The Idea Pipeline That Produced Only Incremental Ideas
A consumer packaged-goods firm launched an employee ideation portal with a $50,000 prize for the best idea. In six months it received 1,200 submissions. Screening found 1,140 were cost-reduction or packaging-tweak suggestions; only 12 addressed the strategic priority of entering the health-conscious snack segment. Employees who submitted radical ideas reported their managers discouraged them because the ideas threatened existing product lines. The innovation team is frustrated that volume did not translate into strategic ideas and is considering increasing the prize to $250,000.
1. Evaluate whether raising the prize will produce more strategically relevant ideas.
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No. The bottleneck is not motivation to submit; it is the type of idea that survives the environment.
The 1,200 submissions show employees are willing to participate. The distribution of ideas (95% incremental) reflects two filters: (1) the portal rewarded any submission equally, so the path of least resistance dominated; (2) managers actively suppressed radical ideas because they threatened existing lines.
A larger prize increases the volume of the same distribution and may increase managerial resistance, since a bigger prize raises the stakes of ideas that threaten incumbents. The lever is not the reward size but the screening criteria and the protection of non-incremental ideas. Fixes: score submissions against the strategic theme explicitly, create a separate track with sponsor protection for ideas outside current lines, and decouple ideation from the submitter's reporting manager's veto.
2. Design the minimum changes to the ideation process to increase the share of strategic ideas.
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Three changes, each addressing a diagnosed filter:
Targeted framing. Replace open-ended 'best idea' with challenge statements tied to the strategy (e.g., 'how might we serve health-conscious snackers?'). This shifts the default from cost-cutting to the strategic question.
Protected evaluation. Route ideas that touch existing product lines through a review panel independent of the affected business unit, so a manager cannot kill an idea by discouraging the submitter. Track how many ideas each manager's team submits and how many survive screening.
Staged rewards. Reward advancement through stages (screened, prototyped, piloted), not a single jackpot. This rewards quality and reduces the incentive to flood the portal.
Measure the share of submissions addressing strategic themes, not total count.