When people ask for my advice on how to improve their innovation programs, one thing I usually suggest is to do away with their organization’s suggestion schemes and tear down the idea boxes. Why? Because it’s too tempting to substitute these methods in place of real innovation that adds customer and organizational value. And they can do more harm than good, in my opinion. Here are 10 reasons suggestion schemes and idea boxes fail.1. Lack of Training. Suggestion schemes assume that employees know how to generate innovative ideas on their own. In most companies, employees are not provided with the proper training (tools and methods) to understand how to generate valuable ideas.2. Incremental Innovation. Without proper training, employees tend to only generate ideas related to their immediate sphere of influence, ad mostly related to process improvement. While these ideas shouldn’t be ignored, they won’t ever lead to breakthrough innovation.
3. Irrelevant to Customer Needs. Most suggestion schemes don’t provide a model to understand customer outcomes and expectations (voice of the customer) related to the ideas.
4. Irrelevant to Organizational Needs. Idea boxes don’t ensure alignment between the ideas and business strategy. Some ideas submitted are important to the company, some are not.
5. Too Many Ideas and Poor Processes. The suggestion box collects ideas. Although some are processed, others are not. Over time, the suggestion box will have more ideas than can be managed by an innovation manager.
6. Wrong Motivation. In many cases, suggestion schemes are made for disgruntled employees who need a way to vent. The result is a very narrow set of ideas from only a small percentage of the population.
7. Overwhelmed Managers. Because suggestion boxes are not transparent, many ideas are submitted by several employees at the same time. An unpopular policy or faulty process can lead to a deluge of almost identical ideas, leaving the innovation manager overwhelmed.
8. Lack of Transparency. A suggestion box is not transparent. Employees cannot see their ideas once they are in the box and do not know what is happening to their ideas. This is demotivating.
9. Lack of Oversight. In many cases, all the suggestions are processed by the same person. This person may not always recognize the potential of a powerful idea, particularly if it is outside of his/her area of expertise.
10. Wrong Message. Idea boxes and suggestion schemes send the wrong message to employees. They encourage limited, anonymous ideation in isolation and without any feedback, as opposed to open and collaborative ideation that leads to breakthrough innovation and adds real value.
What’s your experience with these methods for idea generation? Leave a comment…
About Kamal Hassan
This subject deserv es much more discussion than these top 10. Suggestion programs are encouraged throughout the world as has been my experience, and several of these ‘reasons for failure’ deserver merit, but some do not, primarily because any half decent suggestion program would have ameliorated those risks.
1.Wrong Motivation: That depends on the intent. I believe an empowerment and an encouragement process such as is included in a sound LEAN deployment, will direct motivation through to great ideas. However, we have a secondary program called “Customer comments” which accepts ideas, but basicalli is aimed at fedback for services provided, thus encouraging complaints and kudos. We have active particpation in both. to the author’s point, the 1st one lends to the transparency , and the second only allows for it. The good news is, we take action and publish resolution to the masses if the issue is sign ificant enough even if the concern was expressed anonymously. This customer comments program is baseed on using boxes postred around the sites.
2. Lack of training. This is true even if one has a transparent encouraging program. It is essential to help people understand what might be considered an area to target by clarifying expectations, tools, and even resources.
3. Absolutely. Breakthrough Innnovation is incremental to companies I’ve been a part of, for several reasons, most relating to change management. Folks may be ready for the iseas, but not for the execution, as it relates to breaking down barriers.
4. Any good suggestion program will have VOC at its core. This hsould be a given.
5. Relevancy to organizational needs can be established as rules for consideration of the suggestions. Still, good ideas ideas are best percolated in teams., and if not made transparent, could get lost and create a dienchantment with the program, points noted in 8,9, and 10 of the list.
6. and 7. relate to overburden, to which I say that’s just a failurer of management to adminstrate such a program. It is no more than an excuse. A good program will have adequate management of reviews and responses. Challenging? Sure, but very manageable, in m any ways. This in fact, is whythis subject cries for more attention. Suggestion Programs have 3 distinct phases, as I see it. 1. Design, 2. Management/Leadership (need both) and 3. Adminstration. If these are all great, the program will be great.