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Strengthen your innovation process with an idea management tool!

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If you stop someone and ask their opinion on innovation, chances are they would say – Man, it feels like climbing a mountain!

It is strenuous and difficult and chances are you’re not happy with how you or your firm is performing in terms of innovation.

In fact, according to a McKinsey survey, only 6% of executives are satisfied with their firm’s innovation performance.

94% unsatisfied people. It’s a huge number, but can I let you in on a secret?

It is neither difficult to increase your firm’s innovation performance nor it’s as simple.

What I’m trying to say is it is easy to remove the friction that stops people from sharing ideas. And an idea management software can help you do that.

First things first though, let’s establish the difference between ideas and innovation. Ideas can be anything, on any matter. Innovation, on the other hand, is something that has never been done before.

As a CXO, what you want is innovative ideas from your team or your employees, although it does not come easy.

Barriers to acquiring innovative ideas from your employees.

Some of them are:

  •  You might think your employees do not have any ideas. In fact, a lot of people believe that. When questions were put to CXOs about why they were not getting any ideas from their employees, their response was – “When I ask for ideas in a town hall or all-hands, I do not know why I am not hearing much from the employees. They are the ones who are running the things at ground level. Ideally, they should have a lot of ideas.”
  • Your employees might not share ideas:
    • In the fear that someone else might take credit for their ideas
    • Think their ideas are not too good to be taken seriously
    • Or fear that their ideas might get lost in a black hole.
  • You are resorting to emails, dedicated slack channels, and suggestion boxes for the collection of these ideas. The problem with these is there could be far too many ideas, and in the absence of a proper routing system(sending it to the right person who can take it forward), these ideas can get lost or rot away and might never get implemented.

It is because of these barriers to innovation, you might lose ideas that have gold potential and could formulate your firm’s next million-dollar product.

Companies like Nokia, Blackberry, and Motorola which were once top players in the game fell apart when they did not innovate on time.

Employees’ contribution to the innovation process:

According to a study, an average person gets over 7000 thoughts every day.  Out of these 7000, chances are one of them could be the next gold mine.

And these innovative ideas take birth in our minds and die out because of the lack of resources to get ideas recognized or implemented.

It’s not about ideas alone. Do you think your employees don’t get disheartened when their ideas, though having potential, never get implemented?

This small yet powerful comic by Andrew Tsyaston summarizes the pain well:

idea management tool

Do you know the difference between the persons depicted in the above comic?

Recognition and resources were given to one’s idea whereas the other didn’t. His idea might have gotten lost in a black hole and still remains what it originally was: an idea!

As a CXO, it is your responsibility to recognize your employee’s ideas and get them implemented. It has dual benefits:

  • It increases employee morale and job satisfaction.
  • It could yield profits for your company by making a process or product better.

What should you do next? 

Take it from the words of Steven Johnson – “If you look at history, innovation doesn’t come just from giving people incentives; it comes from creating environments where their ideas can connect.”

How can an idea management tool solve your problems?

A platform that can help you right from gathering ideas to implementing them is an idea management tool.

Now, there are a lot of tools in the market, ~275, the last time I counted. What you need is a platform that takes care of these pointers:

  • It is easy to implement
  • It provides great functionality
  • It is sustainable in the long run and meets the needs of CXOs and gets a great ROI.
  • It is easy to use for employees.
  • There are appropriate routing systems in place that can take your idea to the right person.
  • You can keep track of the status of the ideas.

These are the features to look for in an idea management tool. If you’re looking for one, thankfully, we designed InspireIP ideas in a way that checks all these pointers.

Plus, you can get your organization onboarded within a few hours and for basic trials, get started in less than 5 minutes.

It’s that simple.

Want a quick demo of the tool? Write to us at [email protected] and we will get back to you or sign up here.

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