If you have creative people in your organization (and trust me, you do), then you may find yourself with TOO MANY solutions. This is why suggestion boxes (physical or online) do not work.

Therefore you need to move from suggestion boxes (give us your solution to everything) to a campaign-driven approach (we want your best ideas for specific high-priority problems).

Management first determines the most critical issues to be solved, and then they send out the challenge to the organization. This focuses the creative energies of your people on the most critical opportunities. Campaigns are typically time-based and last only a few weeks. This creates a sense of urgency and entices people to contribute. Be sure to implement the best ideas and reward the organization for their contributions.

When issuing campaigns to the organization, here are some simple guidelines for each step of the innovation process:

Step #1: Define Opportunity

• Clarify problem statement
• Define selection criteria
• Seed campaign with obvious solutions
• Define rewards
• Select VP sponsor, campaign owner and evaluation team
• Allocate implementation resources

Step #2: Find Solutions

• Run campaign for 2 or 3 weeks, with 1 week off
• Provide links to creativity toolkits
• Capture the following information:
  o Idea name
  o Description
  o Value
  o Implementation complexity
  o How idea was derived
• Reward contributions

Step #3: Strengthen, Select and Plan

• Evaluate against evaluation
• Create shortlist of 15 – 20 ideas
• Rank shortlist ideas:
  o Platinum: Game change
  o Gold: High impact
  o Silver: Moderate impact or quick win
  o Bronze: Archive

Step #4: Implement

• Commit to implementing at least one silver idea from every campaign
• Assemble task team for ideas requiring additional review (Platinum & Gold)
• Implement top 1-3 ideas selected
• Consider creating a Program Management Office to monitor progress on implementations and the value achieved