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Inside the Box

By Peter Lloyd

Remember the suggestion box—that old-school black hole where new ideas went to die? Now technology has made the suggestion box instantaneously global, infinitely collaborative, ingeniously networked, and more. But open-ended idea generation can still fail. Just more efficiently now.

What happened to suggestions, recommendations, and new ideas when they landed inside the traditional suggestion box? If anyone ever opened the box, the contents landed on someone’s desk. That person may or may not have evaluated the suggestions. If they did, the ideas eventually died of neglect one way or the other.

Swedish technology company Ericsson, determined to build and nurture a culture of innovation, set out to improve the suggestion box.

In an article by Ben Paynter in Fast Company, To Boost Internal Innovation, Ericsson Thinks Inside the Boxes. Paynter quotes Magnus Karlsson, director of new business development and innovation in the company’s Group Function Strategy department.
We said, “Let’s create a system better than the traditional suggestion box.” We wanted to let ideas travel freely throughout the different silos of the organization.
Great idea! Here’s how it works at Ericsson.


With Ericsson’s creative technology:
Anybody can collaborate with anyone. I hope this means great ideas will attract attention and generate excitement all on their own.

Collaboration can instantly leap the silo walls, which should make for unlimited cross-pollination.

Anyone can open a box and start collaborating. This feature alone should attract ideas as well as ramp up intiative throughout the organization.

As a self-organizing system, interference from knuckleheads who default to fault finding and knee-jerk idea killing should find themselves unable to gum up the works.

Innova
In order to save idea box ideas from suffering the fate of the old suggestion box, Ericsson has put money where its mouth is, as it were. Management has installed the Innova box, a venture capital circuit. Innova awards ideators with time and money. At first, a little time off and a small amount of money to fund experimentation. Subsequent rounds of time and funding follow if the idea continues to show promise.

Everything seems to be in place for idea-generating success and a culture of innovation at Ericsson.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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