The phases of an idea management process at EXINN Technology Center refer to:
Idea genesis and gathering: it implies and encourages participation of all employees. Developing ideas by supporting collaboration, rating, voting. Requesting ideas related to a specific topic. Managers can see the ideas that are being collected and used for the company’s benefit for short or long term;
Idea evaluation and selection: it means to share the ideas, experiences and to make decisions in a collaborative manner which can help in developing idea further, recommending it for implementation; Idea feedback and recognition: the feedback is necessary not only from the other employees but also from the managerial team which has to identify the owner of the idea and to recognize his/her effort;
Idea implementation: the recommended idea is part of current or future innovation activities. Allocating resources to the ideas and the implementation of them. Making successful stories as lessons learned for the organization;
Idea bank: keeping the ideas for future use, it is about the successful ideas and their implementation for learning.
At EXINN, we focus our employees’ creative efforts around specific organizational goals and objectives. Our research shows that when employees are asked to generate ideas or suggestions around a specific business problem or objective, the quantity and quality of ideas tends to increase significantly.
At EXINN, we encourage employees to capture all of their ideas. We do not like our employees to rarely capture their ideas and to loose their “eurakas!”. Our Idea management system can collect ideas from all areas of the organisation, not just specialised departments like R&D and marketing.
By placing ideas in a shared repository, this methodology promotes greater transparency.
Our Idea management system helps us to share the best practices.
It helps us to increase our speed to market and to capitalise on our best ideas faster. EXINN does this by providing a structured process for evaluating ideas and selecting the best for implementation, and by providing a set of checks and balances to make sure the all ideas are promptly reviewed and evaluated.
