“The key is to choose the things that you think are really important and then focus on them like a laser.” – Jeff Bezos, founder and president of Amazon.com
Of all the ways of discovering new ideas, the Walt Disney Company during the Eisner years had one of the most unconventional methods. Modeled after a 1970s television show, Disney’s “Gong Show” was a huge hit with grassroots employees. Three times a year, Eisner and two of his top lieutenants would spend a day listening to anyone (secretaries, set designers, theme park employees) who wanted to pitch an idea. 40 people were allowed to act out, present or imitate his idea until a loud gong indicated that time was up. Then, after all the ideas were aired, Eisner and his managers discussed each one and made a decision.
A bit unorthodox, yes, but it worked amazingly well. According to Peter Schneider, president of Disney functions at the time, most of Disney’s animated films originated from these sessions, as did the idea of Disney retail stores. Most organizations don’t invite ideas with such flair. They also don’t provide instant feedback or make quick yes-or-no decisions. “In most companies there is no obvious strategy for selecting or even evaluating ideas,” concludes the American Management Association survey of 1,356 global managers. Almost half (48%) of those surveyed reported that their companies “do not have a standard policy for evaluating ideas.” The next most common answer? About 17% said that they use an “independent review and evaluation process”, while 15% said that “the ideas were evaluated by the manager of the unit where the idea was proposed.”
An effective selection process connects your “idea funnel” with your “idea pipeline.” Without him, this victory is serendipitous, hierarchical, and daunting for aspiring innovators.
Advantages of a robust selection process
When working with companies just beginning their innovation journey, I often hear managers say that they have “too many ideas, not too few.” How can you have too many good ideas, I’ll ask you. After a more in-depth discussion, what often becomes clear is that they have too many half-done incremental ideas out there that are going nowhere quickly. “It seems we never kill an idea” is a comment I hear often. What this indicates is that there is no established mechanism, nor a review board or committee, to screen, classify, reject, encourage, prioritize, and ultimately “green light” ideas. As Yogi Berra would say, “if you don’t know where you are going, you will probably end up somewhere else.”
It takes 80 to 100 raw ideas to find one or two that are promising enough to follow. So the task of the selection team is to identify one or two, but without demoralizing those whose ideas are not accepted. The selection team serves not only as an evaluation body, but also as a teaching vehicle. At Disney, regular contributors overcame shyness and fear of rejection to show up to the boss and sell their ideas. Why? Because they knew they would receive a fair, if brief, hearing and at least honest feedback on why their idea was not selected. When employees see that their ideas will get a fair hearing, they start to think of more. At Google, Marissa Mayer and a core team of managers meet several times a week to hear an endless stream of new ideas. Google employees have up to five minutes to propose the next GMail, Froogle, Search, or Google Earth. If you are shy, you can submit it through your company’s intranet idea management system. When it comes to selection, there is no one size fits all. Your method should only fit your culture and create transparency for aspiring intrapraneurs.
Establishing criteria is essential
Most companies never get to explain the type of ideas they are looking for, so their criteria are unclear. Without judgment, every idea is of equal value, leading to bottlenecks and battles for scarce resources and inertia. “People never give up their favorite ideas at this company,” is another comment I often hear.
Well-conceived criteria, on the other hand, can be used to get people to think big, to stretch them. GE CEO Jeff Immelt requires each division to produce three imaginative breakthroughs per year – game-changing ideas that will create entirely new business models or product lines with $ 100 million in top-of-the-line revenue within three years. Selection criteria are best when they are simple and memorable; they are most valuable when they are widely understood throughout the organization. At WL Gore & Associates, the criteria have been narrowed down to three words: Real, Win, Worth. Is the opportunity real? Can we win with that in the market? Is it worth pursuing?
At Bank of America, the selection teams in each business unit evaluate ideas using a highly publicized scorecard. Using a simple score of zero to five, ideas are evaluated on dimensions such as: ease of implementation, associated impact, customer satisfaction, and of course, revenue potential. At a technology company, the criteria were narrowed down to five questions:
1. Does this idea fit our innovation strategy? 2. Does it create new value for our customers? 3. Is there a demand for this innovation? 4. Will management support you? 5. Can the solution be rated?
Get the right people on the recruitment team
Unfortunately, recruitment teams often end up made up of people who have little or no contact with customers and market needs, and who have little understanding of innovation. Setting smart criteria is essential, but those applying the criteria to real ideas must also realize the limits of the criteria, especially for radical innovation ideas. For example, if the criteria ask whether there is “demand for this new product / service”, it might be easy to say no. But game-changing innovations – the cell phone, the Post-it Note, the Internet – always create demand. And customers don’t know what they want until they see it and use it. So while selection criteria are critical, so is having the right people on your selection / review team to make intuitive judgments.
The conduct of the selection team should not discourage the flow of new ideas, but should encourage greater participation. Team members should be perceived as unbiased, entrepreneurial (in touch with markets and customer needs), and adept at building ideas for themselves rather than simply judging. Selection meetings should be interactive sessions where the focus is on the questions and unknowns as well as the answers, both in the level of passion and commitment and the level of experience of the individual suggesting the idea. At a large global bank I worked with earlier this decade, we established Magnet Teams in each country where the bank operated to conduct brainstorming and monitor compliance and risk management issues. At one point, we started hearing complaints that these teams were acting more like cops than coaches who were helping you stick to the rules but also wanted you to be successful.
Implementing a selection process will not guarantee that you will find innovative ideas, but it will reduce idea stagnation and allow you, as Jeff Bezos says, “to pick things that are really important and then focus on them like a laser.” It’s no wonder that brainstorming is fast becoming an established and essential best practice for companies looking to embed innovation into their business.