Fresh Takes on Innovation

sticky ideas

The tricky thing with new ideas is that they are very elusive and easily dismissed as compared to old, known ideas that stick in people’s minds and habits.

So this is my own personal recipe to make new ideas stick within the organization.

1. make yourself acquainted with the culture in the organization. You need to learn the way people argue for ideas, how they communicate with each other and how they deal with the “new” in general to be prepared to sell your idea.

2. For a new idea to succeed, you need accomplices. In general, there are three types of potential accomplices in the organization that you can work with to sell your idea:

a) the professional / expert. You need people who will help you with the “proof of concept”, who will waiver all the “is this even feasible” talk and who can back you up on the more technical side of things

b) the organizational expert. Usually these people are found in HR or related departments and know exactly how the organization works. Who needs to be convinced of what, how and most importantly, when?

c) The motivators: People who can motivate other people to move in a new direction, who are role models and users of new technology and new tools, can help you sell your idea.

Find these people within the organization and make them your accomplices.

3. Do not present one idea. Present many solutions to a problem. If your idea is a new specific product, for instance, do not try to sell that product, but talk about the need to add new products to the portfolio in general and then engage as many stakeholders as possible in the dialogue about what that new potential product could be. Talk about criteria, about goals, about new markets, about the customers need, etc. On the one hand, you will then be able to talk about your specific idea in a context, on the other hand, it might very well be the case that your idea gets much better by the additional input, and it might even be the case (I consider it to be very likely) that you find many other product ideas that are at least as good as yours. This will give everyone the chance to choose the best solution instead of just having one idea to deal with, that can be easily dismissed. Most importantly, the idea will now be the idea of the entire team and not the idea of one individual.

4. If you have more than one idea, be prepared to visualize them in a comparable way so people actually get a chance to compare them with each other and to choose the best solution in a structured way.

5. If your idea (or a variation or alternative of said idea) is accepted, you need to go on a campaign for this idea. Having been accepted does not mean that it is implemented; people may not even remember it in a week. Use all the materials you have gathered in the process to make the idea stick. Invent a claim, a logo, a motivational quote or whatever you might need to make the idea stick. Be prepared to talk about it every minute of every day. Remember “Yes, we can?”. That is a powerful idea, but it needed to be repeated over a long period of time to become truly sticky in everyone’s mind.

6. Use your accomplices (see point 2) and your knowledge about the organization (see point 1) to steer the implementation of the idea in the right direction.

7. Talk about the idea as if it were already a reality. This will help people see it as something that will truly be there in a short while and not just a fantasy that you have.

8. Celebrate milestones: Make sure that every significant move towards the implementation is celebrated or at least mentioned publicly. This will make your idea truly stick.

Posted in Decision Making, How we do it, IdeaGeneration, Innovation