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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Blogging Innovation » 10 Reasons Why Innovation Suggestion Schemes and Idea Boxes Fail
Author: Blogging Innovation
