IDEASCALE BLOG

There are a number of ways that participating in or administrating an innovation program can help build your career. If you’re wondering how to build careers with innovation, look to these three IdeaScale examples.

Your Great Idea is Recognized! Marketer, Brian Stearns, suggested a new product idea that generated millions of dollars in sales during its first year. Because of the idea’s success, Home Depot recognized it as one of the most innovative products of the year and featured it on HGTV and in Popular Mechanics. Additionally, the City of Anderson, South Carolina gave Stearns an award because the product created jobs for the city.

You Make Ideas Possible! Sno-Isle Libraries has a program where ideas are reviewed by a committee of peers who help to refine it and assign it to the right team members for implementation. In an Open Nation panel discussion this year, Sno-Isle reported that over half of the members of the team members who participated on this peer review team have since been promoted. This could be for a number of reasons – as a team member who is evaluating and routing ideas, you end up having more visibility in the organization, but you also showcase your ability to solve problems and network solutions.

You Create a System Where Ideas Flourish. In the Covia crowdsourced innovation community, the results were already stupendous: almost $13 million in savings or projected new revenues from employee ideas. But the community was so gratified by the system and the traction that new ideas were able to gain, that they voted the innovation administrator as the Employee of the Year. The community itself recognized and felt the value of the system and wanted to honor that contribution.

And those are just a few stories where an innovation management program led to a positive impact in the lives of individuals and their careers. Certainly there are more examples of innovation leading to promotions and career achievements, but the added benefit in these crowdsourced programs is that the successes are celebrated publicly and shared with the entire community.

How else has innovation built the careers of others?