You have launched an innovation challenge in your organization. So you are waiting for employees to participate and propose ideas or projects. Excellent idea to (re)involve them in your business strategy! But how do you stimulate the proposal of ideas? How do you create emulation around your initiative? In short, How to animate collaborative innovation ?
1- Driving collaborative innovation: editorial management
A first technique to animate thecollaborative innovation is to offer digital content easy to read and share. You can thus feed your participatory innovation platform by publishing different content every day, or every two days. Articles, images, interviews, or even surveys!
Interviews
Interviews are easy to conduct, even remotely. They allow you to value employees who participate in collaborative innovation, those who carry out projects, those who support them, etc. And producing an interview can go very quickly! Prepare in advance 3 issues, pick up the phone and ask your questions to the employee you are interested in. You can then publish recurring interview series and create the “3 questions for…” meeting.
Content created by top management
Involve top management in your collaborative innovation system can be very clever! In fact, you show your employees that the device is strategic. That it is not simply an initiative to "please yourself". For example, suggest to members of management or top management to explain, in video and in one sentence, why they support collaborative innovation. You will then be able to regularly broadcast these 20 to 30 second videos!
Surveys
Surveys are very useful for driving collaborative innovation! Indeed, they are easy and quick to set up, and it is also very easy to answer them. By setting up regular surveys, you ensure a regular relaunch of participation.
2- Driving collaborative innovation: premium and inspiring content
Beyond the distribution of digital content, you can offer your employees premium content to inspire them. They take more time to produce than “classic” digital content, but they are much more qualitative!
Conferences given by the talents of your organization
Your company is full of talent. This is an opportunity to highlight them so that as many people as possible can benefit from them! Do you want your employees to suggest ideas to bring your CSR plan to life? Go and find those who are passionate about ecological and social issues, or experts on these subjects, and ask them to host a conference.
These conferences must now be digitalized, or at least phygitalized. That is to say, it must be possible to watch them live, even remotely. Don't want to invest in live streaming of these conferences? What if you simply asked your collaborators-speakers to speak in front of their webcam, like a webinar?
Feedback
Feedback is often highly appreciated. In addition to conferences, you can ask colleagues to ppresent their feedback on this or that subject, in order to feed collective reflection. Maybe this will inspire some! As for the conferences, don't forget to propose a digital/phygital format, to allow people at a distance to participate.
3- Animate collaborative innovation: collective intelligence workshops
You can animate ideation by organizing workshops. Several workshop formats are possible for stimulate collective intelligence.
Workshops to resolve irritants
This is a workshop of design thinking which aim to identify irritants that employees in the field feel, and then to develop solutions. These workshops are therefore very concrete, and very pragmatic. There are multiple formats of workshops of this type. For example, you can organize a World Café around predefined problems, during which groups of collaborators will discuss to imagine solutions.
Foresight workshops
If you want to do take height to your employees, you can opt for prospective workshops. You will move away from the reality on the ground to gain in creativity. For example, a Workshop in Appreciative Approach allows employees to focus on their successes to imagine a desirable future together.
