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Effective communication strategies are key to elevating user experience, fostering collaboration, and ultimately driving adoption of our platform. In this infographic, we will explore actionable steps to optimize both internal and external communication to unlock new opportunities for innovation and growth.

In today's rapidly changing business landscape, it’s not only innovation teams who are using idea management solutions to find new solutions and encourage fresh thinking among employees. If you're considering implementing an idea management platform in your business unit, here are three key features you need to look out for:

1. Design that drives user engagement

Have you ever started filling out a form just to quit halfway through because it’s not worth the headache? Design and usability of your idea management platform is crucial for employee engagement. If your team finds it hard to use or navigate, they'll soon lose interest.

So, when choosing your platform, make sure it's simple to use and has a user-friendly design. The experience should feel as easy as using any modern website and beloved b2c app. That means users can easily find what they're looking, functionalities are intuitive, and visual elements bring the page or app to life. Remember, this is a place where your team should inspire and feel inspired!

Finally, a great design isn't static. It should evolve based on user feedback and needs. Therefore, choose a vendor committed to continuously improving the platform based on users' experiences and suggestions.

2. Best-practice templates to hit the ground running

With the plethora of idea management literature out there, it can be overwhelming to set up your first campaign. That’s why guidance should be included in your idea management platform with off-the-shelf templates so you can hit the ground running.

Templates give you a head start by providing a structure for generating and managing ideas. They should match your goals and needs, including defining submission forms and idea stages. Plus, they should be flexible enough for you to change the wording to fit your company. For example, do you want to ask for “ideas,” “feedback,” or “best practices?”

Finally, these tried-and-true templates ensure you follow industry best practices. They’re based on the most common processes being followed by thousands of companies across sectors. Forget about re-inventing the wheel - unless you’re running an idea campaign on the future of mobility!

3. Connectivity to your innovation management platform to streamline implementation

Once your campaign is over and winning ideas have been selected, what next? Your idea management platform should easily connect to your innovation management platform to avoid falling into the idea sandbox syndrome where ideas accumulate but lack concrete follow-up.

Having both platforms integrated speeds up the process of turning an idea into action. This connectivity also allows you to better leverage existing partners in your portfolio who could help implement the idea, saving even more time.

Finally, having your entire innovation funnel managed on a single platform means more accurate and holistic analytics from idea to implementation. You should also be able to track topics such as your most engaged internal innovators, hot innovation topics, and innovation ROI.

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Remember, these three features - simplicity, ready-to-use templates, and connectivity - are crucial for any idea management platform. They'll help to ensure the successful creation and management of innovative ideas within your department.

Our mission is to empower users by providing them with the knowledge and tools necessary to optimize the usage of their innovation management platform. Through our shared expertise, we offer essential strategies to not only boost user engagement and satisfaction, but also establish effective governance for driving adoption within your organization. 

In this infographic, we will explore the key steps you can take to unleash the full potential of Bloomflow and achieve tangible business results. Join us on this journey to harness the power of our platform and propel your organization forward. 

Ready to unleash the full power of your innovation management platform? At Bloomflow, we've gathered tried-and-tested tips from various customer examples to help you create a highly effective onboarding experience for numerous users. By implementing these strategies, you can ensure that every user gets off to a great start and maximizes the benefits of the platform. 

Let's dive in and discover how you can optimize your onboarding process for success.

Paris – Bloomflow is proud to announce the launch of its Idea Management solution, designed to maximize user adoption and engagement among employees and to transform qualified ideas into promising innovation projects.

In today's fast-paced business environment, large enterprises face the challenge of constant transformation. Merely relying on a top-down strategy won’t cut it: teams need to be empowered to fuel this strategy with their in the field knowledge and then actually make it happen.

The need for effective idea generation and management tools that put teams and the user experience at the core has never been greater. Today, many organizations struggle with low user engagement and the challenge of having a long list of ideas and no action afterwards.

Recognizing these pain points, Bloomflow launched its brand-new Idea Management module– the first user-centric solution specifically designed to guide ideas from inception to execution.

Bloomflow Idea Management offers a suite of features tailored to empower teams and streamline the innovation process:

• Run time-bound or ongoing internal challenges: Create customized challenges to spark creativity and collaboration among employees.
• Leverage best-practice templates: Benefit from pre-built templates inspired by leading innovators for rapid onboarding and valuable guidance.
• Target select audiences: Directly engage specific groups within your organization to focus ideation efforts and maximize impact.
• Empower employees: Foster a culture of innovation by providing a simple and engaging platform for idea sharing, collaboration, and voting.
• Review and qualify ideas: Seamlessly progress ideas through the evaluation process to ensure that the most promising ideas receive the attention they deserve.
• Close the feedback loop: Keep employees informed with notifications regarding their idea submission and enable them to track their submission.
• Implement the most promising ideas: Effortlessly transition validated ideas into actionable projects, streamlining the idea-to-project progression process.

Key Benefits:

• Maximize user adoption and engagement: With its user-friendly interface and intuitive design, Bloomflow empowers higher levels of participation and engagement across all levels of tech expertise.
• Fully integrated into Bloomflow’s innovation management platform, Bloomflow facilitates efficient idea progression, enabling organizations to move from concept to execution with ease.
• Scalability: Bloomflow offers an easy-to-use solution that you can get started with quickly and grow with over time. 

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Hear from Unilever, a new client who recently added Bloomflow Idea Management to their platform:

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Join Our Early Adopter Program

Be among the first to experience the power of Bloomflow Idea Management by joining our Early Adopter program. As we continue to innovate and enhance our platform, Early Adopters will have the opportunity to shape the future of Bloomflow and influence upcoming features and functionalities.

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Schedule a demo to learn more

Have you ever failed to launch a new innovation project because of the lack of alignment with a startup partner? Or maybe, you didn’t hit your business objectives and saw less-than desirable results. 

Let’s talk about why this happens and how you could put an end to it.

One of many paradoxes in the business world is the desire of corporations to work with startups and incorporate their culture, meanwhile encouraging (or even  unconsciously pressuring) startups to assimilate with the corporation mindset. 

For corporations, collaborating with startups is worth the investment as these partnerships bring a range of opportunities. They can gain insights into emerging trends and quickly respond to changes in the market while gaining a competitive edge. Cost savings, risk mitigation, and brand enhancement among other factors is what makes this type of partnership so attractive.

Startups are agile making them a natural partner in innovation for corporations on a mission. However, there are two inherent differences that can potentially pose a set of challenges - culture and organizational structure. 

They also often bring a fresh perspective that can shake up corporate tried-and-trusted processes. When corporations push their structures onto the smaller teams at startups - the paradox occurs.

So what can you do to avoid this?

Open innovation is when organizations collaborate and seek ideas from outside sources instead of relying solely on their own knowledge and resources. 

And with digitalization only accelerating, it makes sense why more and more corporations are looking outward to help them keep up.

While Bloomflow fosters corporation-startup partnerships, we are also a startup ourselves and have the pleasure to work with large enterprises. We know the startup world. 

And in our experience we’ve identified five key aspects of the corporate-startup partnership that both parties should pay close attention to.

1. Effective and Frequent Communication 

In this type of partnership, there is often no defined process or governance, which leads to ineffective communication as well as security risks. 

Startups are small and flexible giving them the benefit of agility but the downfall of resource management. They do not have the same resources, time, or team to match the corporation's structure and expectations. So as the bigger player in the game, it is important for corporations to stay involved in the project, specifically, in the organizational aspect. 

Both sides should take the time to establish clear communication channels and specific procedures. As a corporation representative, do not be afraid to take the lead and send those calendar invites, follow ups,  or appoint team members responsible for overseeing the processes.

There will come a time when challenges must be faced, and having effective communication will ensure partners will be able to work through them efficiently.

It's complex to keep track of what everyone is doing, but when engaging with externals, we need to ensure best practices‍

‍João Stakonski / Technology Innovation Analyst at Unilever

In a survey conducted by Economist Impact, 5 main open innovation adoption practices were observed in advanced and emerging organizations:

• Centralized team dedicated to open innovation
• Team dedicated to open innovation software/platforms
• Standard procedures for innovation activities
• Adoption of open source softwares to support open innovation projects
• Established licensing or intellectual property management systems to support open innovation projects

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When establishing communication, selecting and adopting practices that work well for both partners is the backbone of your collaboration. 

2. Build Trust Between Partners With Transparency

A sure way to dissolve a partnership is by losing trust and as with any other partner, the startup needs to get the full picture.

As mentioned previously, their main characteristic is their agility  to adapt and sharpen their solution if the organization's expectations are clear.

Aim to instill trust in your partnerships and establish a full transparency policy that covers all elements of the collaboration - goals, timelines, intentions, contracts, procedures, etc. 

Do this at the start of collaboration so your outcome visions are aligned and success at scale is not jeopardized by lack of transparency.

3. Share Information, Carefully 

You need to understand that startups do not have the same guidelines and security measurements as a big corporation. Not all will have information security and privacy protection.

So it is up to you to create an ongoing stream of information exchange and ensure security policies are set in place. Share more than the minimum information required so you can discover insights or find innovation gaps.

Innovation gaps are cases in which a business has a need to evolve but lacks the resources to do so. Discovering these gaps with your startup partners represents  a great opportunity to close them through meaningful innovation.

Keep in mind the "paradox of openness" described by Laursen and Salter as it poses a challenge in collaborations with startups. The difficulty lies in creating an environment that fosters innovation without giving away too much to competitors. Firms that don't embrace external knowledge could miss innovation opportunities while those that share too much may lose their edge to competitors.

It's about finding the right balance between seeking external knowledge to fuel innovation, while also safeguarding your own expertise.

4. Understand Their Methods and Processes

Frustration and complications arise when there’s not a clear understanding of your partner’s differences from your own organization.

Remember, your organization or the startup is not trying to adopt each other’s mindset. That will not happen and that is also not the goal of this collaboration. It is a partnership that is mutually beneficial because of those inherent disparities.

Tobias Henz, an expert in bringing corporations and startups together mentions that “Just openly acknowledging that there may be problems in working together due to different cultures, methodologies, and philosophies and committing to working them out can drive partner satisfaction up by 30 percent.” 

Both parties need to take the time to familiarize themselves with their partners’ procedures. Establish a common approach to ensure both are working in the most effective and efficient way possible. 

Be careful to not impose too many of your own methods and processes. Don’t forget, the key advantage of working with startups is their agility and learning how and why they do things differently. 

5. Set Clear and Achievable Goals

In a McKinsey interview, discussing main obstacles faced in corporate-startup partnerships, Miao Wang, leader of McKinsey’s innovation practice, states that one pitfall “...is lack of strategic clarity about what you are trying to accomplish. Many corporations know they need to innovate, and know the technology trends, but have not translated that into what they practically need to do and therefore how they can leverage the external ecosystem to help them accomplish their objectives.” 

A strong foundation needs to be set for the partnership to create impact. This should be done by setting clear goals and achievable key performance metrics to get the most value out of the collaboration.

‍For us at EIT Food, the most important step is clearly understanding the corporate’s strategic objectives, and then working backwards from there to identify the right innovations/startups and increase the chances of a successful outcome.‍‍

‍Samantha Gadenne / Corporate Venture Manager at EIT Food

Again, many startups don’t have the capabilities to mount large and expensive projects. Therefore, both partners will need to be frank about what is possible and what is not. Keep this in mind while discussing future projects that way the desired outcome is realistic and aligned with business objectives

The goals set should be mutually beneficial. Yes, the corporation will have needs, but the startup should also be benefiting from this partnership (in more ways than just monetary). 

As The Partnership Progresses

Remember to find a balance between learning from the innovative startup and leveraging corporate strengths. With effective communication, information sharing, and understanding you embrace the best of both worlds, and pave the way to success and sustainable growth.

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Meet Yossi Feinberg, professor at Stanford Business School specializing in entrepreneurship. He’s the director of the executive program Driving Innovation and New Ventures for Established Organizations and co-director of an online digital transformation program.

We sat down with Professor Feinberg to gather his insights from more than 25 years of working with executives to drive innovation. Watch the video for the highlights, or read on for more insights!

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity

Do you see an increase in innovation in large organizations in recent years? And if so, why?

There's a sense of urgency that I haven't seen in the last five or six years. I think that urgency is coming from the fact that the world is actually changing fast.

Consumers expect things to be faster and newer. They find it easier to switch between technologies or between offerings, which is true also for business customers. 

On the other hand, there's also higher expectations for more sustainable products. And at the same time, every industry and every company is under pressure, either from existing rivals or from disruption, because there are many more startups who are now attacking almost every industry.

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How do you see companies react to this pressure?

One of the things that we see companies do is react by reorganizing how work is done. An example is companies actually start to organize by product, and they push decision making closer to where the product is created. For example, companies may have product managers who then are in charge of pushing innovation in their own product domains. This brings the customer voice into the process of innovation to provide products faster, and which have a better product market fit

Another example is companies moving to a digital transformation approach where they're trying to digitize the business, create more opportunities and innovation through new business models or through applications of digital technologies. 

But unfortunately, what we see from research out there is that many of these approaches are highly challenging to execute. For example, there are surveys that claim that digital transformation projects fail at the rate of 80% or even higher. And the real problem is that once you try something innovative in an organization and it fails, it becomes much more difficult. The organization naturally resists innovation, and people are a little bit jaded when you try to innovate again.

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What do you tell leaders coming to you asking for help?

The first thing I tell them is that there's no recipe. There's no one magic formula that you can just execute innovation in every organization and be successful. If we had that, you would have seen it already. 

The second thing I tell them is that there is a special recipe for their organization. There are actually insights and tools that help each individual organization find its way into successful innovation.

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So how do they find their recipe?

So usually, the starting point is identifying the types of innovation that your organization wants to pursue. And with that, you have to start thinking about where will the ideation happen? Where will the best ideas happen? Sometimes it's inside the organization, sometimes it's outside the organization. 

Next, you need to evaluate those ideas. 

And obviously, the most important thing is then executing on those innovations. And executing on those innovations means deciding on what organizational model will execute those innovations. Do you want to incubate ideas? Do you want to work with startups? Do you want a corporate venture capital app? Do you want a portfolio of all these things? There are many ways for a company to actually go after those innovative new projects and you have to make your decision on building those. 

But there are two things that are fundamental as you start thinking about all these elements of identifying, generating, evaluating, executing, and growing those innovative new projects. And those two things are the following. One is the information flow in your organization. How does information flow to the people who drive innovation? And the second part, and maybe the most fundamental part, is your organizational culture.

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Why is information flow so important for organizations?

Well, when you go into almost every large company and you ask leaders, “What's the innovation that's happening in your organization?” It's rarely the case that they have a complete map of every innovation that's happening in the organization.

Information flow is dynamic and important from that perspective. But it's not only inside the organization. There's all the information that needs to come from outside the organization whether it's startups, whether it is new technologies that are coming in, maybe trends with consumers or your customers or things on the supply chain. There's always a changing world in which information is crucial when it comes to innovating in your organization. 

But why is this information so crucial? It's because the people who are making those decisions at the innovation level, at the startup level, inside the large organization, they're facing a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity. So having this information and knowing what's going on elsewhere in the organization and outside in the world of the startups or the new technologies or the trends, that is crucial for being able to execute better on innovation projects.

For example, having information on trends or competing startups could be a crucial tool in deciding whether a project is a go or a no-go, whether one project should get more resources than another project, or move faster because this is how we're going to win. Those decisions can help us figure out where to put our resources. And in some cases, what do we need to shut down and prevent having those “walking dead” projects in our organization?

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What about the challenge of building a culture that supports innovation?

This challenge has been around for decades; many have researched it and written about it. But we have to remember that organizational culture starts with people. And when we think about the people who are going to drive innovation in the organization and think about what they need. 

They not only need assets and best practices and guidance and support, they also need a community. And they also need support from others in the organization. It's not enough to think about culture as an isolated thing for a group of people who are driving innovation. It's much more important to think about it holistically for all of the organization. 

The nice thing here is that it actually connects to the previous challenge that we talked about, which is information flow. The same notion of a network, of a connection between people that transfers information, can also help innovators find people who will support them.

It also helps people find opportunities to engage and support and participate in new projects. This helps transfer attitudes and create shared values that will change people's eventual behavior and their underlying assumptions that will lead them to be more innovative personally. That is how to foster a culture of innovation throughout the organization.

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Each business function has its own tools and platforms. What is the role of a technology platform for driving and monitoring innovation in larger organizations?

I'm a strong believer that technology can enable and support innovation in large organizations. The main reason is that it's not technology for the sake of technology, but technology can help us with this information flow problem that we have. 

It can also be a tool that creates a community. So it helps us with transferring those values that eventually translate into this culture of innovation. More importantly, with technology you can make sure that you have best practices, that you're anchored in the business values that innovation can create, and that you can implement better decision making. And in many cases, technology is what helps you to scale whatever solutions you come up with. And that's an extremely powerful tool.

In today's fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead requires constant scouting both online and off. With Bloomflow’s new Scouting Extension, check if a partner is already in your portfolio or add them in a click without ever leaving your tab.

Try the beta, free for a limited time on Chrome or Edge.

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When scouting on LinkedIn, Crunchbase, and PitchBook, consult your Bloomflow portfolios instantly. No more manual entries. Just scouting.

Simplified Partner Addition

The extension automatically extracts relevant details about the organization, helping you avoid manual data entry. This streamlined process not only saves your valuable time but also eliminates the potential for errors, ensuring accuracy in your portfolios.

Effortless Data Cross-Referencing

Prevent duplicate entries, thereby safeguarding the integrity of your data. If the organization already exists in your Bloomflow platform, you’ll know in a single click.

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Innovators can use this tool to spend more time scouting, and less time manually entering data.

If you're interested in learning more about this feature and how it can benefit your business, reach out to our team.

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Do you collaborate with external partners to co-create new value? Then be sure to check out Capgemini’s latest report The power of open minds: How open innovation offers benefits for all.

The report surveyed more than 1,000 large organizations to find that:

• 83% of organizations say that open innovation is a critical success factor in achieving sustainability goals
• 75% of organizations say that open innovation is critical to addressing complex business issues
• 71% of organizations plan to increase investment in open innovation in the next two years

However, most organizations have been unable to tap into the full potential of open innovation. Among the recommendations made by Capgemini is to adopt technology enablers to manage and coordinate open innovation initiatives. Thomas Girard, Bloomflow CEO & cofounder, explains in the report how “Innovation management platforms serve as a catalyst for an open innovation strategy, helping align organizations and their partners while uncovering valuable pain points.”

Unlocking the power of data is crucial to transforming open innovation processes. The ability to easily extract insights on project success rates with specific partners is key to improving open innovation outcomes. Innovation management platforms serve as a catalyst for an open innovation strategy, helping align organizations and their partners while uncovering valuable pain points

Thomas Girard / CEO & cofounder at Bloomflow. Source: Capgemini

For more in-depth information on the challenges and solutions of effective open innovation, check out the full report here.