Carol Rozwell

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Carol Rozwell
VP Distinguished Analyst
11 years at Gartner
21 years IT industry

Carol Rozwell is a vice president and distinguished analyst on Gartner's Content, Collaboration and Social team. Ms. Rozwell explores social business strategy, including social media, social networks and collaborative communities. Read Full Bio

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Resist the Allure of the Open Suggestion Box

by Carol Rozwell  |  December 8, 2010  |  2 Comments

Even during the recession, the interest in innovation remained steady. I was somewhat surprised at this since so often an economic downturn makes companies risk averse. Instead, what we saw was a continuous stream of organizations that want to amplify their R&D efforts using insight from their own employees as well as business partners, customers and prospects. The entrepreneurial spirit was spurred on by the many organizations such as Nokia and Aflac that joined the ranks of leaders like Starbucks and Dell, whose crowdsourcing campaigns are well-known.

So why shouldn’t every organization create an ‘always on’ open suggestion box so employees can submit their ideas any time they come to mind?

Well let’s see why not.

During a recent conversation with a CIO who had been bitten by the innovation bug, it was clear that the desire to have a positive impact on business performance was there. The CIO was looking for clever ways technology could make the company more efficient and sourcing innovation sounded like a worthy place to start.

Unfortunately, when I asked key questions such as:

  • What specific problems are you trying to solve?
  • What kind of ideas do you want to source (product, service, business model, other)?
  • Who will champion the campaigns?
  • How will the ideas be evaluated and selected?
  • Who will be responsible for taking the selected ideas to the next level and reporting on the results?

It was clear that no thought had been given to these important dimensions of a successful innovation program.

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Okay, so this organization is better off saving its money and doing nothing. It doesn’t matter which innovation management tool it selects, or develops from scratch. The interest in innovation will be short-lived because the management and governance issues of innovation have not been addressed.

So resist the allure of the always on, open suggestion box until you have a plan.

2 Comments »

Category: Change management Collaboration Social networks Uncategorized     Tags: , , ,

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Ferdinand   December 12, 2010 at 6:50 pm

    Afraid to to add that ” a plan ” is not sufficcient.
    It has to be “the plan”.
    Preferably put together by top mamagement and a top professional with due experience in the “field”.
    As you mentioned, there has to be resourses allocated to run the program.

    We have such “a plan” in my company, and its hilarious even to the opinion of the blue collar worker.
    In the first three or so years the program collected around 4k ideas!
    They had to close the program because of overflow. Too much ideas and lack of (brain) resources to manage.
    We are on again after a couple of years, but only God knows ( or the devil) what are the criteria that prevail.

  • 2 Carol Rozwell   December 13, 2010 at 6:23 am

    Ferdinand,

    Thanks for sharing your experiences. Over the years, I’ve talked with many organizations that found the same thing as you describe. The employees are creative and very willing to share their ideas. But unless there is a plan to cull the good ones and implement them, there is no return on the effort expended to collect the ideas in the first place.

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