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A worker in one of Europe's largest wireless
communication companies stumbled across an error in his
company's billing software that was costing some $26 million
per year in lost revenues. He pointed out a simple way to
fix it. A secretary at Grapevine Canyon Ranch realized that,
when potential customers searched on the Internet for guest
ranches in the southwestern United States, the major search
engines were returning her company's website well down the
list. She proposed a simple change that made it appear at
the top. A prison guard at the Massachusetts Department
of Correction sent in an idea to use digital cameras instead
of film cameras to process new inmates. Across the department's
sixteen correctional facilities, his suggestion saved $56,000
per year.
From simple ideas for saving time, effort,
and money, to entirely new ways of doing business, front-line
employees see a great many opportunities in their day-to-day
work that their managers don't. Yet most organizations are
far more effective at suppressing employee ideas
than promoting them. Every day, all over the world,
front-line employees watch helplessly as their organizations
waste huge sums of money, needlessly disappoint and lose
customers, and miss opportunity after opportunity that to
the employees are all too apparent.
Ideas Are Free shows managers how
to tap all the ideas their employees have and gain significant
advantage over their competitors. In today's increasingly
competitive business world, only companies that are successful
at managing ideas will thrive. Robinson and Schroeder have
discovered, through extensive research and work with more
than 300 companies -- in dozens of industries, from agriculture
to high-technology -- the key factors that influence the
quantity and quality of employee ideas. They provide a roadmap
for totally integrating ideas and idea management into the
way companies are structured and operate and show how any
manager can develop this increasingly critical competency.
Alan G. Robinson is an award-winning
author, an educator, and a consultant. He is coauthor of
the bestseller Corporate Creativity, which was named
"Book of the Year" by the Academy of Human Resource
Management and a finalist in the Financial Times/Booz-Allen
Hamilton Best Business Book Award. He teaches at the Isenberg
School of Management at the University of Massachusetts.
Dr. Robinson has consulted to more than a hundred companies
and government agencies in eleven countries.
Dean M. Schroeder spent ten years in
industry before going into academia. He is the founder of
two companies, and as an outside CEO, led the turnarounds
of two others. He served for five years on the Board of
Examiners of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award
and is on the Board of Directors of the American Creativity
Association. He is currently the Herbert and Agnes Schulz
Professor at the College of Business Administration at Valparaiso
University.
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