25 Jan 2011

Rewarding Idea Generation Efforts - "Trick or Treat"?

by Peter Verschuere

Being part of the CogniStreamer® Development Team, my main experience with Innovation & Idea Management topics is from a practical point of view. "How can we improve the user experience when discussing an idea?" "Is it always necessary to collect ideas starting from a challenge (or seed, or campaign...)? And how do we handle unsolicited ideas?"

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Recently I focused on this one:
Should the participating crowd be rewarded for their contributions? Some say this is absolutely necessary - others state that introducing a reward system or showing a leader board discourages or impedes people. The main goal of this post is to find out what's the best way to attract as many contributors as possible to a challenge and how to make sure these contributors (and more, new people) keep coming back to help solving even more challenges. 

So I started a discussion on LinkedIn and I received a lot of very interesting and different opinions.

The perfect world

In a perfect universe, contributing and accessing knowledge would be intrinsic. There, the community (the 'crowd') would identify itself with the mission of its company, being proud to play a part in developing the future of the organization. Merely receiving recognition from its peers and mentors as being key contributors and experts would suffice to encourage the crowd to collaborate even more.
(Do I hear sweet sounds of birds flying in the open, sunny skies?)

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However, the need to introduce some sort of reward in an Innovation/Idea Management System (which is usually based on crowd-sourcing principles) is no doubt necessary in most organizations. 
The possible approach varies from tangible rewards (money, free day-off, substantial gifts...) across promotions to recognition (visible reinforcement to teams and individuals for their contributions and role-modeling of contributing behavior). Sometimes a mix is possible (recognition accompanied by rewards). But no matter how an organization chooses to reward and recognize the crowd for its role in Idea Generation, it must make sure it aligns with (and is supported by) the company's culture. If contributing isn’t inherently rewarding, celebrated, and supported by the executive top, rewards will be viewed as worthless and may even generate a negative effect.

Spear traps and pitfalls

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Indeed, if introduced in the wrong organizational culture, poorly considered rewards can produce a reverse effect on the community, inducing disinterest in the company's Innovation Project.
Possible scenarios come to mind:
  • Community may become too focused on individually earning those rewards/bonuses that they forget to contribute in the best interests of the team as a whole. Competition can be good but if its too aggressive it can be detrimental.
  • Feeling of discrimination or dissatisfaction among employees (if they feel the reward assessment process is not transparent).
  • The 'fourth place' syndrome:  If you only reward the top 3 winners the community gets nothing and are less likely to return.
  • Morale could fall if there is a large difference in the amount of reward to people giving similar contributions.
  • There will always be an element of judgment required to administer such a system. Someone will have to rate the real value of the contributions. This judgment may possibly end up being too subjective rather than objective.
  • Some contributors are more supporting or enriching by nature (commenting on discussions, offering inspiration, reviewing an idea) and therefore may not attract as much rewards as other people who offer actual ideas or concepts. There must be a good balance of incentives for these support/enrichment people or else they will not feel appreciated.
Rewarding shared contributions

Judging from the use of our CogniStreamer® User Community, we experience that incentives like recognition and (to a lesser extent) tangible rewards do help Innovation/Idea Management Communities to keep focused and spirited, provided that they are streamlined with the organization's culture and goals, and sponsored by the executive top.

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However, one consideration to think about: 
Innovation/Idea Management Tools are normally community-based, which means solutions mainly originate from multiple sources. So, be careful with shared contributions. Who gets the treat? Who deserves the reward when multiple people have been collaborating on an idea asynchronously? Is it the idea owner(s)? Is it all the contributors? If yes, to what extent? The best way to answer these questions is: ask. Ask what would really incite the community you're working with on this particular challenge and take into account how sustainable you can make this.

Please feel free to contribute to this discussion on LinkedIn: http://lnkd.in/5xQMAb

Thanks for your input:
Scott Kaufman, Jorge C. Sá Couto, Bernat Recasens Vert, Matt Chapman, William McCann Murphy, Michael Soerensen, Eleodor Sotropa, Jim Heilig, Erdem Ovacik