For many people, working from home has been a routine. Over the course of the past couple of years more and more people are facing this phenomenon. With the latest developments in the world around us, many are forced to work from home. Some of you will love it, others will prefer the routine of going into an office every day.

What do the numbers say?

In 2019 nearly 25%(almost 40 million persons) of U.S. Workers said they work from home, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics figures. The BLS looked at all workers age 15 and above who were not self-employed. This is an upward trend. In 2013 the percentage of U.S. Workers who said they work from home was 22,9%. In The Netherlands we have seen an upward trend in working from home. In 2013 there were more than 2 million permanent work-from-home people in The Netherlands, compared to 2,5 million in 2019. In 2019, according to CBS, there were more than 7 million people who work from home sometimes.

COVID-19

With the current spread of the corona virus (aka COVID 19), a lot of companies are already seeking to make arrangements to accommodate remote working, to help reduce the spread of the corona virus while also helping to limit the impact on productivity. Earlier this week, big companies like Twitter, Google and Microsoft told employees to work from home to slow the coronavirus spread, echoing large-scale-work-from-home effort that are already happening in affected countries like China and Japan.

Collaboration

There is a good reason that more and more companies are coming with applications which are focused on collaboration. In times such as the arrival of the corona virus it becomes clear how important it is to offer the possibility to work at home. Many applications are therefore focused on collaboration from different locations. Think of Microsoft Teams, Slack, Google Drive, Trello etc. Collaboration means improved efficiency and increased productivity, but only if you have the right tools for collaboration in the first place. These should not only be available on desktop computers, but also on mobile devices such as cell phones. This results in the fact that all employees can always keep in touch no matter their location.

Innovation is vital

One of the reasons why we have developed Accept Mission is the upward trend we are seeing in working from home. We believe that innovation is vital for every organization to grow. Working from different places doesn’t have to obstruct innovating with Accept Mission. Even if you have to work at home for a while it is possible to contribute to innovation within the organization.

Generate ideas and innovate!

With the application Accept Mission it is possible to generate ideas and innovate with every device at any place. You no longer need to go through the hassle of planning sessions with many people and get them in the same room at the same time. In Accept Mission you can work together from different places and even on different times. It starts with ideas. With Accept Mission we facilitate two ways of collecting ideas. We call these Inbox and Ideation Missions.

Inbox: You can manage multiple inboxes to collect ideas from different sources and collaborate with users to develop ideas into great solutions. Engage people and collaborate on ideas coming from anywhere.

Ideation Missions: Ideation Missions do have a stricter time restriction compared to inboxes. This is done to gather the best results possible: giving people a lot of time to come up with ideas can lead to overthinking. The goal in Ideation Missions is for participators (called agents) to write down as many ideas as possible within a short-given amount of time. All of these ideas (whether they are good, bad, cheap, expensive etc.) lead to a big pile of generated ideas. Therefore we use the gamification elements, like undercover users, timing, reminders, leaderboards etc. Even when some ideas are considered ‘bad’ (implementation of a similar idea has failed in the past, or the manager is skeptical about the idea for example), they can trigger the creative minds of people and therefore act as a (new) source of inspiration: quantity leads to quality.

With the Inboxes and Ideations in Accept Mission it is possible to collect ideas from different sources. It is easy to turn an idea into a project. You are able to collaborate with team members and share files. With a simple overview it is possible to monitor the progress of the projects.

Creativity and the creative brain

Now you know that it’s possible with Accept Mission to generate ideas and innovate. But in order to come up with decent ideas you need inspiration. Inspiration comes from observations, sounds and experiences out of ordinary. When you are working from home it means you will spend probably the most hours of numbers in between the same walls, the same table and chairs. There’s no external stimuli, there are no interesting people you can observe on the subway, you don’t have a chat at the coffee machine with some of your colleagues, there is no billboard that triggers you to unleash your creative mind. But there are activities you can do to improve your creativity. Think of walking, being outdoors or taking a shower. The study of Kaufman shows that 72% of the people have creative ideas while standing in the shower. The theory shows that the flowing water de-ionises the air (think of it as purification), boosting the quality of the oxygen, enabling improved connections to be made between the right part of the brain (the creative brain) and the left part of the brain (the logical brain).

Accept Mission is a powerful and attractive innovation platform for teams who want to go to the next level of Innovation. Start with collecting ideas, make decisions based of qualifying ideas and keep track of progress with ‘innovation projects’. It doesn’t matter where you are. Are you ready to innovate? Get a demo or start today with your free account. Collect ideas and start your first challenge!