Because I love words and language, I am always excited to find a new word that I didn’t know existed before, but one which other people may have been using for a long time.
Opinion by Thembe Khumalo
Most recently I discovered the word “ideation”. When I first heard it, I assumed it was a “made-up” word that someone had coined to mean conceptualisation.
But actually ideation is more than just developing exciting concepts. Ideation comprises all processes involved in taking an idea from its initial conception through to its realisation. Wikipedia defines ideation as all of the stages of a thought cycle, from innovation, to development, to actualisation.
So why should you care about this word that is new to me, but may not be new to you? Well, ideation and innovation can literally change your life. In fact, innovation is changing your life and the lives of people all around the world every day.
We’ve been hearing about innovation for a while now and it’s become a buzzword that finds itself on mission and vision statements and other company literature in a wide variety of industries. We’ve become so used to it in fact, that we throw it around with little regard for how its meaning has potential to either put us out of business, or exponentially improve our position.
The global corporate landscape is littered with the remains of companies that were blown away by the innovation whirlwind. There are obvious examples like Motorolla — manufacturers of the first mobile phone — who failed to improve on their offering once smartphones hit the market and were left panting not too far from the start line. But innovation isn’t only about making better products, it must apply to strategy, investment and most basically, the thinking behind a business.
Take for instance Kodak, the household name in cameras, who even gave the world the expression “a Kodak moment”. Enter digital photography, file sharing, mobile phones and Kodak simply failed to keep up. Today we tell our children the story of how we used to take photographs and develop films and they look at us with disbelief.
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I bet crews who were running Kodak during its heyday also look at each other with disbelief when they see how their story has evolved.
Innovation in business (and I dare say even in the government!) is no longer an optional extra. A colleague expressed it succinctly when she said: “Innovation has become a fundamental catalyst for growth.”
That’s why it’s important for businesses today to develop not just a culture that fosters innovative thinking, but also systems that allow for the full ideation process to come to fruition.
The world is so full of bright ideas, but without leaders and systems that allow those ideas to be actualised, we really might as well not have bothered birthing the ideas in the first place.
Ideation management, sometimes referred to as idea management, is a formalisation of the processes involved in gathering, sharing, analysing and executing on ideas generated within an enterprise and its collaborative networks. There are various ways in which you can begin to foster a culture of innovation within your business: Make thinking legal. You may find this an odd statement, but many managers today still operate out of the ’80s soap opera model where they proclaim to their staff: “I don’t pay you to think!” How many great ideas do you imagine are going to come out of that department? By contrast people who report to me are not permitted to present a problem to me without proposing at least one possible solution. This rule is intended to encourage more people to generate more ideas and needs to be reinforced in all policies and behaviours, both implicitly and explicitly.
Make it a requirement. If innovative thinking was added to your performance contract and directly linked to your remuneration, would you generate more ideas? Absolutely! And your value to the organisation would also increase considerably.
Reward innovators. First National Bank (FNB) in South Africa is recognised globally as the most innovative bank and part of the reason they have implemented over 5 000 innovations in the last nine years (1 416 in 2012 alone) is because employees are rewarded for implementing innovative solutions aligned to the company’s strategy and that deliver business benefit.
The chief executive officer Michael Jordaan says: “Our list of innovation goes across borders. Effectively, every employee can be an innovator and can change the way we conduct business. This is an inversion of the historical top-down application of corporate strategies. With the concept of innovation, we have created far-reaching ethos of creativity and we can see colleagues across Africa and India applying themselves to their jobs with a heightened sense of insight and innovation.”
I am fortunate to work for an organisation with a similar ethos to FNB and I believe if more companies did the same, the quality of lives of our customers and communities would vastly improve. lThembe Khumalo writes in her personal capacity. Readers’ comments can be sent to [email protected].
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