Social Networking in Research & Development?

A few weeks ago I met the head of idea management (IDM) for the Research & Development organization of a well known car manufacturer. It was a very interesting and encouraging meeting.

Until today idea management is seen as a very one dimensional process at this company. Employees submit their ideas online and on paper. The ideas go to the manager and he/she decides whats next. Bigger ideas go to a central IDM team. All ideas face the usual challenges of not beeing evaluated in time and with an appropriate feedback.

So, what he now wants to establish is a social network where ideas can be discussed between employees and managers first. Good ideas will eventually go up in the top list and indicate importance and priority. Seems simple. Hopefully it is because this is the only way of bringing IDM to the next level.

Idea Management Congress in Hamburg, May10-12, 2009

From May 10-12, 2009 there will be the next international Idea Management congress in Hamburg, Germany, organized by the "Deutsches Institut für Betriebswirtschaft" (dib). The dib supports for many years the "idea management idea" and at this congress several hundreds of idea managers gather together to listen to and discuss latest trends and topics.

I have the opportunity to run a workshop about our idea management at SAP and how we think that new technology and trends around Web 2.0 should improve and direct a new collaborative evaluation model in idea management. Adapted social networking in a multi-dimensional community of idea submitters and assessors could be a key differentiator for companies compared with the standard one dimensional idea management.

I am also very excited to listen to the workshop of Tom Dupre , Program Manager for IBM´s Global Industry Networked Communities, USA . He is going to ask the question "What would Obama do? In these uncertain economic times, are Suggestion Schemes and other Employee Involvement processes still viable?"