Company Success with an Enterprise Pipeline of Ideas

The Enterprise Idea Pipeline provides you with an end-to-end view of the flow of ideas from the moment they are recorded to when they are released.  It is meant for the enterprise to respond to high value ideas the moment they came so the enterprise does not miss the idea’s window of opportunity.  

It provides three primary benefits to an enterprise.  First, it is a channel that provides an end-to-end flow of ideas from the moment they are recorded to when they are released and reflected upon.  Second, it is the enterprise level portfolio backlog of ideas.  Third, it is meant to highlight high value ideas the moment they came in so that the enterprise does not miss the idea’s window of opportunity.  

The culture needed for the Enterprise Idea Pipeline is one where the enterprise immediately considers ideas as they come in because they are based on a current problem or opportunity.  You don’t wait for the next budget cycle to consider the idea. The pipeline is a more adaptable way of managing the portfolio of work across your enterprise since ideas can be admitted anytime and feedback may adapt its priority or reshape the idea.  Also, the pipeline brings enterprise-wide visibility and transparency to the work occurring within an organization.

Before moving further, what is an idea?  An idea is something that is deemed as valuable and has yet to be created.  The moment it is recorded, it may be small or large.  Depending on its level of customer value, it may become work that is worthy of evolving into a product or service or a significant feature of each.    

The pipeline is a working example of the delivery axis focused on delivering customer value as illustrated above. As the delivery axis represents the end-to-end flow of customer value from the recording of the idea to the point where it is released and reflected upon so is the Enterprise Idea Pipeline. 

The Enterprise Idea Pipeline can be known by different names such as a portfolio backlog, enterprise kanban board, and idea pipeline. What makes them all similar is that they hold the big ideas that may eventually (or immediately) be worked on by teams.  The Enterprise Idea Pipeline acts as the parent and feeder to all product backlogs and helps you connect strategy and ideas to user stories (and even tasks) and visa-versa.  

The pipeline is primarily used in medium to large companies, when visibility is needed to make investment decisions across portfolios to better understand where the highest value work lives.  It also helps when there are dependencies across multiple products, or when ideas do not have an obvious resting place in a product backlog.  When an enterprise is small and made up of a singular product, then the product backlog acts as the enterprise idea pipeline as these are the ideas that may be included in the future of that product.  

To learn more about applying an Enterprise Pipeline of Ideas in your company so you can be more customer value driven, feel free to reach out to Mario Moreira at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariomoreira/

Divergent Thinking is Great for Innovation and Agile

Divergence is a concept that implies that something is different or develops in a different direction.  Divergent thinking takes this concept and applies it to help you gain new insights and solutions.  This concept can be extremely important in achieving an innovation mindset.  This can benefit your focus on innovation and agility leading to better business results.  

For a company, divergent thinking can be used as a technique that provides an opportunity to create an internal market place of ideas.  These ideas can then be discussed, refined, and evolved into multiple solution options. 

Divergent thinking provides individuals, teams, and companies with the ability to consider lots of possible ways to satisfy a business need. Once divergent thinking occurs, there is a need to pair this with convergent thinking so that one solution is decided upon and experimented with. 

Unfortunately Divergent thinking isn’t encouraged in many of work cultures.  While most companies will say they want new and innovative ideas, there is an angst to move quickly to an answer which typically negates the possibility of sufficient divergent thinking.  Converging too soon reduces options and opportunity. 

If you are looking to infuse a mindset where innovation can thrive, then explicitly introduce divergent thinking into your organization.  Innovation is often introduced in the form of hack days.  This is periodic and event driven.  A more effective approach may be to apply continuous divergent thinking throughout many of the steps of your idea to delivery (aka, end-to-end) process. 

Some may ask, “What is to keep divergent thinking from distracting or slowing down our work?”  The simple answer is to apply a time-box technique for divergent thinking.  A brief example is if you have a business opportunity (aka, idea), allow for a period of time to silently identify all possible solutions.  Place the ideas onto large post-ids and post them up.   

The key is to conduct the divergent thinking silently since this ensures no negative or anchored prejudice interferes.  Divergent thinking works best when ideas can flow freely without opposing opinions.  Once the time-boxed divergent period is concluded and all of the ideas are collected, then convergence may commence.

Divergent thinking is a great way to gain new insights and ideas for solutions to business problems and products.  If you are looking for ways to infuse innovative thinking into your organization, consider applying divergent thinking.  Divergent thinking may allow you to come up with the next generation idea or the 10x gain which can lead to better business results.