Our Director of Business Development, Paul Tran recently sat down with David Detlefsen of WMS Gaming, a company with a rich history of innovation in digital gaming entertainment for the casino industry. WMS started their innovation program 5 years ago, during a time when they were experiencing strong revenue and employee growth. WMS wanted to ensure that it preserved its special corporate culture through this period and specifically maintain itself as a company of ideas.

For WMS having a platform that could support its vision…for every employee to share and to contribute to its innovative company voice was extremely important. It wanted to stimulate internal employee collaboration to help its managers solve real business problems and increase invention disclosures with IP patents groups, while keeping a focus on its core culture.

Using Brightidea's technology platform, the program has been hugely successful since its inception in 2007, resulting in 64 patents being filed and the creation of 110 continuous improvement ideas that include efficiency improvements, cost savings, waste reduction, and safety advances. Deploying Brightidea's Idea management platform onto the manufacturing shop floor means WMS can harness its employees' creativity and empower them to take steps to improve their work life, while also creating cost savings for the company.

The program has evolved and continues to improve over time through valuable learnings gathered through its history, here's just a few of the many nuggets David shared with us.

1. Do not start with an open suggestion box, keep challenges focused and aligned with your corporate strategy. While it may seem like a good idea at the time, an open suggestion box will actually cause more pain by opening up a firehouse of hundreds if not thousands of unfiltered ideas to sort through, many of which will have no tie back to corporate objectives. And by not responding to all ideas, your submitters will get frustrated, causing ideas to dwindle in the long run.


2. Use a solution pull strategy over idea push. This requires some thinking on problem statements and an understanding of business challenges. However, changing to this kind of focused challenge paradigm will guarantee ideas are on target with company priorities.




3. Respond to every submission that comes in, having a focused challenge will make this easier. Idea submitters don't mind being told NO, but they like to know why. Keeping the two way dialogue alive will ensure that ideas get better over time and continue to encourage participation. If submitter's ideas go into a black hole, this will make them less likely to participate over time. Providing a simple explanation for the idea not moving forward is much better than not hearing anything at all.


4. Set a schedule and market your campaign. Leveraging your intranet, using a blog and a newsletter to communicate will keep your campaign top of mind and keep employees participating, collaborating, commenting, and elaborating on ideas. Develop a schedule that has multiple campaigns running at once so that each is in a different phase of execution and review at any one time.


5. Develop a top level strategy deployment. This can be scheduled longer than a standard campaign period and is a business process developed in partnership with the CEO or President to set audacious goals for the entire company to strive for in the year. This is a stretch goal challenge that requires the entire company to be in alignment and work towards, to try to attain something the company isn't currently doing.

David ends the interview by sporting his Innovation hard hat, tapping into the metaphor that innovation is fun, but at the same time can be messy like a construction site and also a little dangerous. You should always start with a blueprint, but in the midst of the construction, you should be comfortable getting your hands dirty but above all staying safe. And don't lose sight that it's okay be silly and have fun!

The interview is loaded with many more ideas for how to best structure an innovation program, how to set expectations and above all ensure success that will keep the program running for years to come. He reminds us to take things slow, establish a process and nurture it along the way, which will leave room for wider expansion that builds upon program success.

We're thankful to our partner Planview for providing a forum for our conversation. If you're interested in hearing best practices from more innovation practitioners, our next Birds of Feather (BOF) event is happening soon in Chicago on June 24, 25th. If you'd like to apply for an invitation to attend, please contact Celia Seib for more information.

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.

Our friends at Hult International Business School are ramping up for their annual Innovation Olympics and are in search of new clients that would like to leverage the collective brain power of diverse teams of MBA students. These students will work with participating companies to develop breakthrough business plans as they compete for Innovation Gold to come up with the most impactful idea. It's a great program that allows companies to benefit from external perspectives and receive valuable innovation input. Previous participants include Levi's, Verizon, GE, P&G, and Pfizer.

For more information on the Innovation Olympics, watch this video. 

 

Paul Tran: [Brightidea] from Brightidea on Vimeo.

On December 11th the Maven Open2012 brought the Open Innovation community to Silicon Valley to discuss the opportunities and challenges presented by OI and bridge the chasm between the most innovative place in the world, Silicon Valley, and the most important innovation management development in the past fifty years. 

Attendees learned about the roots of the OI movement, heard case studies from some of the world's largest companies on their OI successes, saw product demonstrations from the leading companies delivering services to OI professionals, and found out about the massive opportunities available to entrepreneurs creating solutions to help enterprises connect, collaborate, and develop new products.

Paul Tran, Director at Brightidea, was there to deliver the Brightidea Open Innovation overview including the vision of Innovation OnDemand, the Brightidea Innovation Grid, and how large organizations are using OI to solve their biggest challenges. You can watch the 9 minute replay on Vimeo.

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!