Stewart McKie

24 January 2006
www.innomate.biz

ILM Culture: Recognize and Reward

Innomation believes that the success of an idea lifecycle management (ILM) system
is aided by a “recognize and reward” culture. Recognizing and rewarding par-
ticipants in the ILM process is one way of ensuring that ILM remains front-of-mind
in a corporate environment where many other initiatives may be competing for
attention.

There are at least three reasons for rewarding participants in the idea lifecycle
management process:

1. To increase idea quantity

2. To improve idea quality
3. To reflect idea engagement

One way of increasing idea quantity is to award points for each idea submitted -
whatever happens to it after it is submitted. This encourages ideators to take an
active part in the ILM process. Extra submission points may be awarded
depending on the perceived value of the campaign or challenge used to trigger
the idea submissions.

One way of improving idea quality is to award points for ideas that “exit” the
ILM process without being filtered out along the way. Depending on the
“dispatch” destination that the idea is dispatched to, these points could be raised
or lowered around a mean level. For example an idea dispatched for fast-track
development internally will gain more reward points than one licensed to a third
party for development.

Rewarding points to reflect idea engagement is not about quantity or quality but
about how an idea engages the ideation team. An idea that creates a great deal
of debate may be regarded as a positive influence on the quality of the ILM
process itself and therefore deserve rewarding. In this case some way of tracking
engagement is used to compare the level of engagement to specific metrics.

Rewarding ideas is not just about allocating points and translating those points
into tangible rewards. It’s also about recognizing participation and other ILM
milestones. The completion of a major ideation campaign may be recognized as
an event as may the top quarter in the year for idea activity. An annual top
ideators award can be put in place and any special contribution to the ILM proc-
ess should always be visible on the home page of your ILM system.

Reward and recognition is an integral part of the idea lifecycle management

process.

Copyright Stewart McKie, 2005. For permission to re-use/quote contact sm@tripos.biz