It's Small Ideas That Matter

At the NCEO's sold-out annual conference in Chicago, keynote speaker Dean Schroeder, co-author of Ideas Are Free, talked about how his research with colleague Alan Robinson came to the surprising conclusion that what really distinguishes successful employee involvement systems is not the big breakthrough ideas that result but the accumulation of small ideas. Big ideas, Schroder said, can be easily copied by the competition, so they do not provide a sustainable advantage, necessary as they are to keep pace. Companies where employees generate hundreds or thousands of small ideas, however, create an edge that cannot be copied very easily. One company we know, VATEX, an ESOP-owned distributor of imprinted and embroidered promotional products, provides a good example. In their industry, everyone packs in dozens. But dozens are not natural numbers for people, and lots of errors are made in shipping. Some line workers at VATEX suggested they change to packing in tens. The result was a dramatic drop in errors and returns and a big boost in profit margins.

While some small ideas may end up having a big impact like this one, Schroeder said, two other benefits flow. First, the accumulation of small ideas can add up to substantial savings or new revenues. Second, cultures in which people are constantly coming up with small ideas create environments where big ideas are more likely to be generated as well, including from seemingly unlikely sources.

The key is not just to encourage people to come up with ideas (the suggestion box is at best a waste of time, he said) but to establish structures in which people are expected to generate ideas, a topic we have also discussed extensively in our publications.