Idea campaigns are online brainstorming events collecting ideas around one specific question. This spring our company was invited to arrange an internal idea campaign for a B2B organization. Over 200 employees were invited to ideate.
The main goal of the idea campaign was to make the employees aware of sustainability from their customers’ point of view. The campaign question was “How can we help our customers accomplish their environmental goals?” For inspiration we made customer interviews that were available as videos at the campaign website.
We used our online campaign tool for the whole process. Employees could share ideas on a specific site, anonymously. The ideation period was two weeks during which we got over 120 ideas.
A team of experts evaluated the ideas and selected 20 for voting. The campaign participants were then invited to pick up five ideas that they thought were the best. All this was still done anonymously.
Finally three most liked ideas and their presenters were rewarded. The next step will be to put the best ideas into practice and use the other ones selectively in future initiatives.
An idea campaign does not have to be a one-off event. You can use it as a regular part of your innovation process with customers, partners, and employees. The more diverse the group you engage the more wide-ranging the results will be.
Photo Mat Walker
