Idea Pipeline Management- Success Mantra In An Innovative World

By Author: Alice Coope
Total Articles: 213
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The word innovation brings out the images of creativity, freedom and ideas generation. It facilitates individuals and workforce to be liberated with original thoughts, without any shackles and constraints. However, to convert ideas into products and service there needs to be the right set of discipline and process. Therefore to implement ideas organizations need to manage them through a systematic pipeline for it to have the greatest impact.

Idea pipeline management is about a systematic and sustainable approach to ensure management of innovation in all areas of organizational activity. Described as a structural process, it helps enterprises to tap on the creative potential of human capital within the context to deliver business value

When American Airlines CEO introduced the AA Strategy way back in 1996, this low cost airline was richer by 17,109 ideas from their employees, that helped the airline save a whopping US$43M. Further, converting various other ideas into action from the idea pipeline, American Airlines has benefited with more than US$300M.

This methodology of idea management ...
... is designed to handle both large and small innovative products right from new product development, process development, strategic alliances, and corporate venturing, to implementation. IBM's “Innovation Jam” was the IT major’s idea pipeline management strategy, which has been considered as the one of the largest idea management exercises. With the help of crowdsourcing software, the industry major took the crowd of over 100,000 employees, families and clients participating through a 72-hour session of idea capturing on set topics. The large number of ideas generated ready for implementation was worth US$ 100 M.

Enterprises in their attempt to capture ideas make use of a number of techniques to bring out the creativity of the people. From brainstorming to the use of crowdsourcing software to providing an ideation platform, are all used. The technological development has paved way for leading service providers to facilitate a more process-focused idea pipeline management irrespective of the industry.

Being challenged by their competitor, Maytag in 1999 with the innovative washing machine, Whirlpool CEO introduced the idea pipeline management system the I-Pipe to collect and handle the ideas crowd sourced and pooled into the I-Board. This made Whirlpool richer by 7,500 ideas worth over US$3.3B in 2005.

An idea pipeline model that provides a point of reference and collection of ideas as they emerge and to be developed upon, passes through four different phases: raw ideas, generation of innovative solution, proving a concept and preparation before it reaches the implementation stage. However, the key components of idea pipeline management that add vigor to accommodate a wide variety of projects and bring benefits are:

* Front-end idea capture tools

* Back-End processes

* Architecture

* Support systems for IT

An effective and transparent idea pipeline management is a vital factor for enterprises keen on incorporating innovations as their success mantra.

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