An article from Harvard Business Review that looked at the data from 154 companies using Spigit, an idea management tool, over a five-year period, has some interesting findings regarding the ingredients for successful innovation programmes.
I have written elsewhere that innovation in companies should be more systematic (rather than haphazard and left to the “creatives”, so as to improve the chances of success) but that a process may not be the best way to achieve this. I am of the opinion that we need to create the right circumstances for serendipity, and that part of that is looking at things with fresh perspectives. Which new eyes are one way of doing. Turns out this is validated by this research.
The primary researcher, Dylan Minor, found the following when digging into this data:
- The more ideas the better
- To get more ideas:
- Involve more participants
- Create frequent “idea challenges” for employees to get the volume and create a culture of innovation. “(I)t takes five idea candidates to generate one idea that the company judges to be worth implementing”
- Have more people evaluating the ideas too!
- And — my personally biased favourite — have more diversity of people involved in the ideation activities.
A lot of these findings feel to me to be about corporate culture and creation of opportunities for “lucky accidents” to occur. I like the idea of managing innovation like an organic garden: create the conditions for growth but accept what grows may not be as we expected and that may not be an issue. But, no matter what grows in our garden, it is vital that each season, we sow, grow, harvest, prepare, repeat. Process within an eco-system.