The suggestion system return: approaches, objectives and a case research

Abstract

Companies that see technological innovations as privileged instruments for their strategy should get prepared to create and manage ideas on systematic bases. An important source of ideas is the workforce since there is a system enough to stimulate creation of ideas. The suggestion systems created for that end turned into important tools for the quality movement and for that reason they became strongly related with incremental innovation. Thus, such systems were hardly forgotten by the dominant literature on technological innovation. Few people have analyzed them as a means of creating an environment favorable to all sorts of innovations and as knowledge management instruments. Firstly this paper presents a briefing bibliographic review about suggestion systems, highlight the main challenges of creating and managing ideas in quantity and quality compatible with an innovation-based strategies. After, the paper presents a case study on a Brazilian company that has attained an average of 34,3 ideas per employee per year. It is a very expressive number under any criterion, close to the current average of corporate leaders in Japan, according to the National Association of Suggestion System. The study draws attention to the importance of point out the management of the suggestion systems, the fitness to overall organization management system and the outputs reached.