[psmithsfhn]

i use a super-simple 'email myself' app to type up a quick message so that it hits my gmail and i process it later.

usually that means looking at it, looking it up, figure out what, if anything i want to do with it.

i might delete it. i might archive it. i might bookmark it.

i might put it in my 8-mile-long notepad as 'idea: do this cool thing' so that i can find it later and see how bad of an idea it was, or on the very rare occasion, rethink thru it again, and/or even try to do something with it, bounce it off a friend, etc.

in the end, my two repositories are: notepad (which right now is 'Text' program on my Chromebook, backed by a google doc -- i.e. where the content/file actually lives) * gmail, just in my Archived email

i've never actually known the value of 'innovation management'.

always assumed it had more to do with PR -- "hey big company x, capture the _brilliant_ idea of your _brilliant_ people and make enough money next quarter that you won't get fired, or at a minimum you'll contribute to this idea of the company as being an egalitarian place, democracy, etc."

not hating, that's just my general impression.

[itssho]

This is a totally valid opinion of innovation management and I share it mostly... So quick background I've been involved in 3 startups now with varying degrees of success (1 included an exit). In all of those cases we had our early days where 'ideas' pretty much drove the bus. We had an idea... we validated it (at least in the 1 case of exiting lol) and grew from there. Then something happens when there are 50 people in the office... people have ideas... ideas about the product, ideas about the sales, ideas about the fridge in the break room. Whatever. Point is, now the path forward isn't so clear and version 2 of the product is not as obvious as version 1 was. Processes that worked in the beginning are straining and the founders don't always know exactly why. Do they need to be ripped out and replaced or just incrementally changed. Now in the case of a startup it means the founder clears the schedule, sits down with people and figures shit out. In a large company (250+ people) that's not even possible. It would have been nice if as a founder I didn't have to clear the schedule and brute force this, would have been nice if I could have had a pipeline of ideas that helped team leads quickly approve incremental changes and founders understand new problems and make larger strategic decisions without turning to divination :P (which happens). Sort of like a CRM for ideas... this is how I think about innovation management. Innovation shouldn't a new management objective that demands you show what you 'innovated' on this quarter or your fired.