Suggestion box lets staff members buy shares in ideas

Convincing employees to contribute feedback and to genuinely consider other people’s ideas can be a hard-won task for employers. Attempting to turn that challenge into a manageable asset, Idea Exchange is an online tool created to help companies make the most of their employees’ collective wisdom. It’s basically a virtual suggestion box where users can publish their own suggestions, large or small, and browse ideas submitted by their colleagues. Besides better sharing, there’s another big difference between Idea Exchange and a shoebox with a hole in the top—the software lets users support other’s ideas by purchasing shares in them. With the incentive of earning ‘money’, the idea is that employees will more carefully and thoughtfully offer their contributions. Employers can quickly identify favoured ideas by seeing which are being traded and which have the highest stock value. Besides ad hoc submissions to an ‘idea bank’, Idea Exchange also makes it easy for companies to run competitions to motivate people, and to focus their participation on specific topics or goals. Provided as hosted software, Idea Exchange was developed by Nosco, a young Danish company. One to try out in your own company? Spotted by: John Greene