As it turns out with innovation you can teach an old dog new tricks, and Microsoft Word is a great example.
Word processing software, which was first developed by IBM has been around since the early 1970’s, so you would think that everything that could have been added to it in the past 45 years would already be there. Nope.
Recently Microsoft has been adding a number of great new features to their Office 365 Word product.
Microsoft has added being able to dictate your documents without having to use an “add in” product to do that. The improved spell check function provides a definition of the word that it is suggesting, so you don’t end up selecting “nuisance” accidentally when the word you wanted was “nuance”. You can also have Office 365 Word read a document aloud for you to catch mistakes and verify if the content and tone of a document are what you were trying to say.
Along with Office 365 Word, Microsoft has been releasing an increasing number of updates and improvements to their entire Office 365 product line. But where are they getting all these great ideas from?
Four Sources of Innovation
You have four main sources of innovative ideas – your employees, customers (end users), suppliers and the public.
In Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc., we call this 360° innovation. While the first three sources are singular, the public sector is comprised of six sub-sources.
Employees—Your employees interact with your customers on a regular basis and as such, they should have a clear sense of your customers’ needs. This knowledge should lead to new ideas and innovations. Effectively tapping into this reservoir of understanding is key to a company’s innovation process.
However, for your personnel to function as a partner in the pursuit of innovation, they need training on how to identify and develop innovative ideas and a system for properly collecting their ideas.
Customers—Customers are a critical source of innovation. A study by Eric von Hippel demonstrated that most ideas 
for new product innovations come from customers. Research by Richard Normann found that well-managed companies are not only close to their customers, they seek out and engage their most demanding customers regarding their respective needs. This leads to the generation of new innovations.
Microsoft is taking advantage of this source by adding a very prominent smiley face “Feedback” icon in MS Word and a “Suggest a Feature” icon in other products on its Help option that allow a user to submit a suggestion.
The integration of customers into different parts of the innovation process can take a variety of forms, including but not limited to: customer forums, panels, observational approaches, or accessible communities.
With regard to customer communities, Netnography is a growing interpretive research approach used to analyze the communication of consumers in online communities. It provides understanding of consumers’ product-related dialogues and gathers unbiased insights into preferences, wishes, and ideas.
An example of this was a leading global supplier of fragrances and flavorings that used it to identify new business opportunities in the field of citrus beverages.
Suppliers—Your supply chain and vendors can be mined for innovative ideas related to your operations and customer needs. This can include joint development initiatives where you and they explore new technologies and methodologies that can lead to more innovative ways to operate. Wal-Mart has been a role model in working with its suppliers and an example of this is their joint development of RFI technology for tracking inventory.
Forward thinking organizations are looking to form working partnerships with key suppliers so they can work seamlessly on being more innovative. For innovation purposes, to effectively link key suppliers to your organization, a system should be developed to collect and route various ideas to the correct person or area within your company.
Public—The last source of innovation, the public, is comprised of a number of innovation sub-sources, including: the 
public in general, competitors, independent entrepreneurs, innovation specialists, inventors, scientists and universities.
The public sector is key to developing a continuous supply of good new ideas, and it requires forging quality links with others outside your company via a 360° approach to innovation. By building external information networks as well as internal cross-unit networks to generate ideas, fertile growth areas can be identified, or outside solutions can be harnessed for problem areas within your company.
By using an outside network of resources and relationships, your organization can apply its core strengths and competencies to solve complex problems that can provide significant revenue streams. For instance, Proctor & Gamble (P&G) found much of the needed technology outside of it when it relaunched Olay, which now has over $2 billion in sales. Relatedly, overall, at P&G new products resulting from open innovation have increased by nearly 60%.
Where to Start
Determine your overall innovation plan in the form of an innovation strategy document so you know how you want to proceed with innovation instead of just collecting a bunch of ideas.
Next, determine which of the four sources of innovation you wish to initially begin with: employees, customers, suppliers, or the public. Then develop an overall strategy for fully engaging the source you choose. In this way, you will put your organization on a track to embracing an Open, 360° approach to innovation.
Then, since your employees are paramount in the innovation process, determine how you will provide the initial and ongoing innovation training they will require. This needs to include communicating on which areas you wish them to focus their innovative efforts. Without this training, you will not achieve the innovation results you desire.
Finally, decide how you want to get your customers involved in your innovation process. Will this be done via customer focus groups, inserting a request for innovation in your product packaging or instructions, adding an innovation collection feature to your website, or like Microsoft, enhancing your software with a suggestion collection function?
If you need assistance with developing an overall strategy of how to use innovation by collecting ideas and suggestions from your employees, customers, suppliers and the public most effectively, please contact us using the below information so we can be a resource to you in this crucial area.
Fountainhead Consulting Group, Inc. is an Innovation and Business Planning firm. During the past 17 years we have shown over 1,200 companies how to achieve their goals by using our unique, comprehensive and systematic FastTrak Innovation Program™, Innovation Academy™, and Structure of Success™ methodologies. Using the components in these methodologies, each month we examine an aspect of how to transform your business or organization into a true 21st Century enterprise.
Office: (770) 642-4220
www.FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
George.Horrigan@FountainheadConsultingGroup.com
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