After you've tested your brand new innovation process through a pilot test and got some new ideas, little time is left to evaluate them and give proper feedback to contributors.
FEEDBACK
The feedback is a psychological contract between you and anybody who has provided you with some new idea. It's very important, especially when the idea cannot be deployed (and the feedback is actually negative), because too complex and/or expensive, give a feedback being as less generic as possible. This is to actually give back proper recognition of the value related to the fact that the provider has spent his time, effort, creative and professional talent to give you his idea. The contract must always be respected: any idea has a value, which is the commitment of the provider! Otherwise you'll prematurely dry your innovation, internal spring.
IDEA TEMPLATE
The best way to be welcoming for idea providers is to ask them fill up very basic idea templates. Complexity may be the worst entry barrier and, ideally, the best template should be a plain, white sheet.
But having a basic template including the most essential data (such as: a pain, the solution, potential benefits and reflections on feasibility) will be of some important help for the providers, to make some order in the possible disorder of any original proposition.
EVALUATION CRITERIA
Asking the providers to self-evaluate their idea propositions is a good way to:
- anticipate the feedback you'll provide them;
- help the provider to anticipate some cost/opportunity analysis;
- help yourself for the evaluation phase.
A very basic, still helpful self-evaluation criterion might be:
1) complexity (feasibility)
- low: the provider can develop the idea by itself;
- medium: he needs cross-competence coming from other functions;
- high: extra competence is needed; I mean competence which takes to be bought from outside the company.
2) benefits:
- low: the deployment will give value (efficiency/effectiveness) focused to the function the provider comes from;
- medium: a cross-functional benefit will come from the deployment of the idea;
- high: the idea will provide the company with new revenues (new business).
You can make a first classification of the ideas you'll receive on a two dimensional matrix, based on this starting evaluation criteria. This will help you understand which are the ideas you can spend some extra analysis effort on and identify those for which a "negative" feedback must be provided.
