Point: Social networking tools help capture the “quiet contributions” from the fringes of your company

Story: In the typical company, innovation relies on a hand-picked team leading an innovation project. The trouble is, these teams often have no good way of tapping the expertise of the whole company. They tend to call on the small circle of colleagues they know or on the acknowledged experts in an established field. But they have a hard time identifying people whom they don’t already know but who might have new knowledge relevant to the problem at hand. As a result, potential good ideas are lost or hidden.

That’s where social software tools come in handy. With a tool like InnovationSpigit, for example, a company can start a discussion on a topic and employees who know about the topic self-identify by posting ideas, refining the ideas of others, and voting on ideas.

For example, a company could start discussion like “Can we develop a new water filtration product?” People from market research might identify the top-selling filtration products and their value propositions (e.g., “BrandA removes chlorine and lead”).  Someone from HR, who recently bought a water filtration system for her family, might contribute her own insights gathered from what blogs and outside websites were saying about all the competing products (e.g., “BrandB sucks because it’s hard to install”). Unforeseen expertise & spark-generating ideas might come from an employee who’s studied marine animals who might suggest “have you looked at how fish gills work? Perhaps we could base an idea around that.” Other employees might point out the engineering deficits of a proposed technology (e.g., a potential filter material is too expensive for consumer water filters). Another person might have good suggestions for how to solve the cost problem (e.g., to coat the expensive filter ingredient on a cheaper material).

The point is that these contributions can come from anywhere, not just the hand-picked team members and their inner circle. Happenstance insights and contributions from non-obvious personnel help increase the volume and quality of ideas. Reputation systems and voting mechanisms, built into innovation-specific social applications like InnovationSpigit 2.0, help direct innovation efforts into the most productive directions.

Action

• Explore how innovation-specific social applications like InnovationSpigit can be used to improve innovation in your organization.
• Look for tools that expand the range of idea sources to more people and leverage the intelligence of crowds to focus innovation efforts.
• Create a vibrant set of communities around open-ended problems to get new and disruptive ideas.
• Use small incentives, reputation engines, and voting systems to encourage fast feedback that focuses efforts on the best ideas.