Innovation Portal

Hi Guys,
Recently, I have been entrusted the job of designing an innovation portal for my company. It would act like a portal where the employees would post their innovative ideas related to the job/workplace. The innovative ideas would be accesible only to the employees. The good ideas would be screened by the management and implemented at the right time.
I am sure that many of you would be having such a portal already existing in your company.
Can you please share with me the features of such a portal. Even if you dont have any such portal, you can definitely suggest the features that you suggest would be ideal for such a portal.
Looking forward for your suggestions.
Regards,
Santosh Verma.
Bangalore.
(9886609605)

Hi Santhosh,

Congrats for such a wonderful initiative.

It is better to finalise the innovation plan with all sorts of associated policies...like who can review the innovative ideas posted by employees, what would be the mechanism to announce selected ideas, how to appreciate employee for the idea etc. before launching the project.

Also you can expect huge amount of administrative work in connection

with this.

Here you can find some of my thoughts...if found useful, you can try

1. You can request employees to put their innovative ideas for selected categories...for example, Production Automation, testing automation, employee motivation, cost reduction etc. In a better way, you can announce this in your intranet home

2.Decide approvers for innovative ideas and i-i coordinator/admin

3. Let the employee describe the idea, design charts/diagrams/protos and submit to the approver with a copy to the i-i admin

4. Let the approver approves/rejects the idea

5. When idea is approved, release the information somewhere in intranet

6. You may give appreciation/monetory benefit to employee

If you have got HR information system in place, you can reduce 90% of administrative efforts and you can ensure more transparency in the process.

Hope this project will definitely motiovate your team...best of luck

Good suggestions by Sreekumar:)
You will have to make a detailed policy and plan for the innovation portal., which should cover the following aspects.
1.CATEGORIZATION OF INNOVATIVE IDEAS- It could be department wise Or type of innovative idea wise like creating new process, suggesting improvement in existing process etc.
2.PROCESS TO SUBMIT THE IDEA-a structured format for the employee to submit the idea.eg. what is the idea, why needed, what are its benefits etc.
3.APPROVAL TEAM :who would be part of approval team and what would be basis of approval.
4.TRACKING OF THE IDEA SUBMITTED AND TIME LINES-employee should be able to track the idea submitted and there should be defined timelines to know whether his idea is submitted or not.
5.REWARDING THE IDEA SELECTED AND IMPLEMENTED.
hope it will help you to some extent
Regards,
Richa

Hi Sreekumar, Richa and Govil,
Thanks for your suggestions. I am sure they would be useful to me in the process. Guys, I have one more request. Can you please let me know some of the unique and innovative features you think would add more value to the portal?
Guya, Please come up with your suggestions.
Regards,
Santosh Verma.

Hi Guys,
Anyone of you have such a portal already existing in your company?
Can you please let me know the features of an innovation portal?

Hi,
We do have the same arrangment in my current company. We call this concept "idea of the month". We create one page everyday in our intranet which is accessible to all the employees and we ask them to share their idea online in the page. Upon completion of the month, we download all the ideas which were captured in the site. We come up with a Panel comprising people from Senior Manager position and above and present all the collected ideas to them for their review. Based on the mutual consent by the Panel, best idea is picked and the same is not only shared with Management for implementation but also awarded by HR.
thanks.
Best Wishes
Rajiv Naithani