Are organizations embracing a speak-up culture?
When employees share new ideas and bring up concerns or problems, organizations improve, innovate and perform better. It sounds obvious, yet speak-up culture is still not in the DNA of many employers. Do employees have a voice and receive encouragement to participate in continuous improvement (CI) processes?
Harvard Business Review found that managers are often stuck in their ways of working, identify with the status quo, and fear listening to contrary thoughts. They are not empowered to act on information and focus on short-term performance instead of a long-term vision for the company’s evolution.
How can employers promote collective intelligence and engagement within their teams and stakeholders? How can they facilitate their internal and external ecosystems to express ideas and collect all the promising ones?
It should be on the organizational level, and the first step is to rely on technology. This facilitates collective intelligence development through ideation platforms for ideation sessions.
Idea management platform as a resource for business growth
What is ideation and idea management software? You might think ideation is a new concept. However, the first records of this word come from the 1800s, and the first known use of ideation was in 1818. The verb ideate is recorded earlier, in the 1600s, and has a Greek origin, meaning “model,” “pattern,” or “notion.”
As you can see, ideation has long been part of our society, even if it sounds like a buzzword. However, we live in a dynamic world where collective intelligence, like everything else, needs to go to the next level.
Various ideation techniques help generate new ideas. Brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, and prototyping help employers continuously improve their processes. If done right, ideation helps founders and executives determine the right problem.
Are companies equipped with the right resources for ideation?
How to manage ideas in an organized and centralized way? The best way is to choose a user-friendly platform accessible to all employees.
For example, global companies like 3M, Google, HP, Intel, Lego, Microsoft, or Nestlé look for continuous improvement and, sometimes, a crisis response through ideation sessions on idea management platforms.
These companies are open to acting, experimenting, adapting, and learning daily to make great ideas a reality. This is a crucial explanation as to why they have been among the leading companies when it comes to innovation.
Nestlé’s InGenius for genius results
Nestlé’s Global Employee Innovation Accelerator – InGenius – engaged more than 65.000 employees. The Swiss multinational food and drink processing corporation generated 7.000 ideas through an internal contest, bringing new digitally powered solutions to life, such as food products and packaging.
According to Nick De Blasio, head of employee innovation at Nestlé, “the impact of crowdsourcing ideas is phenomenal. They started with a bottom-up open innovation process for IT to solve Supply Chain issues six years ago.
Now, it has grown to accelerate business innovation in new products, services, sustainable packaging, manufacturing, and agriculture. Over 60.000 employees have directly contributed to innovations so far. Some employees made new global connections, learned new skills, and solved problems together.
It’s unleashing the creative potential of our people, and in these volatile times, we all need this more than ever.”
Any reason not to opt for an idea management solution?
Idea management platform delivers impressive ROI for Orange
Orange – a leader in European telecommunications, is an excellent example of ideation and its successful financial outcome.
A Harvard Business Review found that within three years of implementing a collaborative ideation platform for employees and stakeholders, the intranet site Orange produced more than €600 million in earnings or savings.
Successful ideation story from Centrica – multinational energy supplier
Idea management software is easy to set up, cost-effective, and easy to maintain. Many companies use it and Centrica – a British multinational energy supplier – is no exception.
The company increased the number of ideas and realized over €4 million in cost savings from one of its implemented ideas. Isn’t that inspiring?
RATP – transportation company implements idea management platform
RATP, the world’s 5th largest transportation group, uses an idea box – an idea management platform for continuous improvement processes.
They encouraged individual contributions by all employees. That includes clients facing employees like drivers who don’t have a work computer. The internal jury selected 32 ideas from 79 proposals. RATP deployed several ideas:
- A mobile app allowing colleagues to exchange schedules
- A system that optimizes the driver’s view of passengers boarding a tramway
This is a great success story of implementing an idea box solution and obtaining key results.
Now might be the right time to choose an idea management platform and harness the power of collective intelligence.
Are you ready?
What is Agorize?
Agorize is the most comprehensive innovation management platform, supported by a team of experts and community of innovators. For over a decade, we’ve been providing technology powered by a community of 5 million innovators to foster change and accelerate innovation. Our clients and partners worldwide crowdsource, evaluate and develop solutions from startups, employees, developers and students using Agorize.
We’ve helped over 300 global enterprise companies in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, including Enterprise Singapore, Huawei, Microsoft, LVMH, PepsiCo, Bayer, Schneider Electric, Hitachi, L’Oréal and many more by running their innovation programs.
What is an idea box?
Agorize IDEA BOX is an ideation management platform that helps organizations collect, assess and develop ideas from their employees or external communities. It’s an all-in-one solution with features to simplify the process of crowdsourcing ideas, so ideation can be accelerated and improved. Individuals or teams can submit ideas, which can then be evaluated by peers or experts on the platform through grades or virtual investments.
Then, the best ideas can be further developed with the input of others through feedback and comments. Our IDEA BOX solution is popular amongst HR and innovation leaders at enterprise companies. IDEA BOX allows HR leaders to engage employees across teams and countries to contribute valuable ideas and collaborate. As such, positively contributing to the company culture, employee satisfaction and retention and overall ROI.
On the other hand, IDEA BOX supports innovation leaders in solving problem statements by opening up to the relevant communities they want to engage, such as customers, employees or other innovators.
