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The most common reason that companies we talk to don’t move forward with an employee ideas program is centered around “we have other critical projects and priorities” to implement over the next 6 – 12 months.  What this really means 90% of the time is that leadership perceives the ROI of these other projects and initiatives to be higher than implementing an employee ideas program. Today, we’re sharing several heavy-hitting

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Google is often synonymous with innovation in people’s minds. Over the last 20+ years, they have created some of the most user-friendly, dominating products on the market. As of December 2024, its parent company Alphabet holds the title as the 5th largest company measured by market capitalization on the planet. But, did you know that many of Google’s most successful products that drove its meteoric rise came from an internal

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ROI is how you justify your programs existence, yet only 39% of organizations actually track their programs impact.

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What is LEAPP at the University of Wisconsin Stout? The University of Wisconsin Stout (UW-Stout), Wisconsin’s Polytechnic University, is a university within the Universities of Wisconsin located in western Wisconsin. The Leading Educational Advancement through Polytechnic Pathways (LEAPP) program is a systematic approach to innovation that focuses on collection, analysis, and implementation of creative, innovative ideas for organizational transformation. Why is Innovation Important to UW-Stout? UW-Stout is focused on the

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Toyota is the poster child for employee idea programs, you could say they were one of the main players who took the trend mainstream all the way back in the 1950’s as part of the “Kaizen” movement.  Their employee suggestion program, known as the “Creative Idea Suggestion System,” has been effective in generating significant annual savings for the company, and the value of ideas shared has accumulated into the billions

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At Ideawake, one of the most common questions we get from customers and leads is whether to include incentives for participation in their employee idea programs.  Although our response is always a resounding “yes,” from a best practice perspective, only ~50% of the organizations we work with elect to include incentives. This is for a variety of reasons, but they normally fall into one of three categories:  Although these are

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Who is Edge? Edge began inside of Gundersen Health System as the catalyst for transformation; investing in pioneering startups and gathering transformative concepts from employees and community members, building ideas into healthcare breakthroughs that benefit us all. Now, as of December 2022, Gundersen Health and Bellin Health merged. Edge is excited to target the unified Bellin and Gundersen Health System strategic plan. This plan is targeted at the delivery of

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The top 5 reasons employees stop sharing ideas based on our State of Employee Ideas in 2021 survey.

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Who is FAMI and what do you do for them? Natalie Collins: Farmers Alliance Mutual Insurance (FAMI) is a property and casualty insurance company that provides insurance for farms, homes, autos, and businesses.  Our home office is based in Kansas and our insurance products primarily focus on the rural markets in the Midwest region covering 8 states. I serve as the Vice President of the Enterprise Project Management Office and

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Who is Jason’s Deli and what do you do for them? Amy Schuster: Jason’s deli is a family-owned deli restaurant chain, founded in Beaumont, Texas, in 1976 by Joe Tortorice Jr. As we approach our 46th anniversary, we now operate 240+ locations in 28 states. In 2005, Jason’s Deli was the first major restaurant concept to ban artificial trans fats in the U.S. and later became the first to eliminate

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