More and more companies see new value in knowledge and the management of employees' ideas. Such an approach improves internal communication. It allows you to engage employees in cooperative work on company challenges. It also guarantees gathering many important ideas.
Innovatika and Divante cooperate on the introduction of idea management tools and support businesses in developing an innovative culture.
“Implementing efficient systems supporting innovations requires integrated work. If you want to develop a company's potential in innovations, it is not enough to implement a software dedicated to managing ideas. It is just the beginning of the process of hard and exciting work. There are more things to do: to create an organizational culture supporting innovation, a culture open for the exchanging of knowledge andinformation, to let employees risk and learn from their own mistakes and to educate in areas of creativity and non-linear thinking. Only such a complex approach guarantees that spending money and time on supporting and developing innovations will give measurable effects in financial profits and in building a competitive edge. “ - Michał Semczyszyn, Divante
At the beginning of every project, Innovatika makes an appointment with the board of directors. During this workshop Innovatika diagnoses each part of the innovation system and chooses the first challenges for the idea campaign. The subjects of this campaign correspond with the current company's needs. This way each program participant (innovator) is able to support (with his/her ideas and comments) work in many areas of the organization from marketing and sales to management matters. The next step is creating the concept of a Portal of Innovation, which enables effective generation and development of a company's employees' ideas.
„We include employees of companies we cooperate with in building Portal of Innovation. Thanks to this they have an impact on how it looks and works. Due to the function of commenting and grading, Portal helps with gathering employees' ideas and supports work on developing these ideas. An important aim of Portal is to stimulate employees for innovations and to give them new knowledge concerning methods of supporting creative work (both individual and groups).” - Łukasz Gałach, Innovatika
What is Portal of Innovation?
Portal of Innovation is a source of knowledge on innovations in a company, employees' ideas and of developing competences in the areas of creativity and the introduction of new ideas. It may be compared to a traditional community portal, open for all employees through a web browser. Portal of Innovation is based on two proven Divante tools – BusinessWiki (knowledge management) and LiveBlend (ideas management). That is why Portal of Innovation enables the creation of a database of knowledge on innovation (by managers of innovative projects, employees introducing creative ideas or other employees) and carrying out idea campaigns.
Unlike passive tools used for gathering ideas (e.g. “idea box”), Portal of Innovation is equipped with tools supporting the process of idea management. The process tool used for managing ideas enables idea campaigns to be carried out, which means generating employees' ideas as a result of a current need (challenge) of the company. In a situation like this the first step is the definition of a particular challenge by the campaign Sponsor. Then all users may submit their ideas concerning this challenge. Such procedures enable the inclusion not only of ideas submitted by creative people, but also those with a more analytical approach. The ability to comment and grade others' ideas within certain criteria is also possible: Strengths/Weaknesses/Comments.
The next stage is the evaluation of the ideas conducted by groups of experts, who grade ideas accordingly to predefined criteria (10 point scale). After a preliminary evaluation ideas go to the next step during which the best of them are chosen. This stage is supported by Criteria Balancer – it enables granting these criteria different levels of importance. The ideas selection process is finished with a report including campaign statistics and a list of the best ideas and allows the campaign's author to make additional comments.
All ideas are kept in an archive, which enables easy and quick access to them. In this way users may freely browse resources of knowledge gathered in one place.
One examples of a successful introduction of Portal of Innovation is a project completed for Akzo Nobel, a leading manufacturer of paints. During the project conducted for Akzo Nobel, Innovatika and Divante introduced an integrated communication platform and many other actions supporting and developing innovative culture in the company. This software has been integrated with an Active Directory system, making it easy for users to log in the Portal of Innovation. Software was run in Windows. Fast CGI for IIS6 was used to ensure high efficiency and stability of the application.
„During the key part of this project challenges were first given to employees. Those challenges had been defined during the idea campaign.. More than 300 of the company's employees were invited to cooperate. They submitted their ideas and developed others' ideas over a period of a few weeks. This approach to managing ideas and the idea campaign system was a great success. Portal of Innovation is a tool which is commendable in areas of creating innovative solutions, building an internal database of ideas and knowledge on innovations in our organization.” - Olga Borkowska, Akzo Nobel.