The Idea-driven Workforce: Employee Innovation in Action

By Allison Dahl Mar 17, 2011

In part one of the Idea-driven Workforce, we discussed ways to engage employees in innovation and the five characteristics of effective employee innovation. In part two, we will look at operating a successful employee-driven innovation program in your organization — what works and what doesn't.

Pitney Bowes, a US$ 5.4 billion provider of software, hardware and services that integrate physical and digital communications channels with 33,000 employees across the globe, has long understood the connection between an engaged employee base, innovation and growth.

In early 2008, Chairman and CEO Murray Martin challenged his team with a specific call to action, to “include the entire workforce in innovative thinking around product, service, process and customer experience to generate organic growth.”

At the start of 2009 a cross-functional team launched IdeaNet, an internal web community built around “idea challenges” that enable employees to generate and shape ideas. The IdeaNet team works with business leaders and their project team to frame relevant challenges, engaging anywhere from a small number to all global employees. Employees have tackled 52 idea challenges to date.

After two years, over 6,500 employees from 23 countries have participated in IdeaNet, about one-third of all global online employees. 4,000 ideas have been submitted since launch, ranging from growth opportunities to process improvements and ideas to increase customer value. Business unit leaders have adopted 900 ideas for implementation, and a number of tracked actions have realized US$ 8m in revenue generated for Pitney Bowes.

Insights

After managing the program for two years, the IdeaNet team has gained a number of key insights into operating a successful employee-driven innovation program:

Ideas are Built, Not Born

The most actionable ideas are those that incorporate input from multiple contributors. When ideas can be clarified, expanded and built upon, they are more complete and actionable. Forty ideas contributed to three major outcomes from a sales challenge, with multiple ideas synthesized by the project team into each action.

Not all Innovation is Breakthrough

Every challenge doesn’t need to revolve around the most pressing global priorities of the business. Giving employees the chance to weigh in on more specific problems helps to reinforce the notion that anyone could participate in innovation. Challenges to name products have been highly engaging for employees, and showcased the organization’s creativity. Employees named the PBBI Geosk™ software platform, eliminating the need to hire an external marketing firm.

Communication is Critical

Share details on program results whenever possible. Employees don’t expect that every idea will be implemented, but they do expect a certain level of transparency, including details on which ideas were acted upon. The outcomes of each challenge are summarized and published on the corporate intranet and distributed to participants.

Elevate your Lead Users

Within PBBI, the software unit of Pitney Bowes, 77% of employees have participated on IdeaNet, which they leverage to feed their development pipeline and engage engineers from around the globe. They are highlighted as the model for employee innovation across the company.

Innovate Between Organizations

IdeaNet has launched three co-sponsored challenges, with two or more business leaders from different units jointly owning the challenge. The benefits of these collaborations and the merging of cross-functional teams have enabled teams to jointly create new processes with both teams at the table. The legal and procurement organizations recently co-sponsored a challenge and streamlined their procurement agreement process to reduce time spent by both parties.