Principles for Making Ideas Matter
1. Stop the Innovation Theatre
Innovation can be flashy and fun but it only works when it leads to real outcomes. If nothing gets implemented, you’re not innovating, you’re just performing innovation theatre.
Aim for (and track) real impact like "ideas implemented" right from the start.
2. Design for Engagement
Yes, you might be afraid of idea chaos but most innovation programs die because of a lack of engagement. So make it clear why people should contribute and make it easy to do so. If participation drops, you’ll enter an engagement death spiral that’s hard to escape.
3. Carve out Time
Innovation doesn’t run itself. Someone has to manage it. If that’s you, admit it and block time for it. Tell your manager to put it in your job description. Following up on ideas takes real work, and pretending it doesn’t is how good ideas die
4. Never Walk Alone
You can’t scale innovation by holding onto all the control. Involve others early — not just for input, but for ownership of challenges and outcomes. Make departments or individuals owners of specific areas. Let them lead and feel that the innovation success is theirs too.
5. Only Collect Ideas with a Purpose
Collecting ideas without a purpose often ends up becoming a dusty catch-all suggestion box where no ideas end up getting implemented. Instead, every idea collection should solve a real problem, support a clear goal, and have someone ready to act on the results. No purpose? No idea collection.
6. Communicate the Why
If people don’t understand why ideas are being collected, they won’t take it seriously. Always explain the goal behind the idea collection and what will happen after someone submits. Make sure leadership signals that idea sharing is not just allowed but actively encouraged.
Add a personal touch (for example by having a stakeholder record a short video with a friendly message) to show there's a real person behind the request who actually cares about new ideas.
7. Co-Create the Future
Innovation thrives when you're involving people in shaping the future. It's more engaging and actionable than looking back or fixing the status quo. It’s not just about listening. It’s about building together.
8. Fight the Form Chaos
Endless custom forms confuse contributors and slow down decisions. Remember, people submitting ideas are not getting paid to do so. You're asking them to use their valuable time. Only ever ask for what you need to be able to further prioritize, decide or implement an idea. You can always add more data in later steps if absolutely necessary. Working with just one or two central workspace idea forms also helps keep your data tidy for later analysis.
9. Speed up Decisions
Ideas that sit too long die quietly. Move ideas quickly from submission to decision. Limit handovers with waiting times, avoid unnecessary steps, and define what qualifies for a fast yes or no. If each step takes 2-4 weeks, an idea might only get feedback after forever.
If you were the idea contributor, would 7 months feel like it was fast enough for hearing back? No.
10. Automate Later
If your process is unclear or broken, automating it only makes things worse and creates extra work. First, prove the process works manually. Fix what’s not working. Then use automation later to scale. Always try to limit the number of different automations to something manageable like 5-7 so you stay in control instead of losing the overview.
11. Transparency and Trust Wins
If people don’t know what’s happening with their ideas, they’ll stop sharing. Open up the process. Show what ideas are being worked on, which ones made it, and why. Secrecy or extra steps only hurts your engagement and misses valuable input.
If you want to innovate you'll sometimes have to step over your own shadow and trust people.
12. Aim for Continuous Innovation
Once upon a time, innovation meant a yearly campaign or a big workshop. One shot to gather ideas, then back to business as usual. But times have changed.
Real innovation doesn’t come from one-off efforts. It comes from habits—regular input, quick testing, and steady follow-up. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment, build a rhythm. Run challenge-based collections around real business needs, and keep always-open collections for ideas that don’t follow a schedule.
A consistent flow keeps people engaged, surfaces better ideas, and makes innovation part of how your company works.
13. Start with Internal Innovation
Before opening up to customers or partners, start inside. Your own teams are safe, honest, and invested. If you can’t make internal innovation work, external efforts will fail even harder.
14. Choose Healthy Incentives
If your organization is hesitant then extrinsic rewards like points or prizes can help, but their effect eventually wears off. Focus on intrinsic and lasting motivation like purpose, recognition, ownership, healthy competition between teams or departments. Aim to show people that their ideas matter.
15. Don't Disrupt how you Work
You already know and use tools for tasks, projects, video calls, and chat.
Innovation shouldn’t force a new system for existing workflows that already work. It's there to improve and speed up vital processes like idea collection, prioritization, development and selection.
At some point an idea turns into a project and then it's time to let project managers shine, not innovation managers.