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Innovation Management

Innovation challenge

Want to quickly identify innovative solutions for deployment?

Launch an ideation campaign and benefit from the full power of Yumana’s innovation management software. You can effectively involve your employees, partners, customers or student communities to find solutions.

Innovation challenge definition and objectives

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What is an innovation challenge
and why launch one?

More than just an idea box, innovation challenges act as a catalyst to unlock the untapped potential of your ecosystem.

Their aim is twofold: to encourage the emergence of concrete, innovative solutions to problems, while at the same time stimulating collaborative engagement within your organization.

They are short and usually repeated every year, giving you the opportunity to quickly raise awareness about innovation in your communities.

Launching an innovation challenge

How does an innovation challenge work?

Step by step

Screenshot of an innovation challenge platform’s homepage

The keys to a successful innovation challenge

Innovation challenges are an excellent way to raise awareness about innovation among your stakeholders. They are quick to set up and provide the opportunity to gather new ideas, respond to a problem or identify promising initiatives to be rolled out across your organization.

Several key factors will ensure the success of your challenge:

  • Measure your ROI: to monitor the results of your call for ideas, you should define the KPIs to be monitored throughout the challenge.
  • Be transparent and inclusive: increase participation in the challenge by clearly communicating the goals of your ideation campaign to all target participants.
  • Forget the suggestion box: choose a platform that is tailored to your needs and can be easily configured to optimize the user experience.
  • Anticipate what comes after: make sure you have the resources you need to deliver winning projects.
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Screenshot of the description page of an innovation challenge

Step 1: Design your challenge

This first stage is crucial to the success of your challenge.

Before you start your campaign, make sure you define the following elements:

  • Reduce your environmental impact, find new sources of growth, identify the best initiatives taken by your teams during the year... To ensure maximum participation in your challenge, your objectives must be aligned with your challenges and reflect the interests of your participants.

  • To measure the success of your challenge, you first need to define the KPIs you want to monitor throughout the process. There can be many different KPIs: number of participants involved, volume of ideas collected, turnover generated by winning ideas, etc.

  • To ensure the success of your innovation challenge, you need to define 6 key elements in advance: the target audience, the themes of your challenge, the stages and milestones, the reward model for the winners, the communication plan to be used and the follow-up of the ideas to be implemented after the challenge.

  • Like any project, the launch of a challenge requires optimal organization. To ensure that your project runs smoothly, you need to identify the stakeholders and define their roles and responsibilities.

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Screenshot of Darwin, the Yumana Suite’s AI

Step 2: Gather as many ideas as possible

The time has come for your participants to submit ideas, either individually or in teams.

Here are our 3 tips for getting as many ideas as possible:

  • To ensure the participation of your target audience, you need to make it easy for them to submit their ideas online. Typically, a form is provided to your contributors. To ensure the quality of submissions, the form is 100% customizable. Yumana goes one step further, using intelligent analysis of submitted ideas to help you categorize similar ideas and identify and remove duplicate ideas.

  • To ensure that an idea is developed all the way through to implementation, your participants need to build teams that are ready to take action. To identify the best team members, Yumana provides idea owners with the 'Magic Team Builder', which suggests the most relevant profiles with just one click.

  • To get quick feedback on the relevance of their idea, idea owners have two options:

    • They can either self-assess by completing the scoring grid designed for the challenge and get their score in real time,
    • Or they can ask for feedback to assess the value of their idea. Darwin, Yumana's AI, gives live advice on how to improve the relevance of the idea.
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Screenshot of the initiatives voting page

Step 3: Assess and select the best ideas

You've launched your innovation challenge and collected hundreds of ideas.

To assess the potential value of the ideas you collected and be sure to keep only the best, you have several options:

  • To quickly select high potential ideas that meet your own scoring criteria, Yumana allows you to create 100% customizable scorecards.

  • By opting for public voting, you give decision-making power back to your communities and maximize their engagement. You have two options: give each user an equal number of votes or gamify the session by enabling crowdfunding. Each user can then place as many bets as they like on the ideas and earn additional voting tokens based on their participation.

  • Depending on the topic of your ideation challenge, it may be necessary to involve business experts in the evaluation of ideas. The platform provides managers with fully customizable evaluation grids. They can then call on the appropriate experts based on their skills, a group they belong to, or on an individual basis.

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Screenshot of the training video page

Step 4: Bring out the added value of ideas

Once the best ideas have been pre-selected, the nominated teams must go through a preparation phase to fine-tune their idea.

This phase is an opportunity for the nominees to practice for the pitch phase, which follows a two-stage schedule:

  • This first stage outlines the expectations of the jury that will select the best ideas. The training is designed to give nominees the tools to clarify their value proposition and the golden rules for writing an effective pitch. It also prepares nominees for public speaking and potential questions from the jury.

  • Once the candidate teams are familiar with the different pitch procedures, they are required to go through a one-to-one coaching phase. This stage ensures that the quality of the ideas presented to the jury is consistent, regardless of the experience of the candidates.

    The coaching will have been successful if each idea clearly formalizes the following information:

    • The problem addressed by the proposed idea
    • The context in which the problem is addressed
    • The solution to the problem and the expected benefits
    • The action plan to bring the project to fruition
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Screenshot of the winners' presentation page

Step 5: Celebrate your talents according to their contribution

Your innovation challenge is drawing to a close: it's time to select the best ideas and reward the winners.

  • This ceremony is an opportunity for the organizers and participants of the challenge to celebrate the success of the innovation challenge together, whether face-to-face or remotely. It is the opportunity to reward all those involved.

  • Central to the organization of your challenge, the platform plays an important role for both managers and participants. Don't forget to update it once the winners have been chosen:

    • Highlight the winners on the front page to encourage participants to learn more about the winning projects;
    • Inform all participants with a dedicated message and thank them for their participation.
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Customer testimonials

They launched an innovation challenge with Yumana

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We have benefited greatly from the expertise and dedication of the Yumana team.
The simplicity of the implementation and the flexibility of the platform helped to make our innovation challenge a success.

Customer Success Stories

Draw inspiration from our customers for
your own innovation challenge!

FAQ

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All you need to know to launch
a successful innovation challenge

  • To ensure the success of your innovation challenge, focus on 5 key areas:

    1. Ambition: ensure you have a committed sponsor, establish clear, shared objectives and define KPIs. Plan a post-challenge strategy from the outset to capitalize on the results.
    2. Theme: choose an inspiring theme and formulate a clear problem to maximize participation and stimulate creativity.
    3. The audience: target communities according to your ambition and the chosen theme to get relevant contributions.
    4. The rules of the game: these must be carefully defined, specifying the stakeholders, the selection criteria, the stages of the challenge and the motivational drivers to be favoured.
    5. Communication: put in place a strong communication strategy to engage your audience before, during and after the challenge. Ensure that your digital platform is easy to access and use to facilitate participation and maximize the impact of your challenge.
  • Although it is possible to start your innovation challenge without a tool, it is not advisable. An innovation management software offers a number of advantages:

    • The user interface is designed to give participants the best possible experience: based on their navigation, it offers them topics, inspirations or content tailored to their areas of interest, thereby maximizing their engagement.
    • Designed by experts, innovation management platforms are turnkey tools that are quick to set up and master. Rather than investing in in-house tools that are often unsuitable, you benefit from the software vendor's experience, combined with feedback from hundreds of customers, to speed up the development of your solution.
    • Choosing an innovation management software gives stakeholders a comprehensive view of your organization's innovation strategy. Acting as a one-stop shop, the platform centralizes all ideas and projects under development. It simplifies the management of the innovation process while encouraging the engagement of your target audience.
    • Launching an innovation challenge without a tool deprives you of many features dedicated to innovation, severely impacting the results you can achieve. By choosing a platform, you can easily track the ROI of your challenge and manage its results from start to finish. The Yumana platform also includes other specific features, such as the intelligent selection of ideas that match your strategic ambitions, the automatic creation of multidisciplinary teams and idea catalogues, all of which significantly enrich the innovation process.
  • Identifying the most promising ideas is no easy task. As part of an innovation challenge, there are 3 tools you can use to make sure you never miss the next great idea:

    • Personalized scorecards: these allow participants to score themselves against criteria you define. The higher the score, the closer the idea is to your expectations!
    • Community voting: by allowing all participants to vote for the idea they like best, you can increase participation and engagement among your target audience. Your participants will be more engaged with your approach and more likely to get involved in making your project a reality.
    • Expert evaluation: by consulting experts, you can quickly determine whether the ideas submitted are promising or not. They can be contacted directly through the platform and offer a more in-depth business approach, making it easier to eliminate ideas that are not in line with your strategic ambitions.
  • Once your innovation challenge is over, it's important to keep the momentum going by actively following up on the process you've started:

    • Highlight the winners and reward participants for their contributions. This will encourage them to take part in the next challenge and reinforce the culture of innovation within your organization.
    • Prioritize the development of selected ideas and provide project leaders with the resources they need to bring their initiatives to fruition.
    • Ensure that participants are kept informed of the progress of their projects. The people behind the winning projects may be different from the winners of the challenge: make sure you communicate the progress of their initiatives on the platform.
    • Finally, incorporate the lessons learned from the challenge into your long-term innovation process. You'll maximize the positive impact of the initiative and help create a dynamic culture of innovation within your organization.

Our innovation management solutions

Discover all our innovation management solutions

Collaborative innovation

Acculturate your teams to innovation to design and improve your products and services

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Intrapreneurship

Reveal and develop talents’ new skills to explore new business opportunities

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Open innovation

Turn your external communities into key stakeholders committed to your growth

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All innovation management resources

Resources

Our resources to help you launch
your innovation challenge

Innovative ideas: how do you spot them and turn them into reality?

Yumana shares some tips on how to identify an innovative idea and assess its implementation potential.
Find out more

What does disruptive innovation mean?

Yumana gives you the keys to understanding what a disruptive innovation is and measuring the effects it can produce.
Find out more

What are the different types of innovation?

Decoding types of innovation: Yumana provides a benchmark and a practical guide for innovation professionals.
Find out more

Ready to launch your innovation challenge?

Don't wait any longer, contact our experts today and join the Yumana community!

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Want more information about our solution? Let's talk! I'd like to learn more about your innovation challenges.

—Vincent JAMET,
SDR at Yumana