Don't Be An Idea Killer

‘We don’t need your idea, because do we think there is a problem in the first place?’

‘Okay, there seems to be a problem, but your idea is not the solution.’

“Okay, there is a problem, idea is good enough to deal with the issue, but it won’t work here.’

Do you hear such statements made by people around you, when you present an idea? The idea and then the mind that came up with it subsequently dies a natural death by such consecutive attacks in the form of rejections. Blowing a balloon takes time & effort, bursting it, takes a flash of a second, same is true while dealing with an idea.

Big Ideas that were mocked initially

History of innovations is replete with examples where ideas were mocked, doubted, ridiculed at first instance and which later on turned out to be some of the greatest innovations of all time. Here are few examples.

1) The ‘telephone’ was originally rejected and considered inferior to ‘telegraphy’ which was used as a means of long distance communication. When Bell offered his invention to Western Union they hastily evaluated the idea and prepared a memo which read like this.

“This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” 

2)“Who the hell wants to copy a document on plain paper???!!!” Rejection letter in 1940 to Chester Carlson, inventor of the XEROX machine. In fact, over 20 companies rejected his “useless” idea between 1939 and 1944. Even the National Inventors Council dismissed it. Today, the Xerox Corporation has an annual revenue 10.77 billion USD.

3)“The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a ‘C,’ the idea must be feasible.” A Yale university professor in response to Fred Smith’s paper, proposing reliable overnight delivery service. Smith went on to found Federal Express which has clocked in 2017, 60.32 billion USD in revenue

Why Ideas Get Killed and How you stop them from being killed?

In our innovation sessions, we often hear from participants that they put forward lots of ideas, but they just don’t pass through ‘idea to implementation’ funnel & get lost somewhere in between. 

Our simple advice to an ideator is that s/he needs to play a dual role while presenting an idea, one that of an ideator and another is that of an idea evaluator. Idea for sake of idea doesn’t help. If you haven’t thought enough on the idea you are presenting then how do you expect others to do your job and grant budget or support in its implementation.

We have seen in ‘Habit 4’ that all the innovative solutions often lead closer to an ideal state, where benefits of an idea / solution for both the customers and provider far outweighs the cost and detriment associated with it. As an ideator you need to put down under each of these categories (Benefits, Cost and Harm) ideas which will help organisation to consider for going with the idea. This is a must. You may want to ‘idea storm’ with your own team before presenting it to the approver. This exercise will help your approver get a confidence in your idea and he is likely to give it its first chance for serious consideration. He may also later become your collaborator in its implementation. 

Here are some simple steps to sell your idea 

1) The first step obviously is to ask yourself, do you really believe in your idea or it has just come up in one of your ideation sessions without having put enough thought to it. The other thing is to ask ‘what problem does the idea addresses?’ here we need to understand problem as a gap between ‘What organisation / customer wants and what they currently have or get’ This is especially true because many times evaluator may not see a problem on hand and therefore don’t want to consider the idea in the first place.

2) If answer to above is ‘yes’ then you have to next play the role of a ‘devil’s advocate’ to your own idea and get ready for critical questions.

3) If the above two steps are done then don’t worry go for all the next steps with full confidence and allow your evaluators to go after your idea

4) Understand evaluator’s POV (Point of View) and keep your responses clear, simple, crisp and full of common sense. Have necessary back up ready to the extent possible to answer their questions.

5) Show respect constantly, don’t fight, collapse or become defensive. 

6) Focus on all the stakeholders (audience) in the room and don’t let distractors be your only audience

7) Present a first cut implementation plan with possible stakeholders. Many times, when other stakeholders hear about their possible inclusion in the implementation they might be motivated to support the idea. It’s a good ploy to bounce the idea with these stakeholders before the evaluation meeting.

Here are some suggestions to evaluators 

Don’t let the idea get killed at least before an un-biased initial evaluation. Some of the things you can avoid in your communication are 

·       We are doing good, why do we need change 

·       We don’t have money 

·      The problem that this idea solves is exaggerated 

·       No one has done this so far; do you think they must not have thought about this?

·       We tried this before it didn’t work (without explaining what was tried and why it didn’t succeed) 

·       Idea is good but this is not the right time

·       It won’t work here, we are different (conservative, risk averse etc.)

·      We are simply not equipped to do this (This shows inability or lack of thinking about building an ability)

It’s also better to write some reference guidelines for potential ideators. This will make sure that they present the idea in a way that merits attention of an evaluator. It is also a good for an organisation to put up case studies of successful innovations for others to know how idea travelled from ideation till its implementation journey and of those that didn’t go through the funnel. 

What’s Next: Call for Action

As an organisation, you need to answer following questions to ensure that ‘ideas’ given by your employees receives a fair treatment.

?  Have you skilled your employees in ideation techniques & its presentation

?  Do you have guidelines for ideators to know what will merit evaluation?

?  Have you build cases of successful implementation of ideas for people to see and learn from?

?  Do you have a system by which idea systematically gets captured?

?  Do you have an evaluation process and governance structure to evaluate an idea? Are these evaluators formally skilled?

?  Is your idea management system user friendly, where old ideas, that were not considered earlier but have merit at present can be retrieved easily?

?  Do you communicate to an ideator ‘why his / her idea’ is not considered? Do you also offer suggestions on improving the idea that was presented?

? Do you have structured ideation process, by which large number of employees can participate in generating ideas at the same time?

Thing to remember here, if you want to be a ‘knowledge creating innovation company’ you need to sow ‘ideas’ first, then & then only you can reap the ‘innovation harvest’. 

__________________________________________________________________________

[email protected]; 8433727922