We recently published an article that introduced the shift from idea management to full lifecycle idea management.
The main premise of the article was to shed a light on an important aspect of ideation and innovation programs: impact. In other words, it’s not enough to just come up with great ideas – that’s not the hardest part. What’s more important is what you do with these ideas and the impact they have on your business.
In a recent article published on LinkedIn, Planview IdeaPlace CEO, Scott Raskin, echoed the importance of generating impact (not just ideas), “The challenge isn’t a shortage of ideas. The challenge I see is the inability to move beyond generating ideas to generating impact — and for innovation departments to be able to track their ideas from incubation to impact.” He goes on to say, “The real measure of success is the impact those ideas are having.”
At the end of the day, innovation leaders are measured on how impactful their innovation programs are on the business. Does it help surface new opportunities for growth? Does it align with strategic initiatives and objectives? Does it help future-proof the business?
An innovation program is designed to help companies surface new ideas for products and services, operational improvements, and even transform their company cultures. But if there isn’t enough focus on the backend of innovation – that’s developing ideas and measuring their impact – leaders will have a difficult time demonstrating value hindering the expansion of their programs, or worse, put their existence in jeopardy.
As Scott mentioned in his article, “We see this as the next phase in the maturity of innovation programs: to more diligently track and measure not only how many ideas are produced, but also what happened to each — which were implemented and to what impact.”
Check out Scott’s full article for more on the maturity of innovation programs, and the importance of full lifecycle idea management.
