Create awareness 

Make sure you let others in your organization know your pipeline exists and how to get included so their ideas are considered (e.g., if your pipeline automatically sweeps in anything tagged ‘iPhone app’ make sure they know to add that tag!).  Sending out a broad message that you have a way to track and evaluate all the ideas related to the product, business, or other area you manage is a great way to engage people from your team and beyond, as they’ll get excited you’re interested and intend to review their ideas

Meet regularly  

Over time, new ideas will come in and existing ideas will change.  By getting into a regular pattern of meeting as a pipeline team to review ideas, you’ll improve the chances that your team is on top of the innovation going on in your area.  For example, meeting once every 4 weeks has worked well for many groups.  You might want to meet more frequently than that if a lot of ideas are submitted to your pipeline, and less frequently if fewer are submitted.

Help ideas grow first, then decide

Even though Pipelines make it easy for you to make decisions on which ideas are most promising, you don't have to jump straight to the up/down vote.  A good strategy is to "add a comment" to the idea (right from your pipeline page -- it still shows up on the idea page) for the idea team with your initial reaction or questions.  That gives the idea team and the community some time to improve the idea before you do your more formal evaluation. 

Assign points of contact  

This works on two fronts.  First, it makes it clear within the pipeline team who is the point person for a given idea.  Second, it makes it clear to the idea team who they should be reaching out to if they have questions or suggestions.  This creates transparency in the decision making process that keeps both the pipeline and the idea teams on the same page.

Use explicit evaluation criteria

To help all of the members of your pipeline team stay in synch on the meanings of your evaluation criteria, make them as explicit as you can.  For example, if you decide to estimate the value each idea could bring, create drop down choices that represent actual (rough) dollar values rather than “high,” “medium,” and “low.”  Otherwise you may find that one evaluator’s “high” is another’s “medium,” or that the value of the  assessments vary depending on what ideas were recently reviewed.  (“This seems more valuable than that last one, so I’ll rate this one high.”)  If “effort” is rated as “about 100 man-hours” then that type of variability is reduced.  

Establish clear next steps for ideas 

One of the most important things leaders can do is make it explicit and transparent what happens to the ideas that get selected by you and your review team.  Whether you’re intending to pick 2 ideas a month for discussion in your staff meeting, pick 5 ideas a month where each team gets a day to flesh out the idea with subject matter experts or 3 ideas per quarter where the teams get time with customer panels, establishing that next step drives energy and participation, as people know some ideas will get the chance to see the light of day. 

Pick more ideas for smaller bets…not fewer big bets 

One of the clear best practices in innovation management is that it’s very hard to tell which are the best ideas without evidence from the people who have the problem you’re trying to solve.  The best idea pickers in the world – from venture capitalists to serially successful innovative enterprises – admit that the key is getting ideas out in front of prospective ‘customers,’ learning and pivoting based on what you learn.  Most innovation fails when you bet big out of the gate, scaling the wrong thing or scaling what could have been the right thing in the wrong direction.  The relevance for Pipelines is that we recommend you not pick 1 or 2 ideas and bet big on them (big teams and heavy investment) but that you select a larger number of ideas for further investigation, where each idea may only get a few weeks or even a few days initial time.  In that first pass you’re just trying to gather enough data – hopefully through tangible experiments, from storyboards to prototypes or limited pilots of a new process – to  quickly test the big assumptions or hypotheses.  Then you can put more wood behind the arrows that seem promising based on that kind of  real evidence from having actually taken the first few steps.

Make it clear that your pipeline means action 

Innovators respond when they feel that their ideas have a shot at being heard, and ultimately, being implemented.  If you can celebrate some early successes from your pipeline, do so.  This will inspire other innovators to believe that their ideas can become reality.  The quality of submissions should improve as a result. Whether you use newsletters, employee meetings or special events, celebrating not only ideas moving forward but the people behind those ideas goes a long way towards building a culture of innovation and entrepreneurial behavior that will enable and drive meaningful outcomes.