What Is Better – One Big Idea or Lots of Small Ideas?

Have you thought about innovation in your organization? You may even have introduced crowdsourcing software to allow people from within and outside of the organization to come up with ideas. Btu what types of ideas are you looking for precisely? Perhaps you are hoping for that one eureka moment, where a true breakthrough is made by just a single person. In reality, however, it is likely that you will be better served by lots of small ideas. Put together, these ideas create a big change, perhaps the biggest change you have ever seen.

How to Get Lots of Small Ideas

There are a few ways to generate lots of small ideas:

Make sure everybody knows that small and insignificant are two very different things. Every tiny change contributes to a greater agenda. Make sure that your staff knows that, and that it is made clear on your crowdsourcing platform as well.
Make sure that submitting ideas – no matter how big or small – is very easy to do.
Implement every good small idea as soon as you possible can. The minute you approve something, you need to put it into place. This will encourage the next small idea as well.
Recognize those who have come up with ideas as soon as possible, and do so in an appropriate way. A monetary reward is generally not a good idea.
Put systems in place to make a small idea grow into something bigger.

Getting the Big Ideas as Well

Big ideas are equally necessary, and you should certainly not stand in their way. Some ideas to generate them include:

Understanding that all the small ideas put together form a huge idea.
Have an action plan. Make sure every step that you expect people to take is clearly defined. Do also make sure that, if you have a team of people working on innovation or crowdsourcing, everybody knows what their role in the team is.
Make sure people can work together. It takes one brain to come up with a small idea, but add a second brain to it, and that idea can be built on with a fresh new look. In so doing, you develop a small idea into a bigger one.

If you want your organization to remain competitive and relevant in today’s business world, then you need to come up with innovative ideas. These ideas can be big or small, and they are of equal importance. Similarly, you need to embrace different forms of technology to come up with more ideas. Crowdsourcing is a fantastic new form of technology, whereby you basically help anybody, regardless of whether they are in your organization or not, to come up with things that you can use to innovate. This could be an improvement on a product or service, or on something completely new. The sky really is the limit, particularly when you have access to so many ideas.

Continue reading business ideas for teens.