Everyone Innovates Every Day: Collaborative Idea Management at Ericsson

Magnus Karlsson | OpenSource.com | March 1, 2012

At Ericsson, a collaborative idea management tool is enabling all employees to innovate everyday across the organization. After 3 years of use, the pull based and self-organizing system has over 15000 ideas. More than 300 innovation managers globally have opened idea boxes to attract ideas for their specific innovation efforts.

Ericsson has a long history of technology and business innovation in communications, leading the industry in areas such as digital switching, mobile systems and managed services. Going forward, innovation must be accelerated to meet increased competition and broadened to put a greater emphasis on areas such as services and business model innovation.

In the overall strategy, market and insight driven innovation - typically in close cooperation with users, customers and partners - is complementing traditionally strong internal research and technology-led innovation.

The strategic emphasis on innovation is supported by the overall Ericsson mission statement: Innovating to Empower People, Business and Society, the long term business strategy and clear internal messages from the senior team that all employees are expected to contribute to the innovation efforts...