Where Do Your New Ideas Come From?

Where does your next innovation in your business come from? Have you been innovating over the last couple of years or have things been status quo in your business? Times are tough these days with the recession and many organizations are having a difficult time keeping their heads above water. Other companies however are surviving and exceeding expectations. In reality these organizations have chosen not to participate in the recession. What are these companies doing that you may not be doing. They are investing in their future through innovation.

You may ask yourself how are they doing this? Where do the ideas come from? How are they staying ahead of the game? The answer may be closer to you than you think! Many organizations today have an entirely untapped idea repository right in their back yard. Each and every person that works for the organization is a living and breathing innovation factory!

Granted not every idea that everyone comes up with is the next billion dollar idea. But if you combine enough of these ideas together and brainstorm within the organization you can mine those one or two nuggets that may well transform your organization. The key to harvesting these innovative ideas is to create an easy process and shift the culture your organization.

This is exactly what we are doing at SummitQwest. We are tapping into our deep wealth of knowledge and breadth of experience in our employees. We have created a process for the submission and review of any idea that our employee base has come up with and they are delivered to our dedicated business innovation team. During the process we keep the innovator informed of where their idea is and let them know what the good and bad are of the idea. Everyone knows not all ideas will make it through to implementation final implementation. But many of the ideas that are being submitted can be used directly by our existing organization to streamline process and/or help our customers save money or improve their products.

The part that takes a lot of nurturing is the culture. Each employee must change their way of looking at their work and think outside of the box. Innovating is often a process of asking yourself is there a better way to do this? Why am I doing something in this particular way? Can I make this better or improve it? In the beginning of the innovation process everyone is on board the program. But after time people can easily revert back to their existing practices and ways. In order to combat and help shift the daily culture to one of innovation, we regularly conduct brainstorming sessions to help mine those nuggets of information that people may not have thought could be an innovation. Innovation is not a onetime thing, it is an ongoing process that must be nurtured and grown over time.

We at SummitQwest have chosen not to participate in this recession. We have chosen to innovate and drive our organization forward by tapping the vast knowledge of our employees. The ideas that are harvested from within the organization will be fueling our new products and services to our customers in the near future and for years to come. Maybe you should look into your organization and mine some nuggets!

Tom Schraer
SummitQwest