Dear Diary,

I have been compiling a few days to create an agenda with universities, with the search for a software Innovation management system. I had plans to implement one in the company, so that ideas can be channeled from the bottom up, allowing some management of those ideas, their valuation and even a possible vote. All this to create the funnel of innovation, where ideas go to proposals and from there to projects and then prototypes and products.

The funnel should feed on ideas both internal and external, based on a communication strategy that dynamizes participation and involves the entire company.

After analyzing various software solutions on the market, I have to say that the price they have is totally disproportionate. They are basic solutions in a collaborative environment ranging from € 8,000 to € 60,000 a year, which is very expensive when it can be solved with a simple Excel and a Google form. So in the end that’s what I’ve done.

With this funnel I hope to achieve two things: visibility for the R&D department throughout the company and detect possible internal allies. A priori I do not expect to get great ideas for projects, I think the day to day projects makes the minds of workers too close to market, although I hope I’m wrong.

What is working very well is the approach to universities. It sounds like a lie, but they are suprisingly supportive of a company being proactive and approaching them for ideas. The argument is: your role as a university is to stay away from the market and conceptualize innovative ideas. Lean on me and we will transform those ideas together into prototypes and products.

That is another topic that I will talk about the other day, the transition from prototype to product, but now dear daily, I still see it far, first I have to get projects, so that will be a problem of the director of innovation of the future.

PS: amazing the book “Mass and power” Canetti. A unique treatise on how the masses are manipulated.