Harvesting Innovative Ideas

Debasis is a project management consultant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

  Communications Management   Innovation  

This article uses the concept from the author's previous two articles on innovation: Seeking Innovation: Providing the Platform for Ideas to Flow and From Negativity to Innovation: Tapping into Employee Criticism.

A new innovation drive has been running in an organization for nearly a year and half. When it first started, management was happy to see an initial gush of mails hitting the account--one specifically created to welcome ideas. It was a good start. It was clear to management--even years earlier--that the organization had to be innovative. Previous attempts at getting the concept across had not been very effective--management had mentioned the need to involve all employees, but had not shown enough interest in the whole process.

Earlier attempts had led to a few ideas being passed from some of the employees. The ideas bubbled up to top management when they were mentioned by senior or mid-level managers in general review meetings. During assessment of the dismal performance of previous attempts, management was able to ascertain that the channel for communicating ideas upward was not robust and flexible enough. This time around, they took that into consideration and created a drop box for mails--and provided a portal with forum functionality.

A small task force of middle and top management officials was created to receive and evaluate ideas that were expected…

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