How to Manage Ideas and Make Innovation Happen

Managing ideas is a daunting prospect for many, but developing techniques to effectively assess, prioritize, and implement ideas can help businesses stay ahead of the game. Executives need to acknowledge their limitations and understand that innovation can't be managed in the same way as more traditional business activities. Instead, the focus should be on establishing an environment in which ideas can thrive, while implementing a rigorous and disciplined decision-making process to quickly eliminate those that don't work. Transparency, quick decisions, and objective criteria for evaluation are all critical to the success of innovation management. Companies can use a variety of strategies to approach innovation management, from centralized decision-making processes to testing new ideas on a technological infrastructure.