A program for innovation
June 18th, 2008 – by TaraIt seems counterintuitive to create a program for innovation. True innovation is inspired, spontaneous, creative; not something to be programmed or managed. When you have bright, dedicated, passionate people innovation will happen, but sometimes it needs an extra boost.
We’ve found that in a large organization like Intuit there are things you can do to foster that innovative spirit and provide opportunities for it to thrive. I’ve written about our Idea Jam Sessions which give employees across functions, business units and domain expertise a day to imagine what’s possible and present their ideas, sketches and prototypes for judging. We love the ideas we see at these events, but the best part of the day is the energy. People get excited about their ideas and want to pursue them!
That’s led to the Innovation Development Program. It sounds highly structured and formal, but really it’s an extension of the Idea Jam Session concept. We wanted to reward people who were moving innovation forward at Intuit by giving them 3 months of dedicated time to work on their idea and get it launched on Intuit Labs, for all of you to see.
We had our first rotation participants this fall. Sid Gidwani helped deliver our QuickBooks TimeTracker and Quicken Mobile. Vlad Magdalin worked on an internal app to help innovators across the company build teams and develop their ideas for launch. This month we’re welcoming Mike Power and Bala Dutt. Mike is going to work on a cool mobile payment app and Bala is going to be helping our JumpUp team advance their offering in new, cool ways.
There’ll be more great stuff to come from these guys and others, so stay tuned. 
tagged: innovation, mobile, Small Business
Artie
| June 18th, 2008 at 11:32 am
I came across a blog post recently that talks about something similar. Essentially moving away from the dedicated Innovation R&D sort of group and instead getting the entire organization to particpated in the innovation in their own ways.
Andrew
| June 18th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
It’s good to see IDP in action, as innovation really has to be part of the ecosystem. I always liked this story’s quote, “you can’t schedule creativity.”
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20051026/gabler_01.shtml
aditya | June 19th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I think this might work. It would be great to know more about what they come up with after 3 months. But I am not so sure if all organizations can afford this. I would like to get your views on innovation in our corporate blog (mahindrauniverse.com).
Brian Sweat | June 26th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
I didn’t realize that Quicken Mobile came out of this program. That’s a really nice application and I’d like to see more mobile apps for QuickBooks users
With all the buzz on the new iPhone, I would anticipate more small businesses will be getting smartphones and expecting integration with QuickBooks.
Jonathan
| July 9th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
Thanks Brian, we have things in the pipeline for mobile and for the iPhone as well! You can actually subscribe to the feed for new apps that we launch on intuitlabs. Or just keep an eye on the mobile category.
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