You want to set up an idea box in your company, and you are looking for the best idea box? Here are the essential criteria to guide your choice.

From the "anodyne" idea box to the structuring project

For a long time, companies have set up idea boxes without always thinking about the ins and outs of this approach. Employees used them to propose ideas, good practices or even innovation projects. Sometimes they also used it to report complaints, dissatisfaction, irritants or problems, without really proposing a solution.

But once the ideas were in, what happened? In reality, not much. At best, the ideas were all studied, some were implemented but no follow-up was done. At worst, the idea boxes were never opened.

Employees became disillusioned and bored, and the reputation of the idea boxes suffered.

The rise of thecollaborative innovation has changed the rules of the game. And today, setting up an idea box is no longer considered a trivial project. Indeed, companies have now understood that, in order to ask their employees to propose ideas, it is essential to structure the process. And that an idea box alone, without thinking about the "before" and "after", is meaningless.

The front is for example :

• Defining the themes on which you want your employees to propose ideas
• The times when you will put your idea box forward
• The times you will organise to help your staff generate ideas
• Identification of the people (jury) who will validate the ideas
• Etc.

Afterwards, it is for example :

• Criteria for the selection of ideas by a jury or by other collaborators
• Implementing ideas, from prototype to wider deployment
• The choice of what to do with unsuccessful ideas
• The communication you will make about the operational implementation of the ideas

The best idea box is the one sized for your business

As you will have understood, before looking for the best idea box, you must think about all the levers for implementing your approach, but also about the post-proposal phase, i.e. everything that concerns the selection, deployment and communication of the ideas selected.

Once this is done, you can (finally!) find the best digital suggestion box for your business. And the best one is the one that is adapted to YOUR company.

Depending on its size, its maturity on the subject, its internal culture, etc. Identify what is most important to you, and determine the criteria for selecting your tool.

Moreover, a modular platform has great advantages. Indeed, it can evolve with you, and adapt to your needs year after year.

The best idea box offers a wealth of features

The best idea box therefore allows you to manage and animate (both are important!) the whole process ofcollaborative innovation. We have identified 3 functional blocks that are essential to your idea box.

Ideation stimulation and collective intelligence

To stimulate the submission of ideas to your idea box, you will need features that allow you to stimulate ideation.

At Beeshake, we have a few beliefs about this, such as:

• MOOCscan help your employees to better understand the topics you are presenting to them. A few learning paths are often beneficial to ground and inspire them.
• Inspirational events, broadcast live to give everyone access, are also a great way to inspire
• Facilitating collective ideation workshops - even at a distance - helps to bring out the first ideas when the process has difficulty getting off the ground (which, rest assured, is very frequent!)

In short, the best suggestion box for you should offer animation features to help employees think through the irritants they encounter and get them into a solution-oriented frame of mind.

Continuous improvement and calls for ideas

The best idea box allows you to manage bothcollaborative innovation andcollaborative innovation . In other words, on the one hand, your employees should be able to put ideas in freely, throughout the year.

And on the other hand, they should be able to participate in calls for ideas (challenges, hackathons, or whatever you call them in each company) that you organise when you need ideas to emerge on specific (and strategic!) themes.

Communication and monitoring of projects

The third essential element is that you must be able to use your idea box to animate theprocess and communicate about it. For example, you must be able to :

• Promoting project leaders
• Organise livepitch sessions in webinar format
• Publish a regular follow-up of the selected projects
• Follow up and digitally animate experimentation groups or project teams
• Communicating with as many people as possible on the follow-up of projects, and sending automatic newsletters

---