Idea and Innovation Blog

What can we really trust these days? When it comes to reviews and opinions, virtually everything seems to be a promo. You have no idea whether the blogger gushing over their latest user experience is for real or if this is a paid promotion.

And in the end, how does that help you make your products more desirable or your organization more liked?

If you want to avoid the chronic second guess,  one great measure of supporter’s true affinity is what they put in to making something better. A tangible contribution. The documented, and sometimes measurable value, of the effort. No hype, just something helping something else become more – an idea being helped to become an innovation of some kind:

•    Charity innovation
•    Product innovation
•    Service innovation
•    Safety innovation...

The list could go on and should. Helping to improve things that we care about is self-fulfilling, yet unselfish at the same time. The community (or “crowd” in two-point-oh speak) takes care of promoting the good ones and turfing the lame. When shepherded and channelled, the crowd can inject the necessary diversity and provide the critical deliverables to turn an idea into an innovation. The only thing organizations need to do is lead them into doing it. Your process determines if and how this is going to happen. The reality is that all innovation requires a highly-visible, appropriately-funded and sustainably-committed effort. The latter is the guiding light that sets the behaviour pattern for your communities – they lay the template for actionabilty that you wish your crowd of collaborators to embrace. Not very difficult and the payoff immense; often game changing.

So instead of guessing whether the focus group that you just ran had a standard deviation of 50% or not, wouldn’t your organization be better served by the iterative reality and measurable results of an Open Innovation process?