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Idea Templates - Best Practice and Inspiration
Idea Templates - Best Practice and Inspiration

Interested to see how other organisations are using Idea Templates? Want to learn how to make the most of Idea Templates and Custom Fields?

Callan Hough avatar
Written by Callan Hough
Updated over a week ago

Keep reading to uncover the best practice when it comes to setting up fully customisable idea capture fields. Use these examples as inspiration for your own templates or simply copy and paste them on your Idea Drop platform.

Problem and opportunity questions:

  1. Problem statement. What problem does your idea solve?

  2. Impact. What impact would your idea have on our internal or external stakeholders?

  3. Value. What is the value to us as an organisation?

  4. ROI. What potential ROI might your idea have? (if applicable)

  5. Business opportunity. What business opportunity does your idea address?

  6. Value for customers. What value is created for our customers from implementing this idea?

Implementation questions:

  1. Deadline. Is your idea time sensitive? Does it have to be approved or actioned by a specific date?

  2. Process. Please briefly describe the process of how this idea would be implemented.

  3. Timescale. How long would it take to implement your proposed idea?

  4. Costs. What are the estimated costs associated with the idea and its implementation?

  5. Risks. What are the potential risks associated with the idea or its implementation.

  6. Stakeholders. Who would be involved in the implementation and who might be affected after we action it?

  7. Your involvement. Please share the level of involvement you would like to have in the evaluation and implementation of this idea.

Additional information:

  1. Alternatives. What would be the next-best alternative to it (if applicable).

  2. Competitors. Are any of our competitors already doing something similar?

  3. Comments. Are there any additional comments you would like to add?

Potential question combinations for your idea templates:

Structure 1:

Description. Please describe your idea (up to 200 words):

Our weekly, hour-long meetings could be shortened to 30 minutes. Shorter meetings are often more creative and productive and it would also enable us to redirect these time savings into billable hours elsewhere.

Problem statement. What problem does your idea solve?

n/a

Implementation process. Please briefly describe the process of how this idea would be implemented (up to 200 words):

I think the implementation of this idea could be very straightforward by sending a company-wide internal comms email detailing this policy change to make internal meetings 30 minutes as standard.

Impact. What impact would your idea have on our internal or external stakeholders? (up to 200 words):

I’ve done some initial headline impact analysis on this and based on us running over 180 weekly meetings with at least 4 attendees, the annualised time savings would amount to >£561,600!

Comments. Are there any additional comments you would like to add? (up to 200 words):

n/a

Structure 2:

Title: How can we present a clear portrait of our company and its culture?

Problem: I don’t think our employee base, and hence the company itself, knows what our company truly stands for. I feel we need to articulate this in a way that's straightforward and comprehensive.

Customers: I think being clear on this will help us attract customers that are truly aligned to who we are as a business but also recruit more effectively people who are aligned and will add value to the culture of the business.

Competitors: N/A

Structure 3:

Title: Add WhatsApp as a Customer Support channel.

Description: I really enjoy the experience of chatting with a business via WhatsApp to resolve any issues. The quick replies over messaging make the process a lot more convenient than phoning. #customersatisfaction #customersupport

Value: I think giving another channel to our customers to reach out to us will improve customer satisfaction and will cut costs too, by decreasing our use of more costly options to solve customer problems.

Structure 4:

Title: Can we start using collaborative tools instead of MS Office?

Description: Google Drive is a great way to share files and work on things collaboratively. You can review, edit and create in the same file in real-time vs having to take documents online on a pen drive or send them over email to have feedback from our colleagues.

Value: From the company’s perspective, this will save a lot of time and will make our processes more efficient.

Costs: The price per license x number of employees (£6*500) = £3,000/month more or less.

ROI: Hard to quantify as the benefits are multifaceted but the licenses themselves are cheaper than MS Office.

Comments: N/A

Structure 5:

Title: Helping people bounce back to the labour market after COVID-19 by incentivising young people to upskill.

Problem: The pandemic has shifted the future of labour towards the digital world and highlighted the massive opportunities available for skill-based freelancing. The pandemic has also massively hindered young people’s ability to enter the labour market for a number of reasons, including their family circumstances, unfavourable living arrangements, a lack of aspiration to pursue higher studies or a lack of job opportunities. Young people in developing countries need a platform where they can learn valuable skills whilst earning money, from home. A good way to help with this would be to develop a platform with crowdsourcing capabilities to incentivise youth into upskilling whilst getting paid a pledged amount after delivering on the goals set as part of the programme. From the side of the backer, they will be rewarded by having a worker in their workforce who has specifically upskilled to meet the business’s demand and to whom they can outsource work or hire.

Stakeholders: The main stakeholders for this idea are not only the young person and the business sponsor but the business in general as it is making an investment in the person.

Costs: The costs for this idea shouldn’t be prohibitive as these sorts of platforms are widely used (and hence, the code should be readily available) and the additional costs just include the normal operational costs of running a SaaS company.

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