From a creative and innovative point of view – yes, it sounds pretty boring ;-) But, most would agree that a bit of structure and system could benefit you when seeking new ideas – and keeping track of them!
In our new idea management system, Nosco App, we have pulled in experiences from working with numerous customers the past couple of years and, admittedly, we didn’t get these great customers by proposing an idea database to them. All of them were focusing on the power of being able to collect ideas amongst their employees, customers, partners, etc. and being able to quickly determine which ideas to move into projects. But, as they went along, they soon realized that the value created in this process needed to be structured and systematized – and most of all they realized that they didn’t have a uniform space/database for this purpose … but now they had one. Some quickly investigated how/where ideas resided in their company, and the results were quite astonishing: everywhere from personal laptops, mobile devices, spreadsheets, simple pieces of papers, memory sticks and “skunk-work” databases, to external social media tools and “somewhere” on the intranet – and many more! Now, besides the security/IPR aspect of this “anarchy”, a much more serious matter comes to the surface:
“If all this mess is the basis of choosing which ideas we decide to move further, how are we certain that we pick the right ones?!”
Together with many of our customers, we have now created possibilities in Nosco App, so that collecting ideas is just as seamless as usual, and added to that the database layer ensures that ideas reside in one place – whether they are moved further or not. From there you can now start to periodically evaluate your “idea base”, clone “old” ideas with fresh ones to make both better, maybe even set out a policy that your “idea base” needs – at all times – to contain minimum xxx ideas!
So, when starting out with Idea Management, you can actually get the first big win by structuring and systematizing your existing ideas instead of allowing them to be stored in a random manner…..and why not start out by getting your own version of Nosco App by getting a free trial period ?!
