Once you have harvested ideas from your staff, what do you do with them? You need a structured process that enables you to find the good ideas that will help your business, and then you need to implement those ideas.

When organisations get excited about innovation and run an innovation campaign encouraging everyone to submit ideas, they often don't pay enough attention to the back end. If 112 ideas to improve the business are submitted, what is going to happen to them? Who has responsibility for assessing those ideas and taking the good ones further? What criteria will they use to determine which ideas should be developed further? How many of the 112 ideas will be further developed? How will that further development occur? What will the budget be?

Even big companies with lots of resources struggle with this. They run a campaign, rack up all these ideas, and then give them all to Greg to do whatever comes next. No one has thought about how long it will take Greg to go through all those ideas, and he is already busy, so he doesn't quite get around to it, and then after a couple of months someone asks, ‘Hey Greg, what happened to all those ideas from the innovation campaign?' and Greg says, ‘Oh yeah, um … yeah, I'm going to get to them soon'.

Meanwhile each of the 112 people who went to the trouble of pitching their ideas is wondering why they never heard anything back, and why none of the ideas submitted seem to have gone anywhere. And they begin to wonder why they spent all that precious time thinking up ideas to improve the organisation if nothing was ever going to be done with them. Eventually they become cynical, and they promise themselves that next time they are asked to submit an idea, they won't waste their time.

People won't become disengaged just because you don't use their ideas. As long as you give them clear feedback about why their idea isn't being used, most will understand and try again.

They will become disengaged, however, if they feel that the whole thing has been a waste of time, that the organisation was never fully committed to following through, and that their effort wasn't appreciated or respected.

There is no point encouraging your people to be innovative if you are not committed to the back end — that is, to assessing the ideas you get, identifying those most likely to make a difference, trialling them and then, if they work, implementing them.

That takes an investment of time and money, but if you implement even one or two good ideas it could result in considerable payback.

So after you collect ideas from staff, what should you do next?

Set up a process

When you implement a new focus on innovation, don't just focus on the front end, the creation of ideas. Think about how it is going to work right through from the creation of ideas to the implementation of the best ones. It is important to set up a transparent, clear and credible system for assessing new ideas.

The first thing to work out is this: once ideas are pitched, what happens next?

In a small organisation, the idea will probably be pitched to the owner or manager of the business, so it is up to him or her to make an assessment of the merits of the idea, and to decide whether it is worth developing it further.

What about in a bigger organisation? Does the manager to whom the idea is pitched make an initial assessment, then send it on to another individual or to a committee with a recommendation? Or do individual managers have autonomy to make decisions about which ideas they want to develop further?

If all ideas are directed to one person for further assessment, has sufficient time been set aside for them to take on the extra responsibility, or are they expected to do it in addition to their existing duties? If the latter, is there a risk that they end up putting off this task in favour of more urgent ones? Try to design a system that ensures ideas are assessed quickly. Perhaps you should include time limits — for example, requiring that a decision be made within five working days of receipt.

If ideas are directed to a committee for assessment, make sure the committee meets regularly and that it isn't too big.

What is the process when new ideas are received by the individual or committee responsible for assessing them? Is a written proposal assessed, or does the person who produced the idea pitch it in person? The former may be quicker, but it doesn't allow committee members the opportunity to ask questions.

Before you get too far into the assessment process, look through all the ideas. Are there ideas that address the same problem or opportunity? Are there ideas that are similar or that overlap in some way? If so, group them together and make sure they are assessed together. Perhaps you will find that a successful innovation will involve using a combination of idea A, idea B and idea C.

What threshold test must an idea pass before the organisation commits to taking it further? It could be something like this:

The three best ideas submitted each month, as decided by the innovation committee, will be developed further, using time and money up to a value of $500 each. The idea will then be reassessed by the committee, who will determine whether there are sufficient prospects of success to justify further development or a trial.

Or this:

Any idea determined by the innovation committee to have a reasonable prospect of improving an aspect of the organisation's business, and of being used by the organisation in its day-to-day business, will be developed further using resources the committee deems appropriate, bearing in mind the committee's annual budget.

This first test simply requires that an innovative idea be one of the best three received that month. The second test sets two criteria: (1) that the idea has a good chance of improving the business, and (2) that it is likely to be adopted. So an idea that looks like it might improve a part of the business, but could be very expensive to implement and run, might satisfy the first part of the test but not the second.

Make sure you establish a clearly defined test to guarantee consistency and transparency.

Work out what options are available to the decision-maker, and make sure there aren't too many. Keep it simple. Maybe they just need three options. They can:

1. reject the idea
2. recommend developing the idea further
3. send the idea back to the source, advising them of specific work to do. For example, ‘We think your idea has potential, but we are unsure how it would be implemented. Are you able to explain this further? It might be useful to collaborate with Chris on this'.

Ideas that are going further

If a decision is made to progress an idea further, what then?

1. Work out what needs to be done next to develop the idea, and then do it. Try to do it on a small scale, and as cheaply as you can. If you have a budget to develop an idea, then think hard about how to use it most effectively. If you have, say, five ideas that you have decided to develop, advance them in small steps. After each step, assess the results and decide whether it's worth investing more time and money. Take small steps and keep reassessing.
2. Look for opportunities to collaborate. Perhaps other people within the organisation can help to develop the idea. Work out what sort of expertise is needed, and who within the organisation might be best able to supply it. Then get that person to look at the idea and contribute what they can.

   If innovation is a KPI for everyone, then make it clear that those who collaborate with others to help them to grow their ideas aren't doing something extra on top of their job. They are doing their job. At a performance review, a person who has collaborated with two or three others to help them develop their ideas should get credit, just as someone who exceeds a sales target does.

3. Give each project a sense of urgency. Work out what the next thing that needs to be done to develop this idea is, then put a deadline on doing it.
4. Keep the person who had the idea involved in the development process. Let them know what's going on and what the next stage is. If they are ignored and kept in the dark, they might feel resentful and therefore not want to share their next idea. Besides, they probably know more about their idea than anyone else, so they are likely to be useful when developing it.
5. Enshrine accountability in the process. Don't let time limits drift and outcomes remain merely theoretical. For example: ‘This seems to be a good idea and has potential. Some further development is needed.' This sort of assessment doesn't do anything. If an idea is assessed as having potential, then make sure the decision-maker indicates what has to be done next, when it should happen and who is responsible for doing it.

With respect to the who, does the responsibility for taking the idea further rest with a member of the innovation committee, with the person who originated the idea or with someone else? Or does the originator work with a member of the innovation committee? Work it out and make sure it is crystal clear to all.

In bigger organisations, think about how centralised or decentralised you want the decision making to be. Do you want individual managers to have autonomy to develop their own team's ideas, and their own budget for doing so? Or do you want all ideas to go to a central decision-making committee?

Ideas that are not going further

What should you do about the ideas that aren't going to go any further?

They fall into two categories: those the decision-maker thinks are never going to get anywhere, and those that cannot be developed in their current form but may, if some problems can be solved, be developed later.

If someone's idea isn't going to be developed, it's important to let them know as soon as possible. Don't leave them in limbo. It can damage confidence and morale if people feel that their idea has mysteriously disappeared up the chain and they never hear back.

Again, it's better to give feedback in person rather than via email. It need take only a few minutes. Give them honest, but not harsh, feedback. Tell them what you liked about their idea, then point out what you think the problems are. Explain why it isn't going any further and invite them to submit another idea soon. Most importantly, thank them for sharing their idea. It's a simple thing, but it has a big effect.

If you think that the idea has problems but that if they can be solved it may still have potential, share your thoughts and invite the person to have another go. Suggest other people with whom they might be able to usefully collaborate.

It's far better to give feedback in person, but if you have to do it by email, then make it personal and specific. Don't just send a form letter. Clearly set out the reasons why the idea isn't going further. Doing this will probably take as long as talking to the person directly, so why not do it face to face? If you think innovation is important, then act like it is important. Think of the time spent as an investment that will encourage future ideas.

Commit!

If you work in a small business, the whole process will probably be a lot less formal, but don't let the back end slide. Commit some time every fortnight to reviewing new ideas and working out which ones are worthy of further exploration, and what the next step should be. Make sure you give feedback and praise. Without them, ideas might stop coming.

In medium and large organisations, you might consider investing in innovation by making someone in upper management responsible for your innovation systems, and formalising their commitment of time so, for example, 20 per cent of their time is devoted to innovation (or 40 per cent or 60 per cent). This person would be responsible for all the innovation systems that harvest, assess, trial and implement new ideas.

If a business has ten partners or managers, that's a total of fifty management work days per week. How many of those fifty days do you want to commit to innovation? If one person devotes two days a week to innovation, that's two out of fifty days, or just 4 per cent of the total management time. Is that the right amount? Too much? Too little? It's all very well to talk about how committed you are to innovation, but the test of commitment is not what you say, it's what you do.

Find the end point of each idea

The aim of all this is to find the end point of every idea. Those involved in the decision-making process should be able to identify the end point of each idea they have seen or heard. For example: ‘Idea A didn't get past the committee stage because we believed it would cost more to implement than it would save us. Idea B was trialled but didn't produce the benefits we were hoping for. Idea C was successfully trialled and is now being rolled out across the organisation.'