You have launched an innovation challenge in your organisation. You expect employees to participate and propose ideas or projects. This is a great idea to (re)involve them in your company strategy! But how do you stimulate the proposal of ideas? How do you create emulation around your initiative? In short, how do you animatecollaborative innovation?
1- Animating collaborative innovation: editorial management
A first technique for animatingcollaborative innovation is to offer digital content that's easy to read and share. You can feed your participative innovation platform by publishing a different piece of content every day, or every other day. Articles, images, interviews or even polls!
The interviews
Interviews are easy to conduct, even from a distance. They allow you to highlight the employees who participate incollaborative innovation, those who carry out projects, those who support them, etc. And producing an interview can go very quickly! Prepare 3 questions in advance, pick up the phone and ask the employee you are interested in. You can then publish a series of recurring interviews and create a "3 questions to..." event.
Content created by top management
Involving top management in yourcollaborative innovation scheme can be very clever! You show your employees that the scheme is strategic. That it is not just an initiative to "have fun". For example, ask members of management or top management to explain, in video and in one sentence, why they supportcollaborative innovation. You can then regularly broadcast these 20 to 30 second videos!
Surveys
Surveys are very useful for animatingcollaborative innovation ! They are quick and easy to set up, and it is also very simple to answer them. By setting up regular surveys, you can ensure that participation is regularly renewed.
2- Animating collaborative innovation: premium and inspiring content
In addition to 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 organisation
Your company is full of talent. This is your chance to bring them to the forefront so that as many people as possible can benefit from them! Do you want your employees to come up with ideas to bring your CSR plan to life? Look for those who are passionate about ecological and social issues, or experts on these subjects, and offer to host a conference.
These conferences must now be digitised, or at least phygitalised. This means that it must be possible to view them live, even from a distance. You don't want to invest in live broadcasting of these conferences? What if you simply asked your speakers to speak in front of their webcam, like a webinar?
Feedback from experience
Feedback is often very welcome. In addition to the conferences, you can ask employees topresent their experience on a particular subject, in order to feed the collective reflection. Perhaps this will inspire some of them! As with conferences, don't forget to offer a digital/physical format, so that people at a distance can participate.
3- Facilitating collaborative innovation: collective intelligence workshops
You can facilitate ideation by organising workshops. Several workshop formats are possible to stimulate collective intelligence.
Workshops to resolve irritants
These are design thinking workshops which aim to identify irritants felt by employees in the field, and then to develop solutions. These workshops are therefore very concrete and pragmatic. There are many formats for this type of workshop. For example, you can organise a World Café around predefined problems, during which groups of employees will exchange ideas to come up with solutions.
Foresight workshops
If you want to give your employees a sense of perspective, you can opt for foresight workshops. You will get away from the reality of the field to gain in creativity. For example, an Appreciative Inquiry workshop allows employees to focus on their successes and imagine a desirable future together.
