Now's the time for great ideas

As bleak as the economy is, I’m hearing one thing that makes me smile:

“There is no better time for new ideas.”

Yes, the great thing about this poor economy is that there’s so little room to fall. What was a foolish gamble yesterday is a potentially game-saving effort today. So from a creative perspective, I can work with this. Although I dislike economic pain, I love new ideas (maybe to a fault).

So naturally I was intrigued when I heard two men from Microsoft – Don Richardson, director, global innovation and PLM (product lifecycle management) industry strategy, and Simon Floyd, worldwide PLM industry technology strategist – detail their vision for innovation management. Some of their points:

Great ideas aren’t enough. They’ve got to be commercialized. “Great inventors die poor. Great innovators make money.” The laser, for example, was viewed as a solution without a problem until innovators applied it to surgery, manufacturing, and optical storage (DVDs).

The Eureka moment is too short. It’s almost human nature to shoot down an idea the instant it’s proposed. This may end up being the right move, but it’s a poor replacement for a systematic assessment of new ideas. Although you’d look ridiculous striding into conference room wearing a helmet slathered in duct tape, you’d look like a genius if you refined it into a sleek ski helmet with audio embedded.

Products need processes and/or services to go with them. The iPod, for example, would be nothing without the iTunes service. Netflix needs movies and mail. A car needs roads. Great new communications strategies need media, traditional or otherwise.

Ideas have lifecycles that need to be managed. Invest all you want in R&D, but don’t expect a return if you can’t cultivate the best ideas. Here’s the cultivation process: strategize → brainstorm → capture → formulate → evaluate → define → select → deliver.

Software can drive all of this. Naturally, Microsoft demoed software to do this and (setting aside the merits of the particular software), the concept was cool. It’s a social computing environment.

Anyone can propose an idea in the community. It gets its own Web page that you can flesh out with images, sketches and descriptions like a Facebook profile. Colleagues can scan the entire inventory of proposed ideas by title, click through and drill down on the ones that interest them, and rate them like books or movies. There are executive tools for evaluating highly rated ideas, as well as charts, graphs and reports.

I love the concept: encourage new ideas, let them breathe, and consider their potential before their pitfalls. Ensure there’s a process for innovation and everyone knows it. And yes, when the time is right, do what’s required in any cultivation process: the weeding.