Ideation in corporation

What is the correct scheme to develop innovation in an organization? The corporate innovation scheme needs to be based on diverse elements in order to meet several goals. It is necessary to build a constructive and evolutionary workflow which meets corporate as well as creativity needs.

1. Influence of corporate management: it is clear it is not possible to enable any process change in an organization without the support from Top/Senior/Executive management. Only they can ensure the whole environment will use and follow the workflow, establish goals for innovation, define resources, communicate at a proper level, select creative ideas, establish rewards scheme.
2. Enforce idea generation: it is necessary to enforce creativity by setting up proper work environment, create collaboration around ideas (an Idea Management System will help you to share constructively ideas), push individually as well as corporate initiatives.
3. Evaluate Ideas: a good evaluation needs to be conducted. This will consist in idea, criteria, risk, Return on Investment, impact on organization evaluation. To do so, it is necessary to define from the beginning the roles inside your workflow: who should review the idea? Who should decide to get an idea transform in project? This may impose the creation of Review / Approval boards which need to meet regularly.
4. Control outputs: it is mandatory to define from the beginning what could be the output of such a workflow. Does it always mean an idea will be transform in a project?...
5. Maintenance: do not forget, as well as any other workflow, the idea management workflow needs to be maintained. It is then important to report and monitor the results and identify pain points. The workflow needs to continuously evolve to meet and answer corporate needs (change in organization...)

Do not forget to get an effective workflow, people need to feel involve in your process. If they undergo, they will not like it and may be reluctant to any improvement.

Thibaut