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Idea management is the systematic and structured collection, processing, and implementation of ideas within the domains of innovation. In other words, innovation management is a superordinate term of idea management.
When you look into the details of idea management programs, you’ll find vastly different approaches addressing different participants.
For a lot of businesses, idea management is the first step toward structured innovation management. That’s attributed to the fact that the key concept is easier to understand, so you have a business challenge, so you look for ideas on how to handle it.
Idea management also has secondary benefits. Once established and supported by idea management, it’s also an opportunity to engage employees in two-way communication.
A successful idea management system helps to positively shape an organization’s image in the minds of employees. Some employees will contribute and see a direct impact on the success of the organization. Others will only see the results, but eventually, everyone will notice the changes.
How Idea Management System Shifts an Organization’s Perspective
To successfully set up an idea management system, you must consider three central components. That’s the alignment, the people, and the process. These three must be considered whether your innovation project is addressing just a few or more people.
As you address different audiences on different topics and at the same time, technology, which is in the form of dedicated innovation management platforms, becomes a necessary fourth component of success.
Let’s look at how idea management shifts an organization’s perspective.
1. Decreased Risk of Innovation Processes
Risk is part of the innovation process in business. Generally, innovation management has very low success rates. That’s because success is dependent on many factors including talent, the process, and resources.
Part of the challenges in innovation is that you don’t know how or for what you will use the budget. Some innovation management processes need to be fed with more resources, while others get better by starving them
Innovation risks need to largely consider both endogenous and exogenous drivers. Thus, risk management has to be an integral component of idea management.
Well-designed idea management software enables the management team to stay focused. It also enables them to meet the needs of leveraging applicable management processes to manage risks in a structured way. Remember that these ideas lead to innovation. As such, innovation leaders must have the right dose of risk appetite and a high level of risk intelligence.
This will let them use a multidisciplinary approach to manage ideas well and build a business with a lot of new ideas.
2. Using the Power of Stimulus to Effectively Spark Creativity
Organizational employees are always at the center of innovation through creative ideas. To create the right atmosphere and inspire creativity, you need to identify and empower those who think of brilliant ideas. You should also empower the talented staff who take the risk of executing those ideas skillfully.
A lot of businesses have begun using idea management systems and methodologies to orchestrate their organization’s talents. They are also using digital platforms to bring out their creative potential to accelerate innovation and optimize solution forming capabilities.
The people-centric innovation management processes enable the management to guide their people by communicating effectively. They also assess stories to keep up the motivation level towards innovation and use the power of stimulus to encourage creativity.
3. Leveraging Diversity to Develop Meaningful Unique Ideas
Creativity may be an innate process. However, the creativity spark doesn’t always originate entirely in the individual, as it can manifest in a collective setting. So we can deduce that there’s collective creativity happening everywhere more than many people realize.
Diversity helps to spark creativity. It’s a good idea to bring a group of people together with cognitive differences. The differences may include:
- Varying backgrounds
- Unique competencies
- Different personalities
- A broader spectrum of skills
- Complementary experiences
- Diverse cultural perspectives
Bringing different individuals together helps to encourage divergent thinking and stimulates creativity. In the digital context, divergent thinking is about taking up multidimensional hyper-diversities like:
- Creative diversity
- Cultural diversity
- Cognitive diversity
The diversities are useful in nurturing a culture of creativity and shaping a highly innovative organization.
4. Increased Speed of Innovation Deliveries
With dynamic changes and the competition in the business landscape, organizations need to accelerate the speed of innovation. The main barriers to this speed are inflexibility and static processes.
Organizations are required to have high adaptability skills in dealing with emergent events. They should work against all odds and break down structural and idea management obstacles to enforcing cross-functional communication and collaboration. In fact, how well idea management processes are handled is based on various factors. These factors include:
- Resource allocation
- Information fluidity
- Overall manageability
- Decision effectiveness
Some idea management initiatives take a long time to deliver business results that can lead to innovation. So it’s important to consider the innovation deliveries
Solely focusing on individual line extension renovation instead of creating a broader portfolio can limit innovation management to small incremental improvements. It also fails to result in significant step changes and revenue opportunities.
Organizations that can successfully break through the idea management process can increase the possibility of dominating and moving to new markets. This will enable them to move faster than their competitors and build value-added advantages effortlessly.
5. Reduced Fears Toward Innovation in the Organization
The presence of fear towards innovation causes brilliant ideas to wait for better times or just diminish. The overriding mindset in a lot of organizations is the “this is how we do it” mentality.
In the traditional “command and control” business environment, when conformity to expectations is highly valued, independent thinkers are seen as trouble-makers. This discourages people from thinking outside the box.
The fact is that a lot of businesses aren’t fertile grounds for ideation. That’s because they fear taking risks and rarely learn from their mistakes. This fear downgrades creative projects by means of overly rigid processes or senseless KPIs.
To overcome this fear, organizations must build a creative workforce and workplace. Planning and optimizing are also key as you can’t have a successful innovation process without continuous improvements.
Business leaders and other stakeholders must diffuse idea management and innovation through the organization and include people in crafting idea management strategies. Innovators must also be empowered to catalyze the culture of creativity and build teams that can work to amplify creativity in the organization.
Conclusion
Idea management isn’t a new concept and it’s easy to understand. That’s why it’s usually the first step toward systematic and structured innovation management.
While idea management is good and easy to understand, there’s a lot to consider if you’re to turn it into a success story. That includes ensuring strategic alignment and avoiding burning out innovation teams.
