Progress Report Beck KG 

Beck KG

Progress report

What was the reason for implementing your idea competition?

As the head of research and development, I wanted to obtain new ideas for the fastening systems of the future. Originally, we had hoped that a few experts within our enterprise would know the answers. However, this was not the case. There were experts, but there were too few and the survey did not present the desired outcome.

What are the specific benefits that you generally see with idea competitions?

A benefit is that I have many minds to think about a question. Other than this, we can also establish new contacts and recruit potential employees. Additionally, it is good public relations.

Why exactly did you decide upon a competition outside of your enterprise’s boundaries?

In terms of experience, you develop blinkers after many years in the same job and internally you are there lacking the compelling ideas. As a result, I simply wanted to ask the greater public.

How did it work out for you?

So, we were very successful in addressing the crowd. There was also an idea that was followed in a specific way, but not precisely. However, there was initially nothing that led us to completely new products. Despite this, I am very satisfied with our execution, the whole thing worked perfectly.

How were you supported in the execution of the online idea competition?

We gathered two offers for idea management software and/or competitions and compared them; then we decided upon one provider. Although our own platform is nice, it is also expensive. Fundamentally, it was also worthwhile for us to fall back on existing offers.

How does that work with assessing the ideas?

The ideas were made available to us via the platform by the coordinator of our ideas campaign; we looked at them and actively posed questions on them. Then when the process was finished, I annotated and prepared the ideas to present to the management team and then each idea was assessed according to specific criteria. We then looked at which was best. Our management team was the jury: involved in this were the head of customer services and quality management, as well as the company owners and managing director.

In the pricing, you offered financial remuneration within the scope of €500 and €1000. How did you come to these figures?

We were advised by an experience campaign coordinator. We excluded material assets because very few people get excited about a few nails and a pneumatic nail gun, unless, of course, they are building a house. Other companies are able to gift their consumer goods. In our specific case, monetary gifts are better because people cannot do a lot with industrial machinery in their everyday life.

Do you think these prices are fair for the output you generated?

On the one hand yes, on the other hand no, because we were not able to implement any of the ideas. But it could have been a different story. It is always dependent on the end result.

If you could execute an ideas competition again, what would you improve?

Next time, I would select a survey that is “global”. We restricted it too much. If this is designed more openly, it could be that even more comes of it as a result.

Would you recommend ideas competitions to other enterprises?

Yes, definitely, because I experience it time and time again that although many companies are creative, they are, unfortunately, not innovative! Enterprises often only then organise innovation once the company is not doing well. Collaborations with alien companies can help with developing something new together. The whole thing is very exciting. I think it is really good and we need to move more in this direction.

What would you recommend others who would like to do this for the first time?

They should just get in contact with a crowdsourcing platform operator that do something like this and try it out. This is exactly what we did and we had no idea. It is a straightforward investment. Smaller enterprises should also try it out. The companies manufacturing consumer products will make it easier for themselves and can obtain good information relatively easily.

In any case, it should be a general question. Finally, it is likely you should ask yourself: Can a layman answer this question if they are not familiar with the subject matter? The question must be adapted to the public, because, as we established, there are a lot of laymen in the crowd. Aside from this, you should think about posing the question in several languages to address people globally - we only asked locally.

Here you can see how the oil campaign was practically executed on the crowdsourcing platform Neurovation.net:

https://www.neurovation.net/de/beck-fastener?backlink=de/competitions_all

(Interview with Stefan Siemers Dipl.-Ing. Led by Luisa Friebl on 29/03/2019)