2024 the best people in life are free review

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The fact is, because they're the ones actually doing the day-to-day work front-line employees see a great many problems and opportunities that their managers don't. But most organizations do very poorly at tapping into this extraordinary potential source of revenue-enhancing, savings-generating ideas.
Ideas Are Free sets out a roadmap for totally integrating ideas and idea management into the way companies are structured and operate. Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder draw on their ten years experience with more than three hundred organizations in fifteen countries to show precisely how to design a system to take advantage of this virtually free, perpetually renewing font of innovation.
Robinson and Schroeder deal with two fundamental principles of managing ideas that are highly counterintuitive - the importance of going after small ideas rather than big ones, and the problems with the most common reward schemes and how to avoid them. They describe how to make ideas part of everyone's job, and how to set up and run an effective process for handling ideas-how to take a good idea system and make it great. And they show how good idea systems have a profound impact on an organization's culture. At the end of each chapter they provide "Guerrilla Tactics for the Idea Revolutionary", actions to promote ideas that any manager can take on his or her own authority, and that require little or no resources.

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Books by Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder
Employee ideas are no longer a “nice-to-have” but rather the very lifeblood of competitiveness, culture, and strategy. Learn how to align every part of the organization around generating and implementing ideas at the front line. Ideas Are Free sets out a roadmap for totally integrating ideas and idea management into the way companies are structured and operated. Readers will discover how government can be radically improved by harnessing the power of ideas from frontline workers, the people who directly serve the public.

About Alan G. Robinson and Dean M. Schroeder

Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder have between them helped hundreds of leading organizations in more than 25 countries to set up effective front-line idea systems and have researched hundreds more firsthand. Arguably, they are the leading experts in the world on front-line idea systems.

Most organizations today still use approaches based on the suggestion box paradigm, even though it is now more than 150 years old. As a result, their initiatives typically get very few useful ideas – less than one per person per year, of which less than half are usable – and have minimal impact on performance. (Putting this approach into an app, or online system, only results in even fewer ideas!) Today, cutting-edge idea systems routinely get 20, 30, 50 or more implemented ideas per person, and for organizations that use them, deliver 80 percent or more of their performance improvement.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1576753743
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Berrett-Koehler Publishers; Reprint edition (January 8, 2006)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 264 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781576753743
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1576753743
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.62 x 0.77 x 8.3 inches
Reviewer: Quick Base Junkie
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Go and get those ideas!
Review: While this book is a few years old the advice it gives is priceless. It amazes me that more companies do not make use of a suggestion program. Following the recommendations the authors put forward it would be relatively easy and cost effective to introduce such a program. The book is clearly written by individuals who are well versed in the subject with a great deal of experience.The book includes examples of successful suggestions programs implemented at various companies, the ways in which management encourages and rewards ideas, and many actual improvement suggestions ranging from the obvious & easy to the ingenious & complex. One I found to be particularly interesting was from a large nursery that had issues when it rained with the manure in the soil becoming an irritant for the workers. One such worker suggested putting a tarp over the piles of soil when it rained. This was considered a "moral boosting" suggestion, but as it turned out the wet soil was actually causing them to have almost 60% lower plant yields due to the inconsistent way the soil dried. After implementing the tarp suggestion the company saved a lot of time and money. The book also includes recommended tactics to counteract some of the cultural barriers that are often encountered when trying to begin such a program. I found the "Gorilla Tactics - actions you can take today without the boss's permission" at the end of each chapter quite intriguing.I only have one criticism of this book; it's a bit wordy.

Reviewer: D. Corwin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Totally Changed My Way of Thinking
Review: This book was recommended to me by several people at a recent ESOP conference. Feeling that employee input was one of the best ways to build an ownership culture, I purchased the book. I was only 3/4 of the way through it when I found that we had another employee working on an ideas program, planning to give 10% of savings as employee bonuses. I quickly passed the book on to him. As it did with me, it totally changed his way of thinking; he scrapped his initial plan and will be proposing a completely different program that rewards all employees who submit ideas, without the reward being based on the savings.In "Ideas are Free," the authors synopsize idea programs at several high-performing companies worldwide. They also point out the pitfalls of trying to develop and manage rewards based on savings, instead recommending making idea generation and implementation a part of everyone's job. Finally, they help walk you through how to implement a program at your workplace (although I haven't been able to read that part yet, because my co-worker still has my book! -- He has ordered his own, so I hope to have it back soon.).I highly recommend this book. It is non-technical and easy to read.

Reviewer: Rebecca Clement
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The outflow of ideas may spur an inflow of revenue for your org
Review: One of the fundamental principles in the field of psychiatry is that most humans are driven by a fear of loss rather than the perceived reward of gain, which means new opportunities and novel ideas are often avoided in favor of the status quo. Unfortunately, this construct of the human mindset is a recipe for financial decline when it's rampant within a commercial organization. In the book "Ideas Are Free," authors Alan Robinson and Dean Schroeder challenge managers and executives to mine their own organizations for both small and large nuggets of knowledge. Soundview likes this book because it recommends a bottom-up, contrarian strategy to glean the best ideas and learnings from the individuals who have the best understanding of the respective business - namely the front-line employees rather than executives. The book also showcases the best-of-breed idea generation tactics from more than 300 companies across dozens of industries to help the reader see how it's done. Simply put, too many companies look outside the organization for the next big idea, when a little introspection might go a long way toward producing significant results.

Reviewer: Lim Liat
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Better Insights on Old idea
Review: The theme of employee suggestions is not new. But this book provides answers and strong motivation to try out again. The things that I learned from reading the book are:1) Why rewards based on value of saving does not work.2) A series of small ideas adds up to one Big one.3) Even big ideas needs small ideas to get them working right.4) Small ideas are not easily copied.5) A properly implemented idea system improve management - employee relations6) Successfully implemented ideas system is the key to competitive advantage and sustainable long term performance.Please read the book for the details. Highly recommended.

Reviewer: Steve Goldsby
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Investing in innovation to stay competitive? You need this book.
Review: This concepts in this book have played a key role in supporting the ideation elements of our Innovation Master Plan. It's an easy read, densely packed with a lot of great tips, tools and anecdotes to make the case. This is a keeper.

Reviewer: Debbie
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great book
Review: Fantastic book, I have given many, many of these away to companies struggling with how to implement employee suggestion systems and to leverage the ideas of everyone in the organization. Highly recommended. 🙂

Reviewer: peaceteacher
Rating: 3.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Important topic and info—too long
Review: This is a book that could have been a few chapters or an article. The subject matter is important—value people’s ideas, have a consistent easy way for ideas to be offered up, idea generation should be part of every business, school, organizational structure. I am a reader, I enjoy long books but this was repetitive.

Reviewer: Amazon Customer
Rating: 1.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Ideas are not free
Review: After decades of stagnant wages, employees are withholding billions of dollars worth of ideas from companies who do not deserve their affection. The social contract has been breached for a long time. Companies want loyalty but want employment at will as well. At the same time, the business press often talks as if CEO's are the only ones who add value in the work place. Offshoring has cut many companies off from one of the most important sources of innovation.

Reviewer: Robert C Gaynor
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title:
Review: Ideas are the main basis for change & progress & I think that even though this book focuses on business , the underlying principles could be used in everyday life by everyone to improve their own lives.