What happens to rejected ideas? : exploring the life of ideas following the completion of projects

In an ongoing development project there is a risk that promising ideas are rejected due to time constraints. Given that ideas are the carriers of innovation, and that novel and radical ideas are, to a greater extent, exposed to rejections and resistance than more conservative, those ideas, previously rejected from projects, could be seen as a potential goldmine of innovations. The aim of this paper is to explore the ‘life’ of rejected ideas following the completion of design projects. An exploratory approach was chosen in order to gather information about companies’ ways of working with rejected ideas. Respondents from seven companies were interviewed, and two main routes for managing rejected ideas became apparent: codification and personalisation. All participating companies had some sort of codification approach, but this was always complemented by a personalisation approach, whether implicit or explicitly stated. This is important as an idea management system is unable to fully carry an idea forward as it lacks intent, insight, and argumentation. Furthermore, responsibility for rejected ideas and maturity of ideas both seem to affect the processing of rejected ideasValiderad; 2013; 20130507 (petert)PIEp - Product Innovation Engineering Programm