Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations [Hardcover]

Alan G. Robinson (Author), Dean M. Schroeder (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 2004

A worker in one of Europe's largest wireless communication companies showed his manager how to repair an error that was costing the company $30 million per year. A secretary at Grapevine Canyon Ranch proposed a simple change to pull the company's website to the top of search engines. These are just two of many examples in "Ideas Are Free that highlight the single best resource in a company--those frontline employees who can see those telling little details that escape managers. Based on extensive research with hundreds of companies around the world and in every major field, this practical book shows how to draw the most useful ideas from frontline employees and, in the process, significantly improve the atmosphere--and success quotient--of any organization.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Firms that take ideas seriously take their employees’ thinking seriously, and employees who think are employees who are alive. Thus argue Robinson and Schroeder, management academics and corporate creativity consultants. Ideas are the life force of corporations, they say, and managers who recognize this can increase profits and avoid budget cuts and layoffs. Kill employee ideas and what you have is a carcass of a company, a firm mired in bureaucracy and rote processes with a staff of dulled zombies. But ideas are just the tip of the iceberg. The key to a successful company, argue Robinson and Schroeder, is encouraging a corporate culture that swiftly recognizes and implements improvements. With that in mind, the authors focus on ideas as the catalyst of corporate change rather than the end itself. This book is thoroughly researched, with convincing facts and data (Toyota’s success, they say, is the result of an idea culture that takes one million ideas per year from its employees). It also lays out a blueprint for a corporate idea program from inspiration to implementation, along with some unexpected caveats (e.g., rewarding ideas tends to stifle them as people focus on the award rather than on the idea, and small ideas—leading to continuous, incremental improvement—are more valuable than large ones). For any manager interested in jolting a moribund workforce out of complacency, this is a clever, pragmatic guide to awakening both the front line and the bottom line.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Ever since Frederick Taylor advocated that it was management's job to "think" and the worker's job to "do," this perspective has been the basis for the policies, structures, and operating practices of most business organizations. Although this division between thinking and doing may have worked 100 years ago, it is severely limiting in today's environment, where it is the front-line worker who is in the best position to notice problems and suggest ideas. In example after example, the authors show how companies that encourage and implement the ideas of the entire workforce are the ones that come up with the most innovative and successful strategies. Contrary to past thinking on the subject, they make it clear that monetary rewards are not the best way to elicit ideas, and that emphasis on small ideas can be a more effective strategy than shooting for a "home run." The methods described show how to create an environment that encourages ideas, help employees develop knowledge and improve their problem-solving skills, and properly manage the ideas that are generated, including their larger implications. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 250 pages
• Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers (February 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1576752828
• ISBN-13: 978-1576752821
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #376,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better Insights on Old idea, August 26, 2004

By 

Lim Liat (Singapore) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations (Hardcover)

The theme of employee suggestions is not new. But this book provides answers and strong motivation to try out again. The things that I learned from reading the book are:

1) Why rewards based on value of saving does not work.
2) A series of small ideas adds up to one Big one.
3) Even big ideas needs small ideas to get them working right.
4) Small ideas are not easily copied.
5) A properly implemented idea system improve management - employee relations
6) Successfully implemented ideas system is the key to competitive advantage and sustainable long term performance.

Please read the book for the details. Highly recommended.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Empower your employees to do the right thing, June 10, 2004

By 

Shel Horowitz "Shel Horowitz, author, Guerril... (Hadley, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations (Hardcover)

Empowering employees to do the right thing is a key idea in my Principled Profit philosophy.

This principle can improve every aspect of a business, as Robinson and Schroeder demonstrate.

In an empowered organization, employee ideas--especially those from front-line workers--are a currency with the capability to slash costs, boost morale and productivity, and in some cases yield enormous actual-dollar profitability.

But too many organizations go about idea collection all wrong. Either they have no systematized method of collecting, analyzing, and acting on ideas--rapidly implementing the good ones--or they saddle their idea system with an unworkable and counterproductive monetary reward system that results in the opposite of what's intended.

Still, companies that encourage--even demand--ideas from their employees reap many benefits. Interestingly, most of the big improvements come from very small ideas--that piggyback and replicate into a powerful snowball of change For instance, one idea from one employee might save a few thousand dollars a year in a single location, but multiply by 10,000 locations and the savings are enormous. Too, the little incremental changes are often site-specific and harder for competitors to spot, leading to long-term competitive advantage.

From massive corporations like Toyota to single-locations such as a guest ranch in Arizona, companies with good idea capture systems enjoy higher morale, higher productivity, lower costs--and a fresh climate where going to work is actually fun.

And after reading this book, any company ought to be able to put such a system into place.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Free ideas provide huge benefits, July 31, 2004

By 

M. L Lamendola (Merriam, KS USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ideas Are Free: How the Idea Revolution Is Liberating People and Transforming Organizations (Hardcover)

How did Toyota rise from being an obscure automaker to being "Number Three" in "The Big Three?" How did Toyota come to dominate the J.D. Powers Consumer Satisfaction Survey? And why is it Toyota has not laid off a single worker since 1950? Ideas. Toyota uses hundreds more ideas per worker than do its American counterparts.

While Toyota is a stunning example of how one company gets and uses employee ideas, this book isn't about Toyota. It's about liberating people and transforming organizations through ideas. Not necessarily big ideas, but ideas that come from every person in the organization and add up to big things.

The typical organization is an idea desert. This well-researched book shows you, through case histories and clear explanations, how any organization can transform that desert into a lush land that produces bumper crops.

One key is tapping into the vast resource of employees who are closest to the work. Managers have a perspective that is excellent for addressing the larger picture. But to have that perspective, managers are necessarily removed from being close to the work. Thus, they simply are not in a position to see how to improve the work.

Another important concept that many managers fail to put to use is that of massively parallel eyes, ears, and brains. Joseph Antonini taught us that ignoring these inputs is very dangerous--he nearly ruined K-Mart by assuming his ideas were the only ones that really mattered.

We have to remember that employees are often leaders and thinkers outside of work. They rear children, hold leadership positions in their churches, hold leadership positions in their trade or professional organizations, conduct neighborhood watches, pay mortgages, coach softball teams, teach children how to ride bikes, care for their aged parents, plan vacation trips, plan and prepare meals for guests, conduct hundreds of financial transactions each year, safely navigate their way around strange neighborhoods or even cities they have never been to before, conduct research at their library and online, send their spouses or children off to war and support them across vast oceans, and.... You get the point. And this is a point that Ideas Are Free brings to front and center.

Companies who treat employees as a brain trust have an enormous advantage over companies that treat employees as a cost they'd like to eliminate. This book shows you how to treat employees as a brain trust, based on what other companies have successfully done. It also alerts you to some pitfalls and explains why certain approaches don't work.

The competitive advantage that will most determine the future of any company is brainpower. It's not a matter of hiring bright people. It's a matter of correctly managing the brainpower you already have. And that's why I recommend Ideas Are Free to anyone who is in a management position.

In today's globally competitive environment, you can't afford to operate on the same premise Antonini did.

You need ideas. And, they are free--if you know how to look for them.