Idea management is the process of receiving, prioritizing, and implementing ideas from employees and customers to improve the business. It involves collecting ideas through various channels, like suggestion boxes or idea management software. The ideas are then sorted by priority and some may be implemented. However, many companies fail to have a clear strategy for managing ideas, which can lead to dissatisfaction if ideas are collected but not acted on. If a company decides to implement idea management, it should define the scope of ideas sought, assign a group to review submissions and recommend ideas, and recognize employees whose ideas are selected.

1. What Is Idea Management?

2. Idea Management is the process of receiving ideas
from people to be able to improve business. The
thoughts usually come either from customers or from
employees.
But I.M. is not only receiving the ideas. It is the whole
process of receiving, prioritizing and implementing
ideas.

3. Some companies use a letter box to receive ideas from their
employees. Sometimes they take the papers they receive
and sort them in order of priority and sometimes they put
them into an Idea Management Software to make sure
they have everything stored. Some companies use the
Idea Management Software for collecting ideas from the
employees and let them follow the progress of the idea
through the system. When using the idea management
software towards the customers some companies use the
voting functionality, having customers adding ideas and
then let everyone vote for the ideas to see which ideas are
most popular to implement.

4. The main issue that organizations get into are however that
they have not thought through the strategy around what to
do with the ideas before starting to collect them. Most
companies have a great intention, but managing ideas
and rejecting ideas in the right way is not always easy
since you have to consider the psychology around
keeping people inspired even though their ideas are not
chosen. It is also common for companies to collect ideas
and then not have time to do anything at all about them.
This is usually one good way to make employees
dissatisfied at work.

5. If you have decided to receive ideas from your personnel it
is a great idea to create a small project of it. You will
have to define what scope the ideas should be within. As
always it is good to clarify the scope by defining the
boundaries.
Since ideas can be anything from where to celebrate
Christmas to creating new products to market there will
of course involve different amount of complexity around
the process after receiving the idea. An example of how
you can do for a bit larger idea projects is described in
this article.

6. The ideas should be handed in by a specific date and an idea
management group should be assigned to go through the
ideas and recommend the best ideas to the decision
makers. The best thing is to bring all ideas into an Idea
Management Software to make sure that all ideas are
stored for future opportunities. I would hesitate to bring in
budget too much in the idea management process if the
scope isn't something like a restaurant visit, a trip or so.
Most people have less knowledge of all costs involved so
bringing in the money aspect into larger ideas tend to
destroy the inspiration.

7. When the best ideas should be presented they should be
done so by the employees who came up with the ideas.
They should, before presenting the ideas, create a
professional presentation and bring in issues around
implementing the ideas, such as risks, some ideas around
costs, etc.
Having the originator of the idea presenting the idea and what
it can do to the company is a great way of encouraging the
personnel to do even better work in the company.
When the idea is about to be implemented it should first be
tested to make sure it is possible to implement. Ideas can
sometimes look good on the drawing board but very hard
to implement and costly to market.

8. Of course the person who came up with the idea should be part
of the implementation in some way. Not necessarily in an
active position but at least in a passive supportive position.
After having verified that the idea is possible to market and be a
part of the organization it is time to start launching. A launch
can be for the organisation as well as for customers since an
idea can be for internal as well as external use.
I always encourage recognition for ideas that are implemented.
Having a person involved in the whole process of realising the
idea is one type of recognition but sometimes it can be really
nice with a diploma for "Best Idea of the month" and a dinner
for two or something similar. This kind of recognition is a cost-
effective way of having people more involved in the business
and make work a challenging part of their overall life instead of
a must.

9. I also believe to encourage people to come up with ideas even
though they might be totally crazy and hard to realise. This is
why I usually don't remove thoughts from the Management
Software but rather set a lower priority or set the in a state as
"thoughts for the future." This is an important part of not making
people discouraged because their idea might not be chosen.
Resources:
http://www.organizedfeedback.com
http://ezinearticles.com/?Article:-What-Is-Idea-Management?
&id=6658334

10. Thank you for reading!