A dot-com anomaly?
USATODAY.com – The search engine that could
This article about Google evokes deja vu. Sounds like 1999. This company–whose name is now a verb as well–seems to have succeeded in the freewheeling dot-com style that is anathema in business circles now. But it still suggests that a highly innovative environment and success can go together.
Conference: Idea Management/Imaginatik
At the Innovation Conference I attended, Hallmark Cards, Inc., presented their Keepsake Ornaments case study on Idea Management. They worked with Imaginatik and their online Idea Central product. Mark Turrell, CEO of Imaginatik, also spoke.
Some initial steps Hallmark took at the outset of their Innovation project:
* Obtained Senior Management approval.
* Set a clear goal (develop new products in their Keepsake line), timeline, and budget ($5MM).
* appointed a “SWAT” Team to tackle the project.
* Identified potential obstacles to the online Idea Management concept.
The general process is:
1. Idea Generation - they used clear, fill-in-the blanks forms that helped idea providers give their ideas consistenctly and completely.
2. Concept Development - developed criteria and evaluated ideas against it; built upon strongest ideas.
3. Concept Actualization - prototypes developed for consumer test.
4. Product Testing
Hallmark deemed the project a success. 17 product ideas made it protype; 15 of them rated superior and different; three leading to new sub-brands for Keepsakes. They retained the 250 ideas originally submitted for further use.
Focusing the Innovation Process
“Leading-edge innovators have learned that, rather than generating lots of ideas, they can derive more benefit from a targeted event driven process that will enable them to capture the best ideas related to an specific issue”
“Targeted and bounded programs produce better results than open-ended idea collection systems”
“A seeming paradox of innovation is that most useful ideas originate from a structured process rather than random occurrences of creativity”
Gartner Group 2002
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