Experiences from working with idea management in communication

February 13, 2019

By Sara W

I have been working with communication for roughly ten years. This means that I have had the privilege of being in a creative environment for almost the same period of time. Often, this is an environment where ideas are crucial to the business and output – and where they are encouraged. In this assignment I have chosen to focus on previous experiences from working with several different businesses, whom many have one thing in common: that the processes of idea generation and development has been free and intuitive.

There have not always been one person in charge of innovation, instead this task has been shared evenly amongst the contributors in the project or group – no matter their working title or area of expertise. Thus, everyone was involved in the process – which in turn contributed to a culture where ideas were encouraged, no matter during which phase of the project they arose or who contributed to them. This was possible because of the managements efforts to create an open and unpretentious atmosphere.

The processes surrounding idea generation, development and assessment have been treated differently depending on project and level of risk. There have usually not been a formal or fixed system – instead you might call the process intuitive or iterative. Decisions have been made along the way, often in the form of voting or consensus – in exception for high risk projects when senior colleagues have had final say.

With that said, it is possible – in hindsight – to identify a “standard”, yet very rough, process of idea generation, development and assessment. Consisting of four steps: 1) definition of needs and potential, 2) research and insights, with the help of both internal and external expertise, 3) idea generation within the organization, 4) assessment, usually done within the team, and 5) go/kill-decision. The length of the different phases – and the tools used therein – have varied depending on context and type of project.

The need for administration in this idea process have often been minuscule, contained to the absolute basics. This stream lined model is a big plus in small and fast moving organizations, where swiftness can make all the difference.

We live in rapidly changing times, in your opinion, what is the biggest challenge facing society within the next five years?

This answer came instantly: the biggest challenge facing society, in my opinion, is climate change and it’s consequences.

One response to “Experiences from working with idea management in communication

  1. Thanks you for the blog! I think that what we could learn from your experiences is that there needs to be a good contextual understanding for the company, environment, types of ideas, people working with different tasks. It feels that this idea management approach that you are describing is something that came naturally from the organisation, rather than being imposed by upper management. This underlines the importance of innovative culture, but also a balance between disruption and order that can adjust based on the context.

Comments are closed.