Advancing Innovation

CHAPTER 6Open Submission

Necessity is the mother of invention.

—Anonymous

Sometimes it is necessary to innovate just to survive. The sheer necessity of “needing to innovate” pushes people extra hard to get the job done. So if innovation is thrust upon you in daily execution, why not put a channel in place to formally capture those ideas as opposed to letting them sit on the sideline so they never see the light of day?

When you are a small company, you tend to do this every day already, though informally. When you have proximity to people, it is easy to huddle and share ideas. But when you have geographic dispersion of staff without easy access to people to vet ideas and debate what I sometimes call “half-baked ideas,” it becomes more difficult. Also, if you have more layers in your organization, sometimes front-line workers may feel intimidated when submitting their ideas to top leadership. But they would feel more encouraged if they could submit them anonymously.

This chapter explores methods to give employees a channel to suggest their ideas and be recognized or to do so anonymously.

Open submission is by far the easiest innovation channel. It doesn’t take a great deal to implement and can instantly produce results. But it does come with some flaws and pitfalls, so pay attention.

THE ORIGINAL OPEN SUBMISSION SYSTEM: THE SUGGESTION BOX

A simple analogy to this channel is the old “General Manager Suggestion Box.” Back in those days, one of the easiest ways to capture employee ...