This paper describes the surge of interest in the phenomenon of leveraging competitive spirit to create breakthrough ideas and outlines the factors critical for the success of competitions that seek ideas from company employees.
In the quest to grow topline revenues through innovative ideas, organizations are using competitions as a forum for tapping into the creative imaginations of employees, consumers, and external technical, design and other expert thinkers.
The quality and business impact of the outputs is dramatically improved by managing an idea competition not as a stand-alone “idea generation” event but as part of a larger “strategic process” – an open-minded, future-oriented, “divergent thinking” process that involves key stakeholders and calls for a solid understanding of consumer insights and emerging marketplace trends.
Successful idea competitions involve careful goal-setting, framing, participant selection and preparation, the infusion of external information and stimuli, iterative idea screening and refinement, and internal communications that set the stage for successful implementation.