"Social Innovation" is a bottom-up process in which ideas originate from the fringes of your organization, good ideas bubble up to the top, and ultimately get transformed into improved product, services, and processes for your business. When I first started interacting with customers five years ago, we had to introduce and educate majority of our prospects on this way of managing innovation. Today we have crossed the chasm and this practice has become mainstream. In spite of this, vendors in this space have not done much to make it easy for businesses to create the most appropriate social innovation solution that fits the needs and culture of their organization. There are dozens of vendors that offer their own brand of one-size-fits-all solution. On the other hand, there are a few vendors that offer more flexibility but creating the right kind of solution remains an art form and takes several iterations to build. With this series of blog post, I intend to create a framework for exploring different dimensions of such solution and ultimately select one with minimal effort.
I classify social innovation efforts along the following three main dimensions:
I classify social innovation efforts along the following three main dimensions:
- Target community - What kind of users are being requested to submit ideas: employees or company outsiders.
- Privacy Requirements - Can the submitters view and collaborate on ideas posted by others?
- Duration - Are you running a time-bound campaign or trying to create an ongoing community for continuous innovation
| Ideator Community | Target Ideators | Private Submissions | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Employee Suggestion Box | Internal | Yes | Ongoing |
| Employee Ideation Drive | Internal | Yes | Time Bound |
| Open Innovation | External | Yes | Ongoing |
| Open Ideation Drive | External | Yes | Time Bound |
| Employee Innovation Program | Internal | No | Ongoing |
| Idea Campaign | Internal | No | Time Bound |
| Co-Creation Community | External | No | Ongoing |
| Open Challenge | External | No | Time Bound |
In this series of blog post I will explore each of these patterns in more detail.
