Everyone knows that idea management is about collecting many ideas from different sources. When having too few ideas, the quality of smart decision making is lacking. Yes, it is possible to have less but good ideas but that is the same as buying a lottery ticket. It is not a strategy for success.  When having too many ideas, the challenge is to choose the right projects to execute with idea selection. By structuring the idea creation process, more and better ideas are generated. We created a tool called ‘Selection’ and it solves that need. With selection you can assign ideas and users. You also must add criteria that is necessary to score the ideas, that’s it!
Video:
First, what is ‘Selection’?
The selection tool can be used for smart decision making. For instance, you have five new products you want to offer to your customers. You would want to know which product is the most valuable to offer first. Then you can set a criteria list based on multiple criteria. For example: value for customer, value for us, development time, complexity, risk of failing, budget, etc. What you need is: 1) couple of ideas, 2) focus group 3) a set of criteria.
Every user will receive an invite to score every idea based on the criteria. The output is an order list of ideas based on the scores provided by your focus group. When the mission is completed, you will now know which idea got the highest ranking. Tip: you can invite internal (board, jury, management) and external (customers, partners).
Let’s give an example
As an innovation manager you captured a lot of ideas in several inboxes. From all the captured ideas, you will need to select the best validated ideas to start as the next innovation project. To select the best idea(s) you want to invite a focus group. You can use the innovation team, Top management, investors, or maybe even clients to review and validate a list of selected ideas. Here comes the Accept Mission tool ‘Selection’ to play. When you collected their feedback on which idea/project they think should get the highest priority to start as next innovation project.
What problem does it solve?
The main problem in this process (without using a tool) is that the selection by a jury only can be done based on putting it on the agenda of a board meeting. When discussing project proposals to start innovation projects, the group will ask questions. They will try to figure out what the priority is and which proposals are the best in the situation. Group pressure will take over and not all invited people will be equally included in the decision-making. Also, emotions will take over instead of a balanced decision-making process. With Accept Mission Selection you can send out the evaluation process at forehand. Every participant can score the ideas individually and are time & place independent. The algorithm will show which ideas are the best. You can decide to act on this directly. Or you can choose for example to discuss the top 3 results of the selection process in the actual board meeting.
-  It saves time and makes the decision-making process transparent
- Every participant has the same vote and will be included.
- Structured and same decision-making criteria
The importance of idea management
Idea management is the base of the development and growth of your business. Company’s often have many ideas to innovate, but how do you manage the idea’s? And how do you distinguish the good ideas from the bad ones? You will need a process/structure to manage the ideas, otherwise people will be driven in their old patterns. By structuring the process of the idea’s, you will generate better and more ideas. You will also get better solutions by bettering the decision-making process. Organisations who will optimize their idea process, will save a lot of time and money.
Features of the selection tool:
Undercover
Just like the other Accept Mission tool, it is possible to decide if users participate under their own name or an avatar. They can choose between one out of 300+ available avatars.
Linking ideas out of inboxes
You can choose ideas out of one of the inboxes. All information automatically gets connected to the Selection mission.
Criteria scoresÂ
You can add your own criteria at a Selection mission, with a minimum of one criterion. Users can adjust their own scores at the chosen criteria. Therefore, they can choose which criteria has the highest or lowest impact.
Criteria type
Choose between a star rating, low medium high or a custom criterion. It is possible to configurate your own different labels and scores with the custom criteria method. The other two methods can only adjust the weight of the criteria. The method choice has an influence on how visually easy the users can score.
Personal resultÂ
At the end of the Selection process, every user will receive their results in their own overview. It will give the top five ideas with the minimum, maximum and average score. Also, it shows which ideas completed the target score and which ideas are validated as good. Or you can choose to download the results into an Excel file and validate on your own.
Target scoresÂ
Users can set up a target score. Ideas which completed the target score are accepted and the others will be blocked. The targets scores will be made visually into different graphs.
Bullet chart resultÂ
The manager will get a smart dashboard which shows what the total results are. Next to the target scores it will also show the average, minimum and maximum score. The minimum and maximum score will show the range of the score. The smaller the range, how trust worthier the score.
Export for deeper analysisÂ
All the result can be downloaded for deeper analysis. All scorings actions per user per criteria per idea will be presented here. Download available in Excel form.
The Accept Mission Selection tool
Accept Mission “Selection” will easily let you pick a number of ideas, create your own set of criteria and invite a focus group to give their scores. With their scores you can tell you which ideas / projects should get the highest priority. When the selection mission is completed, the selection dashboard will give you a detailed list of the top-rated ideas based on the criteria score. This will optimize your idea process and will deliver better result. Curious how Accept Mission and the Selection tool can optimize your company’s Ideation and Idea Management?
