No matter how you innovate at your company, "idea harvesting" is typically one of the first steps. The assumption (or hope) is that by providing an outlet to collect new ideas from employees, companies will "innovate" their way towards new profitable products and services and streamlined operational procedures.

For example, do any of these techniques sound familiar?

• Idea Box / Idea Database / Idea Wall: A special email address, database, or physical space is set up to collect ideas by anyone in the company. Typically the ideas collected are reviewed on a periodic basis or are forwarded to an expert or manager in the area the idea pertains to. Metrics may be collected that measure the number of ideas created or the internal department or group with the most ideas and employees are measured on how often they've contributed.
• The Creative People Group: The main source of new ideas comes from a specific group of people who were hired specifically because they are considered to be "creative" and "thought leaders."
• Idea Jam Sessions: Typically held at corporate retreats or separately as professionally facilitated events, employees are brought together to brainstorm on new ideas for a particular product line or the entire company.

While there is value in obtaining a laundry list of new ideas, the next steps: deciding where to invest based on the business merits of the idea, is still allusive for companies.

That's where Inkling Markets comes in.

Let's assume for a moment your company is already deploying one of the techniques above for collecting new ideas from your employees. But now how do you determine what ideas to invest in once you've got your collection process down? Management review? Too biased. Voting? Too political and simplistic.

How about asking the inventors of the ideas to determine what the success factors of their ideas are, then run prediction markets about them.

Even if the ideas are currently conceptual, assuming there is additional analysis done on the ideas as they move through your development lifecycle, you can ask questions about its implementation cost, its impact on key performance metrics your company tracks, etc. before committing significant development resources.

Good performance in these types of markets is a good indication further investment is warranted. Poor performance in these markets may mean the idea needs to be re-evaluated, re-formulated, or dropped altogether.