Innovation is More Than a Handful of Great Ideas
There’s nothing more worthless than a bunch of great ideas that “coulda been” – at least from an innovation standpoint.
Global healthcare leader Merck knew their innovation efforts were in danger of going this route. They had a lot of ideas coming in with an organically growing innovation program, but they needed a system for prioritizing and implementing those ideas to avoid an innovation program stall-out.
They also wanted participation on a larger scale. So they turned to Brightidea.
Using the Brightidea innovation platform to manage their internal innovation program, Merck was able to:
- Organize a dedicated team of innovation program managers to connect with key stakeholders, direct innovation efforts, and garner support across all business units
- Develop four self-sustaining innovation communities to run innovation challenges in several countries
- Maintain five ongoing innovation initiatives alongside ten short-term innovation challenges per year, with quick challenge turnaround
- Increase innovation challenge participation to more than 8,500 employees
- Innovate a solution to improve their internal innovation team review process
- Create a repository to store great ideas for future evaluation and potential implementation
Why did using Brightidea’s platform make such a difference? Because ideas without an innovation program are like tires without a car – they can’t take you anywhere. A successful innovation initiative requires structure:
- A dedicated team to act as innovation ambassadors across business units
- C-suite support to convey the importance of innovation in the company’s overall culture
- A single place where employees can follow innovation progress and offer ideas for solving challenges
- A system for evaluating ideas and determining which should be further developed/implemented
- A way to track and report progress of implemented ideas to understand ROI
Once Merck had this structure in place they could coordinate the various moving parts to keep their innovation efforts from crashing halfway through the cycle, and even run multiple innovation initiatives and challenges without missing a beat.
This organized approach is what allowed for the momentum that resulted in Merck scaling their innovation program the way they needed it to. And it will help your enterprise do the same.
To learn more about how Brightidea helped Merck change the scope of its innovation program, read the complete case study here.
