The ideas already in the building
Most organisations spend a fortune looking outside for their next good idea. Consultants, agencies, innovation labs and so on, yet whilst procurement is being briefed, the people who actually do the work sit quietly at their desks waiting to be asked for their ideas.
Internal crowdsourcing flips that dynamic. Instead of asking a chosen few, you ask everyone, and you give them a proper way to be heard.
Unilever does this well. Online idea-gathering and hackathons sit alongside a platform where any employee can raise an idea or concern and have it escalated if nobody acts within a week. The wider employee-experience overhaul this sat within freed up around 300,000 hours a year and lifted satisfaction scores.
There is an older, classic example that’s also worth mentioning as it’s still an idea that can be copied today. In 2006, IBM's 'Innovation Jam' invited 150,000 staff, family and partners into a 72-hour online conversation. It produced 46,000 ideas and, eventually, ten new businesses and the Smarter Planet strategy. Not bad for asking nicely ‘do you have any ideas?’
It’s not just being asked for ideas that shifts the culture. When people see a suggestion of theirs acted on, the story they tell about the workplace outside shifts too. People see culture as their responsibility, consequently the hierarchy flattens, because a good idea from the warehouse now travels as far (if not further!) as one from the boardroom.
The CIPD's 2024 People-Powered Innovation report found the behaviours that unlock innovation are mostly just good management - making sure everyone is heard, making it safe to suggest something a bit daft, sharing the credit. None of that needs a budget or a charter to get started.
That said, crowdsourcing only works if you act on what comes back (see also: the engagement survey). Asking for ideas and then ignoring them, is a cardinal sin when it comes to continual creativity as by not responding you’re quietly telling people that their views don't count.
The best ideas in your organisation are probably already in the building. The only question is whether anyone has bothered to ask for them?
