Turning your business into an ideas factory is a challenge for every entrepreneur. Finding the right idea to cut costs, increase revenue, and improve products and services is a must. For most print house owners, the best answers are in front of them. Your staff usually have the best ideas. These are the people on the front line dealing with customers and suppliers every day, which means they are dealing with the realities of the business.
Peter Biggs, managing director of advertising agency Clemenger BBDO, has established a creative culture where ideas can come from anyone, anywhere and at any time. “I remember winning a piece of business because the receptionist came up with the idea,” said Biggs. The ideas are tested and if they work, they get up.
At Clemenger, all staff are encouraged to come up with ideas. The company even encourages staff members to set up their own businesses. There are employees who run businesses designing laptop covers, selling bottled water and running fashion labels. There are film directors and artists. The cross-fertilisation leads to more ideas.
“Everybody should feel free to put ideas forward,” said Biggs. “But there has to be a rigor around those ideas, the place has to be both generous and vulnerable. I’ve put up many ideas and not one has got through. The MD has to model generosity and vulnerability.”
The challenge for companies is to develop systems that allow ideas to percolate up. Bakers Delight has one through which 90% of ideas come from franchisees. They deal with customers every day. In the Bakers Delight system, area managers talk to bakeries every week. Every area manager has 25 bakeries, checking to see everything is working well and seeking their ideas. In addition, the company holds regular forums where franchisees can raise ideas. Every franchisee would attend eight or 10 of these a year.
One local company has a KPI that requires a certain amount of future revenue to come from products that do not exist today. In their performance appraisals, staff are questioned and evaluated along these lines. It creates a culture of constant innovation.
Encouraging employees to give ideas also means being open to accepting the fact they may also criticise the company.
Other companies turn to technology to generate ideas. At Borrego Solar Systems, a California-based company that installs solar power systems, management created an internal contest, the Innovation Challenge. All 50 employees were invited to submit ideas, which were then posted on its intranet. Employees were asked to vote for the best ideas using free online survey tools. The winner received $500 in cash.
The initial take-up was low but as with all companies, the pattern was the same. Once people start seeing that the ideas were being implemented they were encouraged to come up with more ideas. Borrego now runs the internal contest every quarter.
Edward De Bono, the master of lateral thinking, has argued that every company needs an ideas officer. The first step is to have a hit list on computers or notice boards. Staff are asked for new ideas, whether marketing, product, service or finance and these go on the hit list.
The second step is having the ideas officer, someone designated to listen to or receive ideas. This is critical because having to persuade your immediate boss about something they are not very interested in or don’t have the time to look at is unlikely to get very far.
Leon Gettler is a senior business journalist who writes for a range of leading newspapers and journals.
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