. Providing a continual, fully integrated channel to tap customer ideas on existing and future products will help SAP stay ahead of market demands and the competition in the years ahead!

Check out SAP’s revamped Idea Place today here. Or you can also read the full details of the announcement, here.

The start of the year is a great time to review and reflect on events of the last year that made an impact. With that, we'd like to share with you Brightidea's most popular blog posts of 2012. These posts not only experienced the most views, they also were 'off the charts' in terms of social sharing. So here they are once again, for your reading enjoyment.

Kraft Doubles Down on Open Innovation Learn why the Kraft Foods Collaboration Kitchen (KFCK) is a major shift in the open innovation strategy at the company.

GE’s Healthymagination Challenge Winners Announced! Winners are annouced for General Electric's (GE) open innovation challenge, Healthymagination, looking for breakthrough ideas on early detection and treatment of breast cancer.

Next Generation Innovation Emerges at HP Exclusive video on HP's InnoStream, the latest innovation management campaign driving new ideas on products and services at every level of the company using Brightidea software.

What do you think of this list, did we miss any of your favorite posts from 2012?

Inside Scoop: Shifting the Innovation Culture at ACT

At Brightidea, we often focus on large scale innovation programs at companies with thousands if not hundreds of thousands of employees. Often though, it is in smaller companies where innovation programs are tackling common problems such as sustaining employee engagement with unique creativity and resolve. One of these companies is the nonprofit organization that offers millions of education and career assessments across the country, ACT, Inc. The Innovation Team at ACT is taking a fresh approach to their innovation program through the blending of the digital social innovation platform with physical events. The result is a structured program with impressive engagement to boot.

Last year, the company hired its first Chief Innovation Officer along with staff to effectively initiate its innovation department. While the program scope covers new product innovations as well as process innovations, the overall mandate was really about spurring a cultural shift in the organization. Backed with the organizational structure, and the Brightidea-powered online platform “Bloom”, the program quickly launched a hybrid model of targeted and on-going campaigns where employees could contribute insight and solutions. The innovation team manages the on-going campaign (or the “Open Forum”) and works with department heads to structure and launch targeted campaigns. Departments must have the resources to manage a targeted campaign, and the budget and support to move ideas beyond the evaluation phase to implementation if plausible. 

An exciting feature of their program is a newly launched event series, “Bloom Out Loud”. Simply put, it’s the Bloom process, done out loud and in-person to showcase the impact the Bloom program is making on the business. Held quarterly, these fast-paced high-energy idea gatherings highlight the best ideas from the Open Forum. Remote employees were included by utilizing google hangout. Kari Stillman, who works with the Innovation Team at ACT, cited some positive feedback on the cultural effect of the event. “We received a lot of feedback saying it felt like the first time that we really showcased a culture shift for the organization…It wasn’t leadership talking to team members, it was peer-to-peer,” Stillman says.

The format for the event series is evolving, but at its core, a select group of idea submitters are chosen to present their ideas, in-person and with videos at the event. After the event two ideas move on to the next phase, which includes an ideation workshop and rapid prototyping session before presenting to the executive leadership team. Not only did this event gain traction for the innovation program as a whole (more than 250 ACT team members including senior leaders attended the first event), it is a step towards ensuring that strong ideas have the opportunity to be heard by different business units. It also allows for the community of participants to stay up-to-date on the progress of projects initiated from ideas submitted in the Open Forum.

Since the program began in June, the team has accumulated a company-wide participation rate of over 50% using Bloom, showing the focus on employee engagement has really paid off.

“Bloom Out Loud is a great way to showcase and recognize the impact team members can have by sharing an idea. It also amplifies the culture of innovation we strive to establish at ACT,” noted Stillman.

It will be exciting to see the returns this proactive program will yield in weeks, months, and years to come and no doubt ACT’s customers and employees will be reaping the benefits.

Alison Scott and Mary Nimietz [CCH, A Wolters Kluwer Business] from Brightidea on Vimeo.

This series lets you get an inside look at top global businesses and their leaders that create innovation program success.

Giving us exclusive insights about innovation at CCH, A Wolters Kluwer Business are Alison Scott, Sr. Executive Management Coordinator, and Mary Nimietz, Executive Assistant at CCH. As the leading provider of information services, CCH provides software and workflow tools for tax, accounting, legal and business professionals. Their products track, report, explain, and analyze tax and related law. CCH's leadership realizes that in order to make the processes of the company more efficient and identify new market opportunities, an effective, centralized program needed to be created to tap employees for solutions to critical business needs. The goal for CCH, in terms of innovation, is to spread the skills to innovate across the board, into different business units. Reframing the innovation culture within CCH, both Mary and Alison have exemplified their skills and drive to make innovation a reality every day at CCH.

Connect with other innovation managers like Alison and Mary today by becoming a part of the Birds of a Feather community!

Here at Brightidea, we talk a lot about the vital role collaboration plays in the innovation process. Understanding the way modern collaboration is changing and being shaped by technology, society and beyond, is an important aspect of the way we work. Sarah Miller Caldicott is a tenured expert of marketing and innovation, and a grandniece to Thomas Edison. Caldicott's latest book, Midnight Lunch, examines Edison's collaborative leadership techniques up close. An admirer of Edison and advocate for innovation and collaboration, our very own Matt Greeley, CEO and Founder of Brightidea, gives insights and context for Sarah's newest venture into Edison's world of collaboration in the forward for Midnight Lunch. We sat down with Sarah to talk about the inspiration for the book, and the key points almost anyone can take away about how collaboration is changing the way we work.

What was the inspiration for Midnight Lunch?

In my first book, Innovate Like Edison, I wrote about Edison's extraordinary ability to master so many of the capabilities needed to be a successful innovator. It was stunning to realize that Edison pioneered 6 industries in less than 40 years. Master-mind Collaboration was the fourth competency in what I described as Edison's Five Competencies of Innovation. I was inspired to write Midnight Lunch because I wanted to go deeper into this collaboration competency, to explore it further. In working with companies over the past 5 years, I see collaboration as something that people can put their hands around. Most everyone has worked on a team. People have experienced exceptional teams as well as really dysfunctional teams. Offering a viewpoint on what I describe in Midnight Lunch as "true collaboration" was something that I felt could be immediately for people. Collaboration is doubly important in the digital environments we're dealing with now.

Can you give a little background on the title?

Midnight Lunch refers to the affectionate slang that Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey crew gave to what we to after-hours sessions that took place at the lab. When workers stayed late to monitor their experiments, Edison often joined them. He'd go home at 5 PM, have dinner with his family, then sometimes return to the lab around 7 PM to check in on progress of key projects. Often, he would also run his own experiments during these after-hours visits.

Edison encouraged all the lab workers to observe what the others were doing while he was there, and offer their insights to each other. These heady exchanges were casual, yet focused. At about 9 PM, Edison ordered in snacks and sandwiches from a local tavern for everyone who was still workig. The entire group would kick back, tell stories, sing songs – even play music. People had a chance to get to know each other socially in this setting. No one was monitoring performance, or "keeping score." After these 'midnight lunches,' everyone went back to work for a few more hours.

The magic of midnight lunch was the cohesiveness it created among the employees, and the creative insights it encouraged. Midnight lunch transformed employees into colleagues.

Who can gain the most from reading this book? (i.e. CEO's, Executives, college students, etc?)

This book is really designed to benefit anyone who serves on a team. It can benefit senior leaders who are guiding an innovation team, striving to assemble an innovation team, or working to address differences of opinion being voiced by project team members. It can also benefit individuals who want to improve how they serve their teammates. The book offers step-by-step guidance on how to create collaboration as a capacity of the individual, and then how to meld the creativity that emerges from this in a team context. Midnight Lunch also addresses the unique collaboration styles of Generation Y, so anyone who's part of a multi-generational workforce can benefit from it.

What are the biggest factors changing the way collaboration takes place in modern businesses?

I see three huge factors. The first is that from 2010 through 2020, one billion working-age adults will enter the global workforce. This is an unprecedented number. Organizations must understand how to engage these individuals, how to inspire them, and how to connect them to the innovation process.

The second factor is that this newly emergent group of workers will have access to mobile devices, almost without exception. Leaders must find ways to "collaborate and connect" across the vast network of mobile devices owned by this emerging group, integrating the practices of mobile-native users alongside the face-to-face practices of those already in the workforce. Even though many older workers today are comfortable online, it doesn't mean they understand how to operate in a hybrid virtual/live environment This means that differing work styles must either be integrated, or made to exist comfortably alongside one another – a big management challenge.

And the third factor is leadership style. The days of the stacked hierarchies we saw in the Industrial Age are numbered. Vertical communication is not fast enough to compete with the instantaneous communication of peer-to-peer networks. So teams are flattening, organizations are flattening, and this means that titles and positions long-held in esteem during the Industrial era will shift. New types of leaders will emerge – leaders who can work shoulder-to-shoulder in this new environment, leaders who can inspire others and instill a sense of purpose. All three of these factors are addressed in Midnight Lunch.

What is one surprising thing you learned about Edison from researching for this book?

Edison was dedicated to the self-development of his workers. He wanted to see them progress, to be part of a discovery process that meant continual learning – no matter what area of his operation they were engaged in. While Edison certainly didn't have career paths charted for his employees, as leaders might do today, he rolled up his sleeves and taught his people core skills – most particularly, how to experiment. By emphasizing the importance of experimentation as a means to discover and advance one's learning, he boosted the creative contributions of each individual in his employ. Edison also created an incredibly cross-trained workforce that was adaptive and responsive to changing marketplace conditions. Edison's emphasis on continual learning as a central part of collaboration I think is crucial for us today.

Any predictions on the future of collaboration and how it will change the way we work and build successful companies?

Yes. I think the "industrial internet," (The Internet of Things) coupled with advances in artificial intelligence will transform the way we work. We will see an emergence of data and patterns as huge drivers of our decision-making process, and our ability to drive new business models. A second prediction I would make, which I emphasize in Midnight Lunch, is the rise of the "metalogue." A metalogue is a focused set of communications from few to many. Advances in digital technologies and breakthroughs in visual platforms like holograms will allow more people to engage in metalogue simultaneously, and for their input to be processed and synthesized in realtime. This has huge implications for how innovation happens in the workplace, as well as other parts of our lives, particularly politics and freedom of speech.

These two major trends help define why we need to become adept at collaboration now, and position it as a "superskill" everyone must master. Edison's ability to link collaboration and innovation offers us some important clues on how to succeed in driving value-creation in our digital era.

Beth Beck: [Mentor Graphics] from Brightidea on Vimeo.

This series looks at the ways top leaders of global companies succeed by integrating innovation into their everyday business processes.

This is an exclusive interview with Mentor Graphic's Engineering Program Manager, Beth Beck. Mentor Graphics, Inc (NYSE: MENT) is a US-based multinational corporation that deals with electronic design automation for electrical engineering and electronics. Overseeing the databases used for internal processes at Mentor Graphics, Beth Beck is no stranger when it comes to integrating innovation into critical business processes like product development. Utilizing Brightidea's innovation management tool, Mentor Graphics tackles one of their most powerful networks, customers. With Brightidea's software, Mentor Graphics setup an innovation program where customer product ideas and feedback could be captured and reviewed by internal teams. For the company, prioritization of ideas is critical, as is streamlining the process of getting the most valuable ideas into the right hands quickly.

What more? We thought so! Check out other exclusive interviews with Innovation Champions like Beth here. And don't forget to connect with other innovation leaders and champions from top global companies by joining the Birds of a Feather innovation community.

Erick Kobres [NCR Corp] from Brightidea on Vimeo.

This series looks at the people who make innovation a reality every day. These individuals are redefining innovation at top global companies by injecting employees and customer input into everyday business processes to uncover transformative innovation.

This exclusive interview with Erick Kobres, Director of NCR Software Labs, gives an insider look at how NCR Corp. (NYSE: NCR) is applying innovation processes within the business in a systematic, repeatable manner. NCR  is an American computer hardware and electronics company that provides products and services that enable businesses to connect, interact, and transact with their customers. Focusing their innovation program to examine breakthrough or disruptive innovation, NCR is tackling innovation with the future in mind. Ultimately, Erick's goal for their innovation program is to break the 'business-as-usual' mindset in a systematic way. Through dedication and visionary leadership, Kobres exemplifies what it means to be an Innovation Champion.

Want to learn more? The Birds of a Feather community connects innovation agents from different sectors and industries under one common goal: to reimagine innovation. Join our online social communities and connect with innovation champs like Eric today.