Sources of Innovative Ideas | Incremental Innovation (original) (raw)

Innovative ideas can come from a wide variety of different places, and companies who leave sources out of their innovative process are significantly reducing their innovative capabilities. A recent survey of innovative organization revealed that customers provided the greatest source for ideas, followed by marketing & sales, employees, firm leaders, suppliers and competitors.

Customers

Since customers are the ones to provide the final evaluation of products and services and well as drive sales, it is no wonder that they are the most fruitful source for ideas. In order to fully utilize the power of customers, innovation leaders should put into place methods for garnering and gathering customer ideas. The internet is an excellent place to begin, especially for companies in the technology industries. There are countless outlets online for customers to provide reviews on products. Companies in the retail and services industries may also want to invest in an online portal attached to their website which allows customers to submit, reviews, complaints and ideas.

Innovation leaders should actively compile this information, along with any other feedback received from customer surveys and test groups to derive a set of ideas for new products or product improvements. Properly evaluating and implementing ideas rooted in customer feedback is one of the best methods to staying ahead of the competition.

Competitors

Competing organizations and firm leaders are two other underutilized sources for innovation. Attending industry conferences, exhibitions and tradeshows is a good way to keep aware of what the competition is developing or researching. Businesses can often use these ideas and append or modify them to create new products themselves. On a higher level, business leaders should endeavour to stay well-connected and networked with other leaders in their industry as this is yet another avenue for gathering ideas.

Internal Departments

Internal employees in addition to sales and marketing together make up one of the largest sources for ideas. By virtue of experience and exposure within an industry and its related products, employees are often the most well-informed idea source and can provide detailed, structured proposals for new products and services. Encourage employee ideas by providing them with the necessary infrastructure to submit new proposals. The sales and marketing department usually experiences the greatest balance between customer relations and internal communication. This allows them to easily anticipate and articulate the needs of consumers and translate them into usable ideas.

Look to the Past

Companies should not disregard old ideas when gathering proposals for new products or product improvements. Ideas are not always abandoned because they were evaluated poorly. Often times, the technology available at the time the idea was submitted would not allow for a cost-effective development and/or process. Existing patents should also be considered and with most US patents readily accessible on the internet, it is a low cost method of gathering ideas.

One of the best examples of innovation from past ideas is the answering machine. Originally patented in the 1930s, the concept was not realistically marketable at the time due to the inhibitive costs and poor recording quality. It was not until the 1970s that Casio developed a smaller, higher quality answering machine based off of the same patent. It had taken nearly four decades for technology to render the original patent fully marketable.

Look to the Future

Just as the past can hold a remarkable number of ideas, the future, in the form of young academic researchers, can prove to be just as fruitful. Large companies have been working in conjunction with university research institutions for a very long time. University students are less stifled by industry conventions and are generally more able to come up with new concepts and “think outside the box”. Their relative inexperience can be a valuable asset to an organization otherwise full of tenured researchers. Students are more apt to ask questions, solve problems in creative ways, and come up with features relevant to a wider demographic consumer base.

Ideas take on many forms and can be found in the most unlikely of places. The role of an innovation leader within a company is to identify the likely sources for these ideas, and put the processes in place to properly gather them for effective evaluation and use within the organization.