When speaking about creativity and novel ideas, it is really often that people are enthusiastic and proactive. But are we lacking of good ideas?

Don’t fear to lack of ideas. You will always have tons of « good » ideas

Having creative and novel ideas is not an issue. Put 10 people in a room for 1 day with a good methodology (stay tuned on INNOWEO for that 😉 ) and I guaranty that they will come out with at least 5 to 10 concepts that worth to look closer.
Every brainstorming session will end with a few good ideas.

Why so few see the light of the day?

The main reason why so few ideas come to reality is the lack of empowerment and the lack of responsability.

Really often at the end of a brainstorming seesion, all team members goes back in their office and nothing happens. If no one is ready to take risks for the idea, it is quite normal that very few are actually realized.

As Innovation manager it is key for us to inverse this curve and make more ideas a reality. Don’t mess you up. It means that the organisation has to support your game.

Here are my tips to guaranty that ideas are at least studied and some be saved from the dark night they are heading to.

My 5 tips

1. Find ambassadors or champions (who will drive and support the projects, from top exec to project managers, via technicians.., your champs can be everywhere in your organisation).
2. Have team members (of your creativity workshop) engaged by setting a list of actions for each of them
3. Prove the value by communicating on good results
4. increase the number of participating people: the more people involved in saving ideas,  the more ideas saved
5. Train your execs. Focus on value added and value creation to explain your execs how wonderful new ideas are. If you are successful, no more budget and resources issues 😉

Do you have more tips? Share it with us!