Screening ideas in our Idea Hub
April 23, 2019In Stockholms stad we are starting an Idea Hub. It’s a tool for employees. It works as a hub supports the organization during the idea process, to help get means to projects, to pin point obstacles for innovation and to spread good ideas through the organization. The Idea Hub is yet a project and not fully implemented in the organization. During the project there are pilots from different areas that work with support to find, select and develop their own ideas and test the webb based tool.
So far, screening ideas, are all about making the connection to WHY we need to develop the idea. In the plans and policies the stress is always on consumer good – the benefit for those we are here for. If we can see that the idea is beneficial for the end user, there is were we start. Have we asked the end user? Is it really this they need and want? Who and how many would benefit from this problem beeing solved? The rest follows; do we have recourses to develop this idea, can we make the decisions needed to go on? Do we posess the skills our selves? How long will this take? Can we test in a parallell process and in a small way? Can we scale the results? How do we follow up the results – do we need to measure something now to compare with after? We use a rational screening, and it takes time!
I sometimes find that I would like to have an additional criteria; if the idea benefits our own internal organization. If we can find better administrative processes in our own organization. I’m sorry to say that this is not one of our prioritized areas. We have one grade: the benefit for the end user. I would like to be able to use a better administration as a criteria, to free time for end users. There is a ”ban” on internal administration and all focus is on the end user. I would like to front all the benifits of working on our internal as well as external processes in order to have a well designed admnistration in order to support everyone working directly with the end user. I will work on this!