Questions and Answers from IRI's Members: What Are IRI Members Talking about? These Questions Were Recently Posed on IRI's Community Forum
Lou Gritzo, Leslie Susan Cook, Julie Strasemeier, J. C. Blake, Eric P. Wallis, Luc Adriaenssens, Jay Otten, Gary Yezbick · Research-Technology Management · 2012
Q: Do you use social media for innovation? Do you use enterprise social networking platforms/systems for ideation, such as a corporate idea database or blog that is used to exchange and build on ideas? If yes, how are you doing this? What are you doing to encourage use of the system, and what results are you seeing? Has anyone done anything to take it to the next level by using these ideas to drive innovation? Gary Millington Manager, Information Services Eastman Chemical Company Answers Our management team and I have had multiple discussions with a spectrum of both early career and very senior staff, individually and as an aggregate, on the benefits and use of social media. Most staff members like it for keeping in touch with their colleagues around the globe, but somewhat to my surprise, there is virtually no energy behind its use for technical benefit including ideation, development of solutions, or information exchange, despite encouragement to do so. Maybe it is the nature of our business, or our demographics (all with PhDs, most over 30) but they still prefer face to face, in front of a whiteboard, in the lab, or somewhat increasingly, using videoconference and web exchange. Social media is purely social. Lou Gritzo Vice President Research FM Global Our company uses software from IFT (Innovation Framework Technologies) to enter challenges, log ideas, comment on ideas, and then rate them. During the 18 months of having this system, we have been making adjustments as we learn. For example, it is important to have a core team representing different units to enter well-worded challenges and then to evaluate the ideas on a timely basis and get feedback to the submitters. Thus far, we have not made good use of entering insights to support the challenges. We recognize the early adopters on an ad hoc basis with small monetary awards and by listing their names in a company newsletter. With the continuous improvement, we have seen an uptick in the quantity and quality of ideas. Approximately a dozen of the 200 ideas entered last year were resourced for further evaluation and assessment. We are still learning about how to improve our front end of innovation. Marketing Director Mid-Size Chemical Company Sealed Air is just beginning the social media innovation journey. Late last year we evaluated over 10 idea management systems with social media/ collaboration capabilities. We found BrainBank to be our number one choice in terms of both the idea management process and social media (i.e., Facebook) feel. In 2008, we had implemented a pilot with another idea management software vendor with limited success, due mainly to the limited social media networking capability. I would be happy share on the evaluation process for the various vendors. Leslie Cook Innovation Manager Sealed Air Q: Do you offer awards for innovation? I am doing benchmarking to determine what types of awards are offered for innovation. We have expanded globally and I am also interested to learn how other global companies handle these awards. 1. What kind of innovation awards do you have, and what are the award amounts? 2. How, if at all, do you vary the award amounts based on various country locations? Sue Flanigan U.S. Director of Human Resources Rogers Corp. Answers Yes, we do offer innovation awards via a trust fund a former CEO created for young technologists in R&D. The number of awardees varies each year (5-10) and the dividends from the trust are evenly distributed to the winners ($8,000-$12,000). We also provide a crystal plaque with the monetary award and present it in front of our R&D organizations. We do not vary the award amount by country. Julie Strasemeier Global R&D HR Systems Manager Procter & Gamble At Colgate-Palmolive, I started the President's Award for Technical Achievement. …