Brightidea Sparks a World of Innovation
July 10, 2012 by Ann Augustine, About.com Guide, About.com Collaboration Tools
The Brighter Side of Innovation:
The technology world is propelling us to do new things. Brightidea, Inc., an innovation management software company based in San Francisco, is helping to build online innovation platforms to capture ideas for new things wherever ideas emerge.
Brightidea has helped organizations over the last decade to harness internal innovation processes. What is sparking new interest in innovation now is our transparent social networking activities that affects nearly everyone.
So, take a healthy breath as you review examples of the innovation outcomes through public innovation, employee collaboration, and peer-to-peer communities.
Public Innovation Platforms – Challenges, Incentives, and Sometimes Cash Prizes:
Suppose you have a new idea to submit into Bosch's power tools open innovation platform for professionals or DIY people. Surely you know drilling, sanding, or sawing activities create more work from wood chips and dust left behind. So in Bosch's open innovation community, the challenge assignment is given, 'do you know how to extract dust perfectly or avoid dust at all'?
Bosch, a giant in the field of automotive and industrial technology looks to improve products and perhaps egg on potential inventors. Bosch knows innovation can come with an exchange of opinion from suppliers and customers. If you're an inventor, you may consider licensing your new products or processes to companies, particularly like Bosch who have a true interest in technical innovations, similar to the company's founder, Robert Bosch, also an inventor, 126 years ago.
In another example of open innovation, General Electric's ecomagination site is a shining example of an open innovation platform that awarded $50,000 to green innovators and funded its' $500 million dollar program to help put ideas to work.
HessExpress, the independent gasoline-convenience retailer, created the Idea Bank, a public innovation community. One of the rewards for HessExpress is a new loyalty program that a customer offered in its idea challenge program. As part of the Hess Corporation, a Fortune 100 integrated energy company, the retailer not only has a strong Facebook presence, its' physical connection to customers is even greater, which helps fuel customer engagement. According to the company's report, a whopping 1.3 million customers visit Hess stores every day.
Employee Collaboration Often with Your Customers:
Because social networking has flung open the doors between departments and even regional boundaries, what we have now is greater transparency. But listening is just as important as contributing our ideas.
Brightidea's Janelle Noble, Director of Marketing, suggests Customer Service is playing a more important role than ever before. At the point of inception, when a customer is offering suggestions for product improvements or even service (no offense to agents), the innovation tools will allow an agent to take immediate action and route ideas to engineering. These integration points between people and technology help make an internal innovation process work better.
For the most part, private innovation communities, within the walls of an enterprise, are closed for the purpose of protecting the company's intellectual property. At the same time, automating the integration points between front end social tools like Yammer or Twitter, offer methods for crowdsourcing ideas in conjunction with Brightidea.
Birds of a Feather Leadership Community – Innovative Flocks and Followers:
If you're an innovation professional, the Birds of a Feather (BOF) community will be appealing because peer-to-peer relationships are built on a foundation of trust. Brightidea uses its Webstorm innovation product to help the BOF community create its own magic. BOF'smoderator, Paul Tran, Director of Business Development, helps facilitate challenges and monitor progress.
BOF members host in-person events throughout the year, typically in a company's innovation center. BOF's events are fun, like Kraft's R&D kitchen, where cooking is the central theme. What better way to get people working together than in the kitchen.
One of BOF's members, David Detlefsen, WMS Gaming innovator, submitted a relevant idea for an innovator's online dictionary. His entries seem quite on target:
Duck Hunting – Someone throws up an idea and someone else shoots it down.
Business as Usual (BAU) – The social force that prevents ideas and change from becoming a reality. For example, a person might demote an idea, 'that's interesting, but the BAU won't allow it'.
On the bright side, ideation and social collaboration are part of innovation management that is here to stay.
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