Advocacy and screening

Advocacy and screening is the process of identifying the potential benefits and problems present at a particular time. Advocacy and screening encompasses evaluation of potential opportunities for ideas within a particular organization's context. The process of advocating for and screening ideas reveals another tension in the innovation process. Once ideas have been generated, they need to be evaluated, because not all ideas will be worth the effort of implementation. However, new ideas may be risky and might undercut the status quo, so the natural inertia against new ideas must be counteracted with advocacy; otherwise, ideas risk rejection in favor of the known. Thus the processes of screening and advocacy must take place simultaneously.

The joint processes of advocacy and screening allow ideas to undergo a period of refinement during this stage of the innovation process. By discussing an idea and hearing arguments for and against it, the idea itself becomes streamlined. Excess is removed and new notions may be added. This stage is crucial to the adoption of new practices and development of new products. Even a great idea must be pitched to upper management, and that advocacy calls upon very different skills than those utilized in idea generation. Advocates often play a role in helping innovators make their ideas and their benefits more explicit and communicable.

Idea generators do not always have the skills necessary to effectively advocate for their ideas (Heng, Trauth, & Fischer, 1999). Whirlpool again provides a great example. A structured training program with an emphasis on business strategy and analysis produces Innovation Mentors, who aid those with ideas in the process of advocacy to management (Cutler, 2003). These mentors do not manage idea generators, but facilitate, encourage and support them. Innovation Mentors also lead brainstorming sessions and evaluate ideas based on market environment and manufacturing concerns. This support network is balanced by a formalized review process that evaluates and grades each idea based on its potential to meet customer needs and its fit with the company (Warner, 2001).

Screening helps to discard ideas with low probabilities of success or high costs of implementation (whether those be social, structural or financial). The identification and refinement of ideas with high probabilities of success is the major, desirable output of this stage of the innovation process. To increase the likelihood of success, both advocates and screeners must be present in an organization and have the collaborative skills to interact productively.

In older companies, established hierarchies can make advocates hard to find and screeners overly negative about new, risky ideas (this concern can be counteracted with careful changes to culture and enhanced collaboration (Kodama, 2002)). In newer, younger companies with an emphasis on teamwork and collaboration, screening and cost-benefit analysis may be incomplete or lacking, which can lead to the demise of the business. Striking the right balance is difficult and different for every organization.

Success indicators

'One of the things I have struggled with is evaluations on my ideas. Some of my ideas light up fires around here, while others are squashed ... When I ask why was a given idea not pursued, I get wishy-washy responses ... We clearly lack standards in how we evaluate ideas ... Needless to say, I grow skeptical when they [the executives] ask for ideas and then do not provide feedback as to why an idea was not pursued.'--Software Engineer, Information Technology Organization

'Evaluating ideas used to be a highly subjective process. Often, ideas were evaluated differently depending on who came up with them ... Evaluation also depended on who was reviewing the idea ... The analogy I would draw is how disciplines review scientific research ... On any given day, any idea might make it or might get rejected ... Over the last six months we have put in place a systematic, transparent, open, and feedback-laden process to review and screen ideas. Any employee that turns in an idea via our Intranet can track the idea, see who is reviewing it, see the comments, ask questions and interact with the reviewing managers, and get constructive feedback ... Both the number of submissions and the quality of ideas have increased since we implemented the standardized review system.'--VP of Research, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Firm

One of the major distinctions of a company with robust innovation processes is the existence of clear-cut protocols for the evaluation and screening of ideas. Usually this involves two stages, one at the organizational level and the other at the customer level. Checking the fit between a new idea and the mission and values of an organization as well as the organization's current capabilities and resources helps weed out ideas with less potential. In the second stage, screening focuses the energies of employees on ideas that have demonstrable commercial value. Thus, the first stage identifies possible ideas, while the second clarifies which ideas are most likely to succeed. This is a highly pragmatic approach.

Another screening consideration present in robust organizations is the need to assess both the idea's relevance to the current operational needs and its potential long-term impact. This helps organizations avoid being blindsided by issues of the future because they become aware of how many immediate, ideas of the present they support, and can evaluate if long-term benefits or consequences are likely to accrue. Of course, this balancing act requires paying attention to immediate costs and benefits, as well as long term investment and return on that investment. Companies such as MAK Technologies have internal R&D funds to promote ideas that support or refine operational concerns, while they prefer to work with customers for ideas with longer-term impact. In this way, MAK Technologies uses market concerns and needs to guide long-term feedback, but implements operational changes quickly. Brittle organizations are less likely to balance appropriately between immediate and longer-term ideas. Often, brittle organizations become trapped in a cycle of working on problems of the present, then falling behind. Robust organizations also know how to advocate and screen for ideas and risks that have varying degrees of impact, locally or globally. Some ideas may be highly context-specific and local in their impacts. Robust organizations have dedicated teams in place that examine the potential of ideas and then advocate and screen for them. These teams are comprised of representatives from the various functional areas of the organization, as well as the various geographic sectors. The team represents the wide array of activities and capabilities of the organization. Brittle organizations, on the other hand, are more likely to view ideas in the confines of local contexts, thereby not understanding risks and potentials fully.

In robust organizations, employees also have numerous avenues through which to advocate for and get feedback on their ideas. For example, at Aptima Inc. employees have weekly company-wide brown bag lunches where they can present ideas during the early stages of development to receive feedback. More structured processes are in place to review ideas at a later stage of development. Robust organizations also recognize that advocating for ideas is a risky and time-consuming process. If dedicated advocate roles do not exist (as is the case in most organizations), then employees must advocate on their own time, with little encouragement and with the formalized screening process against them. In the case of radical innovations, advocacy needs to be particularly determined and skillful, because opposition is likely to be raised against the general notion of change, no matter how good or useful the change might be. In brittle organizations, the reward system is skewed towards successful idea generators, who receive credit and recognition for idea generation. Robust organizations recognize the difficulties and the risky nature of idea advocacy, and provide rewards to those who advocate for ideas in addition to rewards and recognition for idea generators.

Robust organizations also understand the challenge of evaluating truly innovative ideas. The challenge can be put forth as follows--if an idea is truly innovative and involves a radical departure from the current state of affairs, chances are high that there might not enough qualified individuals within the organization who can evaluate it. Moreover, if highly innovative ideas are evaluated by the same screening procedures as incremental ideas, many of the radical ideas will be discarded. It is much easier to calculate the Return-on-Investment (ROI) for an idea that the organization has experience with and understands. This is because there is an established history in the given domain and the presence of well-understood governance processes to manage the idea. However, in unchartered spaces, screening for ideas requires a higher degree of tolerance for risk, uncertainty, and incompleteness. Robust organizations understand this issue and appreciate the complexity of advocating and screening for radically innovative ideas. It is common for robust organizations to employ the assistance of external entities (e.g. professors and researchers at universities, venture capitalist, etc) to help in the advocacy and screening for these ideas. Robust organizations have a network of trusted external sources that they can bring into the innovation process at this early stage without risking loss of intellectual property or suffering other negative outcomes. Brittle organizations, on the other hand, do not clearly understand the differences in evaluation criteria when screening for different kinds of ideas. Moreover, they are less likely to involve external entities in this stage of the process as they fear loss of intellectual property.

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