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)

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.

Innovation Champions: Farm Credit Services of America from Brightidea on Vimeo.

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

In this video, Brightidea sits down with Angie Winegar, the Director of Strategy & Innovation at Farm Credit Services of America, for an exclusive interview to learn how the company organized around innovation using Brightidea software. Providing credit to nearly one-third of the nation's agricultural industry, Farm Credit Services of America recognizes the importance of utilizing innovation to achieve operational efficiency and promote next generation services for customers. Angie also points out that the company's long-term goal is to sustain a corporate culture where all employees and departments are organizing themselves around innovation in their job functions.

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

This post is part of the Innovation Management Practitioners Blog series.

United States may continue to be a dominant player adding to the global manufacturing output, but by smaller margins than in the past. The decline of US manufacturing compared with the rest of the world showcases the dominance of emerging economies such as China that are doubling total output (see stats here and here). The gap could become even larger as emerging market manufacturers around the world have demonstrated success through government support and focus on advanced manufacturing. In June 2011, the United States President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released their Report to the President on Ensuring American Leadership in Advanced Manufacturing, which delineates the issues with the current state of manufacturing in the U.S. in comparison and that, “as U.S. leadership in manufacturing declines, other nations are investing heavily in advancing their manufacturing leadership, innovation systems, and R&D. As hopes to increase jobs and support the advancement of a robust manufacturing continue, private companies are exploring how innovation can spur growth, cost-savings, and efficiency through initiatives designed specifically to fuel innovation.

This is Part Two in the series discussing Brightidea's Limitless innovation campaign looking to Brightidea employees for the latest technology and social application ideas. In the first post, we sat down to speak with VP of Product, Jason Hardy-Smith. This time we bring you Paul Tran, Director of Strategic Initiatives at Brightidea, who delves into the experiences of using Brightidea software and the methods utilized to achieve dynamic participation at all levels of the company.

Paul brings years of expertise helping customers use Brightidea software to deliver continuous results. However, using it for an internal campaign at Brightidea has surfaced new insights for Paul such as, "it allows us to firsthand experience what it's like for customers to use our software and that allows us to make the user experience better by actually putting it through our own internal processes." Using Brightidea internally makes it possible to take advantage of countless features and workflows. A few utilized include automated point-scoring for participation and campaign leaderboards, as well as advanced concept clustering to identify themes to inform proposal collaboration and scorecarding needed for proper decision-making.

Just like most campaigns, challenges and key insights emerge, such as learning how to formulate and present a concept clearly. Paul emphasizes the importance of how an idea is communicated because "not everybody knows how to pitch, not everybody knows how to communicate their idea very well." Through this campaign Brightidea employees gain knowledge on how to effectively present an interesting idea so that the idea itself is exciting with illustrations, clear presentations, pictures, and more.

Paul also helps Jason moderate the campaign and facilitate continuous communication internally. By actively engaging the community through spurring discussions around concept submissions via comments, as well as sending company-wide emails and directly speaking with employees around the office. "We made a formal announcement from the CEO in a town hall, subsequently we've pinned up metrics. For example I print out what the current stats are and put them on the office walls so when people walk down the halls they can see how many ideas have been submitted today, what the most recent ones are, and what the most popular are."

Paul believes that the ownership of the Limitless campaign at a VP level helps drive the success of the entire campaign. "What's really inspired the employees on Limitless versus different campaigns is that there's a true owner," says Paul. "No doubt we've run countless employee-facing campaigns in the past. It is not that nobody's listening to them, and ideas aren't being implemented, but partially these campaigns act as a system of record too. With Limitless, we have an owner at a department level driving it who is extracting enormous value from the collaboration with a vested interest in the findings and insights being surfaced." Giving employees from every area of the business one space for collaboration around new technology, as Paul passionately notes is "extremely valuable".

Be sure to follow Paul on Twitter at @paultran888.

Brightidea is a company built on the principles of making innovation practical. It's not surprising, then, that we use our own software as a system of record for internal communications on everything from process improvements to customer enhancement requests via our public IdeaSpace. Targeted campaigns are also common, from the Marketing Department seeking ideas for our innovation newsletter to our most recent annual internal campaign called Limitless, inspired by the feature film, looking for the latest breakthrough ideas for Brightidea technology.

We recently chatted with Jason Hardy-Smith, Vice President of Product Management at Brightidea, about spearheading Limitless. The reason for the annual campaign, "we weren't sure we had the right ideas and we thought that if we opened it up to the company we'd get a greater variety of ideas from different perspectives." The entire process of tapping the wealth of knowledge and expertise spread across the organization is proving to have a powerful impact on the Product team's work and vision for the future. "I think it's quite enlightening. The different perspectives that people bring to the table are what is going to make our solution really unique. I'm really proud of it. I'm really proud that across the country everybody has taken the time to participate."

And people did participate. In the first few days 80% of the company logged-in to the campaign, and there has since been 100% login rate. The quality of participation and the collaboration post-submission has been truly impressive. "People aren't just sitting there for 10 minutes and thinking about an idea, they're actually hours and days putting together complex diagrams, long explanations and doing research on technologies to bring things to be really well thought out and polished," says Jason.

Limitless is also representative of the Brightidea philosophy and "this company belongs to everybody that works in it," said Jason, meaning that employees are encouraged to be active contributors in deciding what the roadmap for the company should be. He also added, "in running a company in that way I think you get more buy-in and collaboration and you have happier employees, it's just generally a better place to work."

When asked what it was like using Brightidea's own software, Jason responded that it's "humbling in a way because you think you know everything about your product and you think you know what's best for it all the time, but when you're actually using your product in a real-life scenario you realize that you're missing something and you come up with things that you never would have imagined would be in the product."

Overall, as a VP of Product, sourcing ideas and developing concepts that truly are unique and make a difference is paying off as Jason signs off saying, "I don't think there's another software that meet the product manager's needs as much as this does."

You can follow Jason on Twitter at @JasonHardySmith

Here at Brightidea we are constantly working to provide the best experience for our customers to innovate more efficiently.

We understand that hiccups happen and support issues emerge. With our Brightidea Support Portal, administrators have access to an unparalleled on-demand resource for interactive support along with numerous tips, best practice docs, and video tutorials. We continually provide customers with the most up-to-date knowledge and support that facilitates innovation success. Over the years, the Brightidea Support Portal has quickly and effectively handled a range of customer support tickets with a 96% customer satisfaction rate.

Brightidea serves Fortune 2000 innovation leaders that offer a wealth of knowledge and experience. Within the Support Portal, the ability to facilitate peer-to-peer discussion is easy. The Brightidea Innovation Community is a forum where administrators can ask questions, post comments, share insights, and connect with some of the most experienced innovation practitioners in the world. Questions like 'how to promote participation' or 'what are the best practices for idea evaluation' are responded by innovation experts at companies like Emerson, etc. Customers get the most out of the Brightidea experience by having in-depth discussions and best practices tips while connecting with like-minded professional in a private setting.

Anthony Madama, Technical Support Manager at Brightidea, said, "Utilizing the Brightidea Innovation Community forum will allow the conversation to take place among our innovators at anytime. Bridging these innovative minds together could spruce great plethora of new methods and ideas to include in their social innovation programs."

Customers can feel secure in discussing and sharing anything from workflow details to design suggestions and configuration tips and tricks in confidence with community peers. Brightidea customers can join immediately here!