Innovation drives the sacred P’s—productivity and profit. It is the hot topic, not just for products and business processes, but across the organization. Innovation isn’t always earth-shaking or about the next big thing, but large or small, it’s always better. Companies spend big bucks on innovation assistance, hiring top consultants, going on special retreats, etc.

The problem is that that usually taps only the higher levels of the company and can limit innovation based on the company’s financial resources.

What you want is a simple, inexpensive way to tap the creativity in your people; the same people who are constantly dealing with your products, processes and customers, know them intimately and frequently have innovative ideas or can ask creativity-provoking questions that are just as valuable.

The CEO (or top person in the department, group, whatever) must support the innovation wiki for it to succeed big time. Here’s how to do it.

Start with a wiki on your intranet or at a free host

Write a brief description of the wiki’s purpose: That you want to create a “field of dreams and innovation” for all your people to play in to take the organization to the next level.

Then add some basic ground rules tailored to your own organization:

• All ideas are welcome, no matter how outrageous or revolutionary they seem.
• No idea is too small; no subject too minor.
• Good ideas have nothing to do with position in the company hierarchy.

Next, recruit “early adopters,” those people who love to be on the bleeding edge of what ever is going on. Then create a major internal PR effort encouraging everybody’s participation. Keep the topic in the company’s public eye with constant references.

Finally, the most important ingredient to making your innovation wiki a success is to use the ideas—if you don’t use them people will lose interest very quickly—whether directly or as the springboard to something else, and publicly credit them to the originator. You may want to add some kind of incentive or award for each one used (even if the use is indirect), but it’s most important to offer major, public appreciation.

Do all this, and they will come.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2006 at 5:48 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Motivation, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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