This technique is an efficient tool to involve the
bottom level employees – whose opinions are not usually taken
into consideration - in the search for new business concepts, thus taking
advantage from their knowledge of the company “periphery”.
It is a kind of competition for business planning that allows to put
into practice what Andriopoulos, Lowe (2000) and others call “opportunising”.
In other words, employees are free to identify and join creative plans
that are commercially interesting. So you can promote ideas “from
below” and develop all cognitive resources within your organization.
Employees are directly involved in the generation of creative and cost-effective
plans and can therefore combine their personal ambitions with a full
understanding of the upcoming trends.
So this technique helps you to both generate a large number of suggestions
and set up an ideal business climate for the so called personnel empowerment.
To start up the process, the company can create a multi-functional management
team supported by the company venture capital unit; it can help to stimulate
new ideas and involve the operating personnel. The different business
plans will then be selected and winners will be awarded prizes and given
funds to carry out their plans. Moreover, they will be offered a coaching
about idea development and management.
To confirm the value of this technique, Foster and Kaplan wrote a book
called “Creative Destruction: Why Companies That Are Built to
Last Underperform the Market – and How to Successfully Transform
Them” that shows the case of a European electronic firm that found
out 180 new business concepts thanks to an internal planning competition.
After carefully examining, selecting and incubating these concepts,
four new starts-up were developed within the company.