Tainted Innovation, Tempting Innovation

Ideas attributed to individuals come with their baggage and perceptions. People struggle to separate their feelings about the creator from the idea. In facilitating ideation sessions, ideas should be presented anonymously so that no one knows who came up with them. It may be better to reward participation in innovation rather than solely rewarding ideas. Learning from outside competitors is viewed as vigilant, benchmarking, and stealing thunder from a competitor, whereas acknowledging the superiority of an internal rival’s ideas can display deference and undermine one’s status. To strip away the credit for an idea, have people ideate in small teams, share ideas in digital form without tracking who entered them, and have a completely separate team evaluate the ideas objectively.