One of the biggest trends in how enterprise organizations operate is the peer-to-peer sharing of ideas across large numbers of employees. InformationWeek recently published some research about a long-term study that showed impressive gains in internal measures (projects on time) and customer-facing results (sales associates exceeding plan). Tools such as Salesforce.com and its formation of contributors has made a huge market out of quickly connecting the intelligence of the world outside an organization to its core. This allows massive analytics to be employed for forecasting trends and business levels.
In this recent article from Forbes, they cite the success that AT&T is having in using a similar technique to crowdsource ideas from all over the organization into an innovation funnel. They share some really interesting and creative outcomes and are clearly benefiting from this wave of creativity among their own employees. These were not small or isolated events – one was a service package for budget-conscious international travelers, while another was a new app to keep teen drivers safe by auto responding to texts while driving.
Interestingly, they share that the money is not a primary motivator for employees, but instead:
“A sense of accomplishment and knowing that they have a chance to create something extraordinary.”
It’s great to see that AT&T has had the foresight to create a VP-level position to run the program, because as you can imagine, when you open the faucet for ideation to 130k associates, you are going to get a tremendous volume of ideas. Caring for those ideas and making sure they are heard, responded to and integrated is a huge job.
When ideas fit nicely into a line of business, the path of implementation is clear, and resistance is only due to the product team’s capacity to execute. When ideas fall between business teams, or require new thinking around the business model, however, it becomes really important to be able to have a peer-level champion that is at the same organizational level as the business operations leaders.
When the manufacturing of associate engagement first came through in the late portion of the 1990’s, I was running a global operation that put in place a system of ideation we called “I recommends.” Any of the 500 factory associates could take a form (yes, they were paper), fill it out, and put it in the system, where they were tracked, responded to and integrated into the core factory operation as much as possible. There were stunning successes and considerable positive soft benefits from the program.
Just as in the AT&T example above, it was clear that the pride of having contributed to the process, and the soft recognition employees received, far outweighed any passing monetary rewards we provided.
3 Keys to Crowdsourcing Innovation
Out of this experience come relevant lessons that are applicable in the current wave of crowdsourcing innovation as well:
- It takes real effort to make sure that each and every idea is recorded and reviewed by a real person. The integrity of the whole endeavor pivots on trust. These systems are not without cost, and the cost comes up front. You need to put people and systems in place based on a projected outcome. Do not try to “stretch the existing team.” It’s been tried and it will kill your program before it gets started.
- You must stick with it for the long run. Some of the biggest innovations will come after the honeymoon period. Once the system is debugged and the low hanging fruit is picked, the brilliant – but skeptical – will begin to put in some ideas that will be really good. The paradox is that these ideas will also be much harder to do, because they will typically affect a significant portion of the process or the business model. It’s at this point you are being tested, and your positive response is key.
- The unspoken foundation of the first two points, is that you have thought through and built a system that you can stand behind that will be able to not only deal with the overall flow of ideas, but has a very clear criteria for those which get selected, a process for them to get tested, and a very visible process for those that get implemented. Your upfront work on these systems, while not glamorous, is key – it will allow a fully functional roll out, with real answers to the skeptics’ questions. Stated succinctly, everyone must understand that while every idea will not go ahead, there exists an objective criteria and a short list of ideas will get implemented.
The upside of harnessing the creative juices of an enterprise is huge, whether it has a hundred, thousand or ten thousand employees. Hardwiring your innovation to those at the edge of your organization has been the grail for many years, and as we get better and better mobile tools at the edge, the information will only get richer and richer.
What are your experiences in crowdsourcing ideas? What type of processes and tools do you find to be the most useful? Please drop me a line or leave a comment below.
