Intuit's Tad Milbourn

Computer-Assisted Brainstorms

October / November 2009 By: Ken Castle Volume 7 Number 5

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Innovation can come from the top down or from the bottom up, but how many organizations are able to tap the full creativity of their employees? How challenging is it to generate ideas on new products and services? If the suggestion box or the email in-basket isn't exactly overflowing, perhaps the reason is that people are skeptical of getting feedback from management. Or maybe they worry about not being recognized if an idea that bubbles up from the rank and file is actually adopted.

Suppose there was a simple-to-use collaboration tool that not only stimulates the flow of ideas—€”often from the most unlikely sources—€”but also greatly accelerates the time-to-market process, from inception to launch? Suppose this tool could achieve workplace efficiencies, streamline collaboration and dramatically improve morale? And suppose it could directly contribute to the bottom line faster than anything that's been tried before? Would this be the magic bullet of productivity?

It just might be and perhaps that solution is Intuit Brainstorm—„, a new collaboration tool from the Mountain View, Calif., producer of best-selling small business and consumer applications such as QuickBooks, TurboTax and Quicken. For the past two years, Intuit has been quietly baking and beta-testing this new collaborative project. And now it's heading for prime time. Those who have used the tool, both internally and externally, have seen how transformational it can be. One global manufacturer with a $2 billion market cap describes Brainstorm as "the Facebook of enterprise," only with a "wall" of ideas instead of snapshots.

Here's how it works: An employee on the company intranet opens the Intuit Brainstorm home page and selects one of two buttons: "Add an Idea" or "Discover Ideas." With the first, you fill in the "Punch Line" box with a name for your idea, a second box to describe the problem you're solving, and a third to give it a category or tag such as "infrastructure" or "renewable energy." If you want to browse, just click on the "Discover Ideas" button and enter a virtual supermarket of ideas. Shop for and select whatever intrigues you, then follow the prompts to set up your personal agenda of discussions, comments and contributions.

Floating a Brainstorm idea requires no face-to-face meetings or conference calls, although those typically come later if the idea advances to the development stage. People from unrelated teams, or from widely dispersed offices, can participate on their own schedules, in their own time zones. And Intuit encourages this engagement through a novel policy called "unstructured time," which allows flexibility and freedom of choice during 10 percent of the work week. Brainstorm ideas are posted and searchable, proponents can enlist supporters and invite refinements, the system can notify participants of new postings, and managers can track progress through automatically generated emails.

Some of the cool features include "Help Wanted Ads," which allow virtual teams to identify other employees with relevant skill sets, and the "I'm Stuck" button—€”an S.O.S for assistance from managers. There's a leaderboard to display the top-producing innovators and most prolific commentators, so the recognition is ongoing. But what has made Brainstorm such a hit with employees and customers is that it is user-friendly. Forget about manuals or special training sessions; newcomers can just plug and play.

Like many concepts in Silicon Valley, Brainstorm is the brainchild of a recent college grad. As product manager and guiding light of the project, Tad Milbourn was 23 when he arrived at Intuit in 2006 with a business management degree from the University of Wisconsin. Like other newcomers at a publicly traded company with 8,000 employees and a sprawling campus, he soon discovered that locating information was a daunting task. How do you engage a myriad of teams and find the pulse of the organization? Being in the loop, he soon realized, could take months or years.

"We were swimming in a sea of alphabet soup, it was hard to make sense of anything, and we all had a common gripe about getting access to information," recalls Milbourn. "The first idea we considered was reinventing the company intranet. We were accustomed to using Facebook in college and not having a firewall. But at Intuit there was no clear place to go for information. It was all locked inside of people's heads." So Milbourn and his fellow grads had a brainstorming session and came up with the idea of a collaborative application that would have employees coming to them. And what do you call something like this? Heck, why not Brainstorm?

"We had the insight that ideas are not just light bulbs that go on and are judged at the moment," he says. "Ideas start raw and improve with collaboration."

As part of the training for newly hired graduates, Milbourn was assigned to a leadership development program that required him to work six weeks as a customer service rep. Walking in customers' shoe—€”a mantra of Intuit co-founder Scott Cook—€”is ingrained in the corporate culture. Milbourn soon realized how Intuit affected the lives of its customers, how, in his words, "a mother with a small business was able to spend more time with her family because of something we created that improved the way she worked." That put a face on the technology.
Since Brainstorm's internal launch in May 2008, the application has clearly captured the imagination and passion of Intuit employees. In a typical month, 1,000 to 1,200 staffers, or approximately 15 to 20 percent of the workforce, visit Brainstorm, according to company estimates. By the end of summer, over 2,800 ideas were generated and more than 200 advanced to the greatest hits list of actual or pending releases. According to Milbourn, Brainstorm has "increased participation in innovation by 500 percent and the rate of ideation by 1,000 percent."

Among the early product successes is ViewMyPaycheck, an idea that originated from a call center employee. It's a simple, web-based tool that allows employees to quickly pull up information on their current or previous paychecks through a company intranet, and to see graphical displays such as a pie chart that shows where their money goes. The app, in beta version, has been posted on the Intuit Labs website (www.intuitlabs.com <http://www.intuitlabs.com/> ), allowing visitors to download it and provide feedback. From inception to release, ViewMyPaycheck took three months to create—€”an amazingly short gestation period compared to the typical development cycle of a year or more.
The company has begun selling Brainstorm to other corporations, using a subscription model with a flat rate per user. Potential customers run the gamut from medium-sized companies to large government agencies.

Among the early adopters is Vistaprint, which was recently ranked 16th in Fortune magazine's global list of the "100 Fastest-Growing Companies." Vistaprint generates profits by selling matching letterhead stationary, enhanced websites, T-shirts, hats, postcards and dozens of other products that create a branded theme.

Jay T. Moody, senior manager of research and innovation, estimates that half of Vistaprint's 1,700 employees use Intuit Brainstorm, with about 300 active on a daily or weekly basis. "When we first tried to decide what innovation tool to use, we looked at a lot of vendors in the marketplace," he says. "We also tried using internal tools, such as our wiki, and connecting those to e-mail. We came up with about 40 criteria, including simplicity for first-time users, security and reliability. We found that even in its beta version, Brainstorm was the clear winner. Intuit focused on the things that really matter, such as connecting people in a large organization." One differentiator, he adds, is that other programs have voting mechanisms—€”sort of like an American Idol-style popularity contest—€”which Vistaprint didn't think should be the primary yardstick for measuring the worth of an idea.

Moody says Vistaprint employees generated about 900 ideas in six months, and seven of them have already been adopted. One was a simple suggestion: Rather than show a car door magnet as a disembodied product photo, which didn't easily convey its purpose, why not show it on a car door? Bingo! That rang up several thousand dollars a month in additional sales.

How are employees recognized for their winning ideas? At Vistaprint, a basket of gourmet goodies may arrive at the honoree's cubicle, bringing questions from surrounding employees and, most likely, leading to an impromptu celebration, according to Moody. There's also a kitty of several thousand dollars for cash awards, as well as an innovation newsletter and a physical "innovators' wall" with employee photos.

Is Intuit Brainstorm a game-changer? Could it revitalize innovation in large companies? Cut waste and duplication from government? Allow for collaboration across geographies without having to do it in real time? When Milbourn unveiled Brainstorm to a group of Silicon Valley IT executives, marketers, VCs and other thought-leaders in September, they couldn't stop peppering him with questions or speculating on the possibilities.

Ken Castle is a freelance writer based in Silicon Valley.