You’ve heard it a thousand times: companies need to be innovating in order to survive. The Googles and the Apples of the world are doing it- Google famously used to require employees to dedicate 20% of their time to innovation. But what exactly does it take to create a sustainable innovation program, especially if they are in an industry that is traditionally risk averse? With the right forward thinking, willing executive leadership team, incorporating innovation into the corporate fiber is possible. When done right, this will have a significant impact on your bottom line. Here’s how:

Be open to change Scary for many yes, but necessary? Absolutely. Changing a company’s cultural DNA doesn’t have to be as painful as it sounds. Incorporating innovation, however, does mean that the long-tenured, restricting business model needs to be revaluated and restructured to support a more open business standard. Open business models allow for both the creation and capturing of value.

According to Henry Chesbrough, author of Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape, “Open Models create value by leveraging many more ideas, due to their inclusion of a variety of external concepts.” 1 Breaking down internal silos to uncover game-changing ideas is the only way to get ahead and stay ahead of the curve.

Embrace social media as a vehicle to facilitate communication

The Millenials aren’t coming. They’re already here. As the global workforce begins to be inundated with young, tech-savvy professionals, corporations are going to have to embrace the reality that, whether they like it or not, the world has gone social. As people are leveraging social channels for personal forms of communication and entertainment, social has found a place in the enterprise too. As the introduction of social outlets has increased connectivity and fostered communities of creativity within the workplace, organizations

Activate your crowd Foster a community for realizing corporate success. By pulling knowledge from the edge of your employee and/ or customer communities to the core of your company where actionable ideas are executed, you are extracting invaluable data that will improve your business. According to Gartner, “engaging a large community of employees to

are starting to see that breaking down silos has its positives. According to Forrester, “the larger trend toward enterprise 2.0 and the emerging social enterprise is inextricably bound to the drive toward innovation.” 2 Social for social’s sake, though, is no longer considered viable in the enterprise. Adopt a platform that provides structured innovation capabilities that leverages social dynamics, game mechanics and crowd science algorithms to help solve specific innovation needs. Finding that next billion-dollar idea is easier than it seems.

generate [ideas] will be best achieved with an event-based or ongoing crowdsourcing initiative.” 3 Incorporating engaging game mechanics such as incentives and rewards (whether they be monetary or not) will act as a motivator for the crowd to innovate and create productive change.

5 WAYS TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION PROGRAM

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Listen Your employees are your greatest assets. You’ve hired them for a reason; why not leverage their knowledge and creativity to better your company? As you may already be aware, people’s abilities and passions aren’t always being tapped within their day job role. Good ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, and at anytime. According to Gartner,

“intellectual capital is a key driver of economic value for every company, and that as such, it must be identified, created, managed, measured and leveraged.” 4 By engaging with your crowd to discover new business insights, you are creating future success for your company while simultaneously reinforcing employee satisfaction.

Incorporate an effective tool to manage the influx of ideas 5

You wanted ideas and you got them. Companies who

have gotten over the hump of executive disbelief that they are capable of creating a successful, scalable innovation community, are then tasked with another challenge: once they realize they have the ideas, they then need to find an innovation platform that effectively elicits and manages the valuable data that is captured. According to Gartner, “today, 80 percent of a company’s information is unstructured data.” 4 Sure, a large piece of creating a thriving innovation eco-system involves executive buy-in, strategic alignment and a willingness to step outside of the box; however, once you’re there, you need a way to sort the ideas and separate the good ideas from the not- so-good ideas. Implementing an intuitive solution that is easy-to-use, scalable, and robust is imperative. Innovation doesn’t have to be as abstract a notion as some attempt

to claim. The process of innovation, when approached effectively and with purpose, can have a tremendous effect of a company’s long-term success. Global industry and government leaders such as AT&T, Pfizer, UnitedHealth Group, and the U.K. Government are just a few examples of successfully implemented innovation programs. Tapping into your crowd allows for internal cross-functional teams or external customer communities to aid in the establishment of company plans, deliverables and measurable objectives. Engaging in crowd-enabled innovation allows organizations to harness the social capital within their communities and pinpoint the ideas that drive revenue and generate cost savings. You’ve got the resources, the ability, and the drive. Go ahead, activate your crowd today.

REFERENCES 1 Henry Chesbrough, “Open Business Models: How to Thrive In The New Innovation Landscape,” Harvard Business School Press, 2006, Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data, accessed August 15, 2011. 2 Rob Koplowitz et. al, “Disciplined Social Innovation,” Forrester, Aug. 30, 2010, Forrester.com, accessed August 15, 2011. 3 Kathy Harris, “Use Innovation Network Design to Unleash Open Innovation,” Gartner, Feb. 28, 2011, Gartner.com, accessed August 15, 2011. 4 Tom Austin et. al, “Introducing the High-Performance Workplace: Improving Competitive Advantage and Employee Impact,” Gartner, May 16, 2005, Gartner.com, accessed August 15, 2011.

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Spigit crowdsourcing software helps companies engage internal and external crowds in innovation, using patented algorithms, game mechanics, and crowd-derived data to identify and analyze the most valuable ideas, predict their potential business value, and assess challenges. Spigit’s sophisticated, user-friendly interface powers engagement and ideation, amplifying a company’s ability to innovate faster, more often, and better than competitors. Our mobile-first platform offers simultaneous releases in 11 languages and four global data centers, allowing for real-time, global innovation that is safe, scalable, and repeatable. Spigit’s 4.5M users from 150+ countries have generated over $1B from their enterprise innovation programs.

SPIGIT | San Francisco, CA, USA | spigit.com | hello@spigit.com | (Sales) 1-855-774-4480

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