Many companies organize idea competitions for students or young professionals. Why? Is it just a part of marketing with the purpose to produce some news articles? Here we have two examples: L’Oréal and Dyson Design Award.
L’Oréal does it to find new employees. They never use any of the ideas but keep the copyright. L’Oreal views innovation as a collective process where every employee has a well defined role and function. No trespassing, please. Total control seems to be the key word. The military visuals of their ads is no surprise.
Dyson is more paternalistic or as it is written in the article “philanthropic”. Dyson doesn’t do much with the ideas, either. At least the participants keep the copyright. Dyson’s view of innovation is that of a solitary hero who gets there through a long suffering.
Both l’Oreal and Dyson give some feelgood prices like travel and money. And both waste the ideas. Both rely on obsolet individual behaviors (the reduced employee and the solitary inventor) and both could do much more if they decided to adopt a contemporary view of the resource “people”.
You can be big without being a dinosaur.
Article in NZZ, 22./23.8.2009 “Der Wettbewerb als Praxistest für Studierende” by Ronald Schenkel
http://www.brandstorm.loreal.com/Cand/index.asp
http://www.deutsch.dyson.ch/designaward/default.asp?sinavtype=menu
