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Why do innovation initiatives fail? This Fast Company article lists six reasons your organization may be experiencing setbacks.
In our first blog post, we explored reason #1, i.e. how lacking a formal framework can hinder successful innovation. In this blog post, I’ll dive in to reason #2: Not tying initiatives to overall company strategy.
Tie Your Initiatives to Company Strategy
Once you have a formal framework in place, ensure your innovation initiatives tie in to your organization’s strategy. This includes understanding your goals both in the long term and short term, plus the steps you are taking to achieve them.
Leverage “Idea Challenges”
How do you ensure the submission of quality, focused ideas that complement your organization’s strategy?
Idea challenges can help you achieve this:
An “Idea Challenge” is a time-limited campaign to solicit ideas focused on a specific problem.
Idea challenges have been used to spark ideas in many contexts – including entrepreneurial competitions, such as MIT’s IDEAS Global Challenge. In their challenge, teams have a finite amount of time to innovate solutions for developing communities. The result is a team who is motivated by a tight deadline and a focused goal.
Idea challenges offer you 2 key advantages:
- They create focus by pinpointing a specific problem before asking for employee input.
- They create urgency by creating a short time limit for submitting ideas.
Want to learn more about idea challenges, and how to run your own? Check out our free white paper.
Putting It All Together
Idea challenges offer you a great way to tie innovation initiatives to your organizational strategy. By running regular idea challenges once every 2-4 weeks, you can innovate in sync with your strategy.
Suggested Next Steps:
- Companies of all sizes (from Fortune-500s to growing startups) use IdeaGlow software to build their own innovation management framework. IdeaGlow is affordably priced & relatively easy to implement. If you’re interested, you can apply for a FREE 30-day trial of IdeaGlow software.
- Get new information we publish on innovation management right in your email inbox, sign up for a FREE email newsletter packed with useful info.
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3) Do not read this blog one sentence per day during your lunch break, while eating a 