Employee Ideation Tool
From a Vision to NorthStar
NorthStar began as a simple vision. In my career at American Airlines I had worked at a small, medium, and hub stations, control centers, and numerous enterprise projects. I had experience and perspective that could benefit areas that weren't necessarily what I was focused on at that moment. How could I bring my knowledge and experience to the table to help determine the desirability, viability, and feasibility (DVF) of an idea without quitting my role and dedicating myself to researching this potential idea? What is the process if I have an idea that is outside the "realm" of my focus area?
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Hence NorthStar, which was originally named Vision. I found an amazing coworker and friend who volunteered to help me develop a site where employees could very easily post an idea. Now we had a cool idea that the two of us liked but had no clue whether this was just "Stephanie's place to put her ideas" or if other employees would find it beneficial and useful.
So we tested our hypothesis. The tool wasn't totally built but had enough functionality to post, comment, thread conversations, and vote. We introduced to one department at a townhall meeting that had about 80 attendees and then we waited and watched. We saw the posts starting, the comments starting, the voting... After a three week tested we saw 128% engagement from 16 different departments. We had only introduced it to 1. So through word of mouth other employees from different departments were logging in to see this new tool. We were even to test one of the ideas posted within the 3 week period!
We iterated on the idea and added commenting, threading of comments, voting on ideas and comments, notifications, tagging, and more. We used inspiration from tools that employees used frequently both in their personal and professional lives. We held multiple design thinking workshops, think aloud prototypes, and even presented the idea at the CIO's staff meeting to all her VPs.
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Finding efficiencies, capitalizing on the talent you already have within your organization, and creating fun ways for that knowledge to be shared and collaborated on is what will give your business the leading edge in innovation. Let me help you create that for your company.
