The ideas developed by your employees, partners, and distributors can be an important source of knowledge that, in many cases, proves quite relevant to your business.

However, I must admit that I had no clue as to how enormously important promoting a culture of ideas and innovation could be as a source of direct business results—until we did a live “experiment” with a large group of companies. I call it an experiment because when we started off, we honestly didn’t know what to expect.

In a five-year period in this group, nearly 25,000 ideas were generated. After a process of evaluation and selection, about 15 percent of the ideas ended up getting implemented. Many ideas were from employees suggesting small (and occasionally large) improvements in their own work process or in customer service. Several were cost-saving ideas. Some were revenue-generating ideas as they related to new products or market expansion. About 30 percent of the implemented ideas had a direct financial benefit in the form of either increased revenue or cost savings. In this 5-year period, ideas contributed $550 million in revenue and another $120 million in cost savings for the group as a whole.

 …