Nurture Ideas with Improvement Software

Discounting the time we sleep, we spend more than 50% of our time working. While working, many of us think of ideas about ways to improve that work.  Often, it’s not generating ideas that we struggle with, but rather, we have difficulty finding a productive way to share these ideas with anyone other than our co-workers in the breakroom.  It might be fun to share ideas this way, but it’s not particularly useful in terms of improving the organization.

An idea is like a seed.  If it is not nurtured and given the right environment in which to grow, it will wither and die. Good leaders recognize that there are seeds of creativity in every employee, and strive to nurture those seeds.  Part of the process of cultivating ideas is finding a way to share the ideas in a consistent, productive way, so that they can grow and thrive.

Some organizations try to encourage creative participation by implementing a suggestion box methodology, but often, these boxes are where good ideas ideas go to die.  We write our idea down, pop it in the suggestion box, and we never hear about it again.  We’re lucky if anyone reads it, much less does anything about it. There’s no visibility, no follow through, and no impact measurement in suggestion boxes.  In fact they often do more harm than good, as asking for ideas and then ignoring them is worse than not asking for them in the first place.

In modern companies with successful cultures of innovation and improvement, the traditional suggestion box is abandoned in favor of idea software that provides a platform for cross-functional collaboration.  This process of enabling collaboration weeds out the weak ideas, and helps to successfully cultivate the strong ones.  Idea software provides the visibility for employees and management into the progress and impact of the improvement, and enables recognition and reward to the people responsible for initiating the improvement.

There are two main types of  Idea Software available:

1. Ideation
   
   Focuses on community voting on new product ideas.  Ideation Software might implement 2% or fewer of ideas, as these solutions are looking for the next big thing.
   
2. Kaizen / Lean
   
   Focuses on continuous improvement process to enable small teams to make incremental improvement on their immediate work environment, which can include product changes and/or innovations.  Kaizen or Lean Software that focuses on incremental or continuous improvement might implement 80-90% of ideas created.

It is important when choosing Idea Software that attention is given to what issue is being addressed.  Are we looking for the next big thing, or trying to empower every employee by implementing a collaboration platform that supports a culture of continuous incremental improvement?

Whatever the issue being addressed, Idea Software will help make it happen.