Driving business growth through an idea management platform

Are organizations embracing a speak-up culture?

When employees share new ideas and bring up concerns or problems, organizations improve, innovate and perform better. It sounds obvious, yet speak-up culture is still not in the DNA of many employers. Are employees given a voice and encouraged to participate in continuous improvement (CI) processes?

Harvard Business Review found that managers are often stuck in their ways of working, identify with the status quo, and fear listening to contrary thoughts. They are not empowered to act on information and focus on short-term performance instead of a long-term vision for the company’s evolution.

How can employers promote collective intelligence and engagement within their teams and stakeholders? How can they facilitate their internal and external ecosystems to express ideas and collect all the promising ones?

It should be on the organizational level, and the first step is to rely on technology. This facilitates collective intelligence development through ideation platforms for ideation sessions.

Idea management platform as a resource for business growth

What is ideation and idea management software? You might think ideation is a new concept. However, the first records of this word come from the 1800s, and the first known use of ideation was in 1818. The verb ideate is recorded earlier, in the 1600s, and has a Greek origin, meaning “model,” “pattern,” or “notion.”

As you can see, ideation has long been part of our society, even if it sounds like a buzzword. However, we live in a dynamic world where collective intelligence, like everything else, needs to go to the next level.

Generating new ideas can be accomplished through various ideation techniques. Brainstorming, mind mapping, storyboarding, and prototyping help employers continuously improve their processes.

It is an integral part of the design thinking process that cannot be ignored in our fast-paced world. If done right, ideation helps founders and executives determine the right problem.

Are companies equipped with the right resources for ideation?

How to manage ideas in an organized and centralized way? The best way is to choose a user-friendly platform accessible to all employees.

For example, global companies like 3M, Google, HP, Intel, Lego, Microsoft, or Nestlé look for continuous improvement and, sometimes, a crisis response through ideation sessions on idea management platforms.

These companies are open to acting, experimenting, adapting, and learning daily to make great ideas a reality. This is a crucial explanation as to why they have been among the leading companies when it comes to innovation.

Nestlé’s InGenius for genius results

Nestlé’s Global Employee Innovation Accelerator – InGenius – engaged more than 65.000 employees. The Swiss multinational food and drink processing corporation generated 7.000 ideas through an internal contest, bringing new digitally powered solutions to life, such as food products and packaging.

According to Nick De Blasio, head of employee innovation at Nestlé, “the impact of crowdsourcing ideas is phenomenal. They started with a bottom-up open innovation process for IT to solve Supply Chain issues six years ago.

Now, it has grown to accelerate business innovation in new products, services, sustainable packaging, manufacturing, and agriculture. Over 60.000 employees have directly contributed to innovations so far. Same employees made new global connections, learned new skills, and solved problems together.

It’s unleashing the creative potential of our people, and in these volatile times, we all need this more than ever.”

Any reason not to opt for an idea management solution?

Idea management platform delivers impressive ROI for Orange

Orange – a leader in European telecommunications, is an excellent example of ideation and its successful financial outcome.

A Harvard Business Review found that within three years of implementing a collaborative ideation platform for employees and stakeholders, the intranet site Orange produced more than €600 million in earnings or savings.

Successful ideation story from Centrica - multinational energy supplier

Idea management software is easy to set up, cost-effective, and easy to maintain. Many companies use it and Centrica – a British multinational energy supplier – is no exception.

The company increased the number of ideas and realized over €4 million in cost savings from one of its implemented ideas. Isn’t that inspiring?

RATP - transportation company implements idea management platform

RATP, the world’s 5th largest transportation group, uses idea box – an idea management platform for continuous improvement processes.

Individual contributions by all employees were encouraged. That includes clients facing employees like drivers who don’t have a work computer. The internal jury selected 32 ideas from 79 proposals. Several have already been deployed, including:

A mobile app allowing colleagues to exchange schedules
A system that optimizes the driver’s view of passengers boarding a tramway

This is a great success story of implementing an idea box solution and obtaining key results.

Now might be the right time to choose an idea management platform and harness the power of collective intelligence.

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Driving business growth through an idea management platform

Driving business growth through an idea management platform

Table of Contents

Are organizations embracing a speak-up culture?

Idea management platform as a resource for business growth

Are companies equipped with the right resources for ideation?

Nestlé’s InGenius for genius results

Idea management platform delivers impressive ROI for Orange

Successful ideation story from Centrica - multinational energy supplier