Monday August 3, 2009
How much would you pay for a great idea?
Monday Starters - By Soo Ewe Jin
SOME years back, a new kid emerged on the banking scene in Malaysia. It created waves with a slew of creative products and ideas that got the customers excited but its competitors, still locked in the traditional mode, worried.
It was different not only outwardly, but also within.
One of its outrageous staff benefits was to offer a million ringgit to anyone who came out with a great idea that could be translated into a viable and profitable business reality.
As far as I know, that prize was never claimed. But it generated a lot of attention within the company. Morale was high and everyone felt the company was seeing them not just as workers but as partners.
Traditionally, most companies, Malaysian or otherwise, tend to rely on a small number of people to be the so-called brainstorm group.
If, occasionally, they invite others in, the others will learn soon enough that it is not so wise to rock the boat and that they often cannot get their ideas past those in the inner circle.
Dr Goh Chee Leong of Help University College wrote about this “group think” mentality in his column, Psychology at Work, recently.
Among other things, he wrote: “Anyone who raises a different opinion or idea is cut down to size; they’re told they are not team players, they are criticised for rocking the boat and – in the long term – they are sidelined and put in cold storage.
“Group think happens when we deprive our leaders of the information they need to make good decisions. Group think happens when we tell our leaders what they want to hear even though it may kill them in the long run.”
So it takes a truly enlightened CEO to want to reward the staff with a huge sum of money for a good idea.
McKinsey recently released a report entitled “Using prizes to spur innovation” that revealed how prizes used to spark innovation are on the rise.
Not only has the amount risen, the role of such prizes is changing – nearly 80% of those announced since 1991 have been designed to provide incentives for specific innovations rather than to reward excellence in general.
Rewarding staff for performance, be it by way of a paid holiday or extra bonus, is not new but such schemes only reward certain categories of the workforce and do not address the possibility that someone could well be capable of that gem of an idea that could grow the company by leaps and bounds.
I think it is time that Malaysian companies come out with monetary incentives, a RM1mil prize would be a good start, to challenge their staff to think, and not just to work.
The other day, I watched a documentary about Alabama hairdresser Phil McCrory who came out with a novel idea while watching coverage of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska.
Noticing that an otter’s fur was saturated with oil, he wondered if hair could help clean up oil.
So he collected hair from his shop, stuffed it in a pair of his wife’s pantyhose (with her permission, I hope), tied the feet together into a ring and put it in his son’s wading pool with some oil.
Viola, his gadget soaked up the oil in seconds.
He applied for a patent on the idea in 1993, and got it in 1995. Nasa engineers did some tests in 1998, showing that hair would indeed help clean up oil.
Today, McCrory has founded and is president of his own company, BEPS Inc.
I am sure there are many brilliant thinkers in Malaysia who can be like McCrory.
Some of us may not want to stride out on our own but we are afraid to share our ideas for fear that they will be laughed at or simply ignored. Worse, sometimes the best ideas are stolen and repackaged as someone else’s.
Still, it would be a tremendous boost to company morale if we know that a prize of RM1mil awaits us if we come out with a great idea. The odds are probably better than striking the lottery.
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