Imagine the following scenario. Your company has a limited budget, and must decide on two initiatives:
- One idea is to enhance the back-end infrastructure which will reduce service outages by 25%
- The other idea is to provide free daily lunch to all employees with catered food
An employee vote will determine which idea is implemented. How do you feel about the odds of back-end infrastructure winning?
User sentiment, as expressed by votes, is a fantastic input into identifying which ideas have merit. Capturing crowdsourced opinions brings diverse points of view to ideas. But as my hypothetical example above shows, it cannot be the sole measure of an idea's worth. Another way of putting it:
The democratic notion of one person, one vote does not apply to innovation strategy inside enterprises.
This concept is a key distinguishing characteristic between the egalitarian Web 2.0 world and the corporate world where strategic bets must be placed continuously.
Some Opinions Are More Equal than Others
Inside companies, we assign relative weights to the opinions of those with whom we work. When the SVP of Logistics provides feedback on an idea, that feedback carries with it the following characteristics:
- Numerous years' experience in the field
- Access to a broad range of information from the logistics unit
- Understanding of overall corporate priorities
- The ability to fund innovations
In other words, the SVP's feedback carries a lot of weight. A field delivery employee will also have valuable insight on an idea. Capturing this insight is incredibly valuable, and can alter the fundamentals of the idea itself. But clearly, a simple one-vote per person approach is not appropriate in this case.
Another problem with solely relying on popularity contests for innovation is that they undermine the culture of meritocracy. Some employees are naturally going to be more effective at generating valuable ideas; others will excel at identifying and improving the ideas of colleagues, partners and customers.
The problem with all votes being equal is that it starts every idea at ground zero. Thus, if an employee with a demonstrated track record of consistently identifying winners provides a positive opinion about an idea, it doesn't affect the visibility of the idea. It must still go through the process of getting a large quantity of votes from the community. In this scenario, companies can lose valuable time or miss out on important ideas altogether.
Binary Feedback Mechanisms Fall Short
The value of simple yes/no voting is that it is easy to do, driving higher participation levels. This type of engagement is vital for engaging larger communities in the process of innovation.
But simple voting mechanisms present two problems to the identification of the most useful ideas inside companies:
- The low threshold for engagement overstates the value of the feedback
- The positive and negative aspects for an idea are lost in the simple vote
Let's examine the reduced feedback value first. In simple idea popularity contests, it's quite easy for users to go through a list and give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. This occurs regardless of whether someone is fully informed on the aspects of the idea or not. It's a simple gut-check of whether the idea appeals to a person. The existing number of 'up or 'down' votes further influences this process of online voting - as people take signals from what others have done.
It's the genius of social software: a well-rendered list of items served up for fast decisions. Great for polling people, prone to overly quick decisions based on incomplete input.
The other issue is this: the details of why an idea is liked or ot are critical. They flesh out the idea, and give it context. Maybe it has received a lot of 'yes' votes, but it has a big flaw in one attribute. Or the idea is generating a lot of buzz, but on closer inspection it is a poor fit with the business unit's direction. If an idea receives a lot of negative votes, where are the flaws? Imagine a list of evaluation criteria for an idea. Wouldn't it be great to know where the unpopular idea fell down in terms of people's view of it?
There is a trade-off between requiring greater levels of feedback and user participation. The graph below describes this trade-off in terms of Spigit's tools:
The more you ask people to enter, the fewer who will do so. Striking a balance of lightweight versus more informative feedback is critical to effectively mining the perspectives of innovation communities. It's also important to select the right tools for the evaluation - certainly simple votes make sense in polls of new consumer product features.
Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
The beauty of a community-driven innovation platform is this: everyone's idea will get an airing, and any idea can become one that is taken up and implemented by a company. We talked earlier about some opinions being more equal than others. That's true, and it's a critical aspect of innovation management. But there is another truth:
All ideas have an equal opportunity to make it
How they make it is subject the various influences that dynamically occur on the innovation management platform. It's important to distinguish between the influence any individual has and the merits of any single idea.
This is what differentiates Spigit from many other idea management vendors. We don't want companies to miss a single good idea, but we recognize that simple popularity contests can throw up a lot of noise and miss some of the best ideas relevant to your business.
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