When organisations
are considering investing in social collaboration tools, one of the use cases
that often appeals most to senior executives is idea management, and the
prospect of crowd-sourcing new and exciting business opportunities simply by
making the process of capturing and developing ideas more effective. I
published a great case study on this a few years back, looking at global
engineering and construction firm Mota-Engil's implementation of a customised version of Telligent's social collaboration platform to create a more accessible channel for surfacing ideas, and a
more structured way of taking these ideas through to realisation.
When you think about
it, idea management - or "innovation management", or
"ideation", as it is also known - is almost a perfect activity for
social collaboration. The goal is to create an open, democratic environment
where anyone can suggest ideas, perhaps for a more efficient way of doing
something, or for a new product or service, for example, and everyone else has
the opportunity to see these ideas, to comment on them, to rate or vote on
them, allowing the most popular/successful/viable to bubble to the top.
Of course, it's
rarely as easy as that; the reality is that, like any social community, it
takes a lot of community management effort to drive adoption, promote
involvement and encourage participation throughout the process. But equally, if
the organisation is committed to the process, it can be a great way to show
employees, customers or partners how important their opinion, knowledge and
experiences are to the organisation.
Because this is very
much a two-way street: not only is the organisation benefiting from the ideas
that are created here (and let's be clear, there is potentially a LOT in this
for the organisation), but it's an opportunity to strengthen the relationships
between the organisation and its employees, and/or its customers and partners,
depending who the community is for. From an employee's perspective, such a
programme enables them to contribute to the organisation's strategy and
direction, but it also gives them an opportunity to contribute in areas where
they might have skills and expertise outside the scope of their day-to-day
role. As well as enabling them to feel more engaged, it could open up new
opportunities for them, elsewhere in the business. For customers and partners,
being able to influence the organisation's direction can help to cement that
relationship, which is beneficial to both parties.
In Mota-Engil's
case, the project went far beyond simply taking advantage of social
collaboration technologies, implementing formal processes for managing the
projects that were created from the innovation community, and after just seven
months saw the number of formal innovation projects double. An interesting
takeaway from their experience was how valuable new employees can be in
identifying potential opportunities; we tend to assume that the most
knowledgeable and experienced can contribute the most, but this fresh
perspective is often an invaluable injection of life into the most established
and unchallenged of processes.
Do you use an idea
management platform in your organisation, and if so what has your experience
been? I'm keen to hear from anyone with an interest in this area, so please get in touch or leave a comment.
#Collaboration