Managing Many Ideas

Some people say that you can never have too many ideas. But is that true? Let’s say you manage a small start-up company and you want to innovate, how do you keep track of the ideas without ending up in an idea overflow?

So you get the entire workplace to help come up with new ideas. The company only has 15 employees so you are optimistic that this will be easy. But ideas can multiply quickly. Let’s say everyone comes up with one idea a day, which not a lot. After a week you have 75 ideas, in a month you will have more than 300 ideas and in a year, they will be almost 4000. That is 40 packs of post-it notes. That is idea overflow.

What is Idea Overflow?

Imagine trying to sort 4000 ideas. Just something simple like finding which are easily implementable and which are not will be difficult. Most often it is the manager’s job to look through the ideas. So it will be his or her time on the line. If each idea is given about five minutes, you will need more than six hours a week to go through 75 ideas.

Now imagine that your employees are very creative or that the workforce is larger than 100 people. The manager would then be spending the entire work week going through ideas. But is there any way of managing this idea overflow?

Get Organized

If you get hundreds or thousands of ideas weekly you need to organize. A first step would be to get a bunch of binders or keep everything in a big notebook. It might also be a good idea to sort the ideas into those that are good and those that are bad. But that isn’t enough. You will also need to sort which are easily implementable, which are expensive and which are inexpensive. Most companies would then throw out ideas that are bad, too expensive or difficult to implement.

But times change. What was once considered lame is suddenly high fashion and things that once were technically impossible has become easy. This applies here too. And that is why no ideas, even the ones that seem bad at first, should be thrown away.

Piles of Paper

The manager might not always be a specialist in all relevant fields and might need help from other employees. If you need input from another employee then they will need a copy of the idea. Of course, you could give them the original idea, but it might get lost in a large workplace. But you would quickly drown in paper. 4000 post-it notes laid out are about 23m2. So post-it notes or similar solutions are not ideal for idea management. Using something like Excel will lead to similar problems. It’s very difficult to effectively manage a 4000-line spreadsheet. So what can a company do?

employee ideas

Ideanote is Ideal for Managing Idea Overflow

Idea management platforms are the best solution for idea overflow. That’s where Ideanote comes in. It’s online and accessible to employees anywhere at any time. This is very important because most people don’t get ideas in forced brainstorming sessions. They get them on the fly. At the grocery store or the gym. So having a mobile platform will help you get more ideas and better ideas. You might think this is a problem because you already have too many ideas. But that is not the case. Ideanote focuses on feedback which helps you focus on the best ideas! This along with other features will help you manage all your company’s ideas.

Feedback is King

One of Ideanotes biggest features is feedback. Employees can like ideas and comment on them. They can do this both on a computer or a mobile device. This means that ideas are very accessible and employees can (and should be encouraged to) use their downtime to look at them. Managers can then easily see which ideas are most liked and garner the most discussion. Ideas often beget more ideas, so Ideanote will increase the number of ideas your company has access to. Some might fear this because idea overflow was the initial problem. But when you use Ideanote this will not be a problem at all. With increased feedback, you will be able to identify opportunities, develop them and implement them.

Develop Ideas Together

Another thing companies get with feedback is that employees can develop ideas together. Often ideas start out as rough outlines but when people work on them together they can add details. This can save the company time and money in later development because some of the work will already be finished.

It also means that an idea can change and evolve into something new. This is a great thing as it gives you an innovative advantage. Ideas often need to evolve. Bad ideas can become good and expensive ideas can become inexpensive. An example of this would be the internet itself. In the 60’s, it started as ARPANET, a military system that shared files, but over more than 50 years it has evolved into the internet we know today.

By giving you workforce a voice they will be happier and feel like a bigger part of the company. Because everyone wants to pitch in and share their input. This is one of Ideanote’s best features.

Ideanote idea overflow

Create Missions

Ideanote can also create missions. This allows the users to easily categorize their ideas. This is great for most companies. Most often the sales department doesn’t know a lot about production and vice versa. So by creating missions employees can focus on their expertise. This will help you organize but also increase the number of ideas your employees share with each other.

Keep Old Ideas

Ideanote will also let you keep old ideas. Some might think this was bad because it would lead to idea overflow. But that is not the case. As an online platform there is loads of space and nothing has to be thrown out. As mentioned earlier it is easy to sort and manage ideas in Ideanote. So keeping old ones will not stress the system. This can be beneficial if you want to revisit an old idea at a later date.

You Can Never Have Too Many Ideas

As we have seen with the increased feedback you will be able to manage your ideas more easily, develop them better, sort them, keep the old ones and do so much more. So when you use Ideanote you should not fear idea overflow – you should embrace the many ideas. If you have access to lots of ideas, you are more likely to find that one in a million that will change everything. And the small everyday ideas can help your company tremendously too.

Ideas are the engine that drives innovation and without them, your company will stagnate. But by managing ideas properly, it will flourish – so embrace the ideas!

Ideanote is here to help you do just that. Try it out today. It just might help your company reach its next level.

For similar articles you can check out the following: Digital Idea Management: A Brief History and it’s Development, What is Idea Management and Why is it Important? and The Idea Management Platform and Users as a Source of Innovation.

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