One of the most common issues that comes from running Hackathons, Innovation Challenges, or crowdsourcing ideas is that there are more ideas that potentially have a positive ROI than you can possibly pursue.
But what if you could increase your organization’s capacity to validate and test new ideas and ultimately better prioritize the ones with the most promise?
Meet Adobe’s Kickbox Program – An initiative that was designed to democratize innovation by giving employees on-demand access to resources and a structured process on-demand to validate their idea and pitch it to a decision maker to be taken to pilot, and ultimately implemented.
The Birth of a Game-Changing Program
In 2013, Adobe faced a common corporate challenge: How to systematically validate and test more ideas from their creative talent pool of thousands of employees. Their answer was Kickbox, an innovation-in-a-box program that democratized innovation across their organization. The concept was simple yet powerful—give employees the tools, resources, and permission to innovate.
Unlike traditional innovation programs that often involve lengthy approval processes and bureaucratic hurdles, Kickbox took an unconventional approach:
- Immediate Resources: Each participant receives a red box containing a $1,000 prepaid credit card to test their ideas—no questions asked.
- Clear Framework: The program provides step-by-step instructions for validating ideas using proven innovation methodologies.
- Democratic Access and Built-In Permission: Any employee can participate, regardless of their role or department. Participants receive explicit authorization to innovate, removing organizational barriers.
The ROI: Measurable Impact and Success Stories
In its first year alone, Adobe tested nearly 1,000 ideas—a dramatic increase from their previous rate of 12-24 product prototypes annually. This surge in innovation activity came at a lower cost than their traditional innovation processes.
Several successful outcomes emerged from the program, including Enhancements to Adobe Creative Cloud, New features in Adobe Marketing Cloud, and various internal process improvements that increased operational efficiency.
Beyond tangible products, the program delivered significant cultural benefits including measurably increased employee engagement and satisfaction, enhanced ability to attract and retain innovative talent, and a strengthened innovation culture across the organization.
Challenges of Applying Kickbox to Other Industries
While The Kickbox Program has proven successful inside of Adobe, there are common challenges when trying to apply it to other industries and organizations:
- Designed for Testing and Validating Software Ideas – Because Adobe is a software company, the experiments in The Kickbox program often aren’t relevant to testing the viability of services, physical products, or smaller continuous improvement-style solutions.
- Technical Knowledge Required Limits Accessibility – The different experiments that need to be conducted to make it through the first level of The Kickbox program require a minimum threshold of technical know-how (ie: building a landing page on a website), which makes the program inaccessible to many frontline team members.
- Shotgun-Style Approach to Awarding Boxes – Since anyone can be awarded a box and can pursue any idea that they would like, there is often push back from leadership and mid-level management on employees spending company time to pursue an idea that doesn’t align with strategic goals or an employees existing role.
Want to Bring a Kickbox-Like Program to Your Organization? Meet Ideawake’s Ideabox Program
Given some of the shortcomings highlighted above, back in 2017 Ideawake did a co-development with Aurora Healthcare to build an offshoot of The Kickbox called The Ideabox Program.
After a year of development, the first iteration of The Ideabox Program kept the concept of a physical box, but completely redesigned the content and program structure in the following ways:
- More Approachable Curriculum – Instead of applying only to software, The Ideabox focuses on experiments that can be used to validate physical products, continuous improvement-style solutions, as well as software.
- Augmenting Teams with Coaching – The Ideabox Program incorporates training and coaching to help teach teams how to validate and test ideas, increasing the percentage of teams that make it through the program.
- Designed Around Existing “Innovation Challenge” Framework – Instead of awarding the boxes on demand, teams are awarded the Ideabox once their idea is shortlisted by leadership at the conclusion of an innovation challenge, helping align ideas that are being tested with leadership and strategic goals.
Since launching The Ideabox, Ideawake has taken over 350 teams in 9 different industries through the program. If you’re interested in learning more about whether implementing The Ideabox would be a value add to your innovation or ideas program, you can schedule a 30-minute Discovery Call here.
