Moderated by Josh Shabtai, Senior Director, Lowe’s Innovation Labs
Abstract:
In today’s fast-moving business environment, every organization claims to want “more innovation” – yet few have a structured, repeatable way to identify, prioritize, and scale the best ideas. Join your fellow members for a brainstorming session in which we’ll explore methods and best practices for how ideas are captured, developed, backlogged, and translated into impact.
As a group, we’ll discuss the systems, incentives, and governance models that make idea management scalable and strategically aligned – without stifling creativity. The session will surface practical frameworks and real-world insights from across industries to help participants balance open ideation with disciplined portfolio management.
Key Brainstorm Challenges:
- Balancing Freedom and Focus: How can organizations encourage open, creative ideation while ensuring alignment to strategic priorities?
- Sustaining Engagement Beyond the “Idea Dump”: Many teams launch ideation platforms, but enthusiasm fades. What mechanisms sustain momentum and accountability?
- From Thousands of Ideas to the Critical Few: How do teams effectively evaluate, filter, and prioritize ideas – especially across diverse business units or functions?
- Ownership and Governance: Who owns the ideation process? Should it be centralized under an innovation team or embedded within each business area?
- Measuring What Matters: What metrics demonstrate the health and value of an ideation pipeline – beyond vanity metrics like number of ideas submitted?
- AI and Automation in Ideation Management: What’s the role of AI in enhancing discovery, clustering, and evaluation of ideas – without losing the human spark?