Innovation Is Under Your Nose, Can Your Smell It (part 2)?

In an earlier post I provided several questions that can help determine how effective your organization or group are at capturing Innovative ideas and acting upon them.

I wanted to also be sure to provide you with an overview of the process you can follow to take the answers to these questions and convert them into an actionable plan. Here are the top three steps in doing so:

1. Capture: You must find a means of collective innovative ideas from all parts of the organization, both internally and externally. Our research has shown that the single most important reason organizations fail to be more innovative is because they do not effectively capture all of the ideas and opportunities that abound.

2. Assess: It is impossible and unreasonable to pursue every idea that comes along. When a means to effectively capture innovation has been found, the next step is to develop a means to assess the ideas against criteria that are important to the organization. In essence, determining a priority in which innovative ideas should be pursued. The criteria differ for each organization, however can include considerations such as investment, resources or time. For a more thorough list of criteria, send an email to shawn@casemoreandco.com with the title “List of Innovative Assessment Criteria.”

3. Action Planning: Once ideas have been captured, assessed and prioritized, action planning is required to capture the “What/By Who/By When.” More specifically:

What are we going to do? (this might be one or multiple steps)

Who is responsible? (every action needs someone accountable for completion)

When will this be complete? (to be effective, every action must be brought to completion).

So there you have it, a complete guide to capturing Innovation in your organization. Now, what are you waiting for? Get out there and innovate!

© Shawn Casemore 2013. All rights reserved.