The problem this guide solves
You have been thinking about running an idea challenge for a while. Maybe your manager asked about it. Maybe you read about it somewhere. Maybe you are just tired of being the only person expected to come up with ideas for improvement. But every time you look into it, it feels like a big project. You worry about low participation, bad ideas, or worse, collecting a pile of ideas and then doing nothing with them.
This guide is for that exact moment. It walks you through running a small, fast, low-risk idea challenge from start to finish. Not a six-month innovation program. Not a company-wide campaign. A focused pilot you can set up this week, run next week, and have actionable results the week after. Think of it as a test drive. If it works, you will know exactly how to do it again at a larger scale. If it does not work perfectly, you will have learned more in two weeks than you would in six months of planning.
Before you start: the two-minute gut check
Before you do anything else, answer these three questions honestly. Write them down somewhere you will see them.
1. Do you have a real problem to solve? An idea challenge needs a specific question at its centre. "How might we improve things around here?" is not specific enough. "How can we reduce the time it takes to onboard a new supplier from 6 weeks to 2 weeks?" is specific. If you do not have a real problem, stop here and go find one. Talk to your operations team, your customer service team, or your production floor. The best challenge questions come from the people closest to the actual work.
2. Can someone actually act on the winning idea? You need a decision-maker who will look at the results and say yes or no. If you collect ideas and nobody has the authority or budget to do anything with them, you will damage trust. Before you launch, get a verbal commitment from someone with authority: "If we get a good idea from this, will you back it?" If the answer is hesitant, find a different sponsor or a different problem.
3. Are you willing to follow through even if it is uncomfortable? Following through means responding to every idea (including the weak ones), making a decision, and being transparent about what you chose and why. If you are not ready for that, do not start yet. A failed challenge where nobody hears back is worse than no challenge at all.
Day 1: Frame your question and choose your audience
Your challenge question is the single most important decision you will make. Everything else flows from it.
A strong question has three qualities. It describes a specific, real problem that your audience recognizes. It is narrow enough to generate focused responses but open enough to leave room for creative solutions. It can be answered by the people you plan to invite (not just senior leaders or subject matter experts).
A few examples of strong questions: "What is one thing that slows you down every week that we could fix in the next 90 days?" "Where do we lose the most material in our packaging process, and what could we do differently?" "What would make our onboarding process less confusing for new hires in their first week?"
For a deeper dive on writing challenge questions, see our guide How to Write an Idea Challenge That Actually Gets Relevant Ideas in the Idea Program Toolkit.
Day 1 continued: choose your audience
For your first challenge, invite 30 to 100 people. Not the whole company. Not a random sample. A targeted group that has direct experience with the problem you are trying to solve.
If you are asking about packaging waste, invite people from production, quality, and logistics. If you are asking about customer onboarding, invite the customer success team, the implementation team, and a few product people. Include a mix of seniority levels. The people doing the daily work often see solutions that managers miss.
The size matters because you need enough submissions to be meaningful (aim for 20 to 40 ideas) without creating so many that evaluation becomes a burden. A 30 to 40 percent submission rate is realistic for a well-framed challenge with a targeted audience. So 30 to 100 invitees usually produces a manageable number of ideas.
Avoid the temptation to go broad. "Let us just send it to everyone and see what happens" sounds inclusive, but it produces a lower submission rate, less relevant ideas, and a harder evaluation process. Start narrow. You can always expand later if the first one goes well.
This is covered in detail in Day 2. For more on audience selection, our guide Who Should You Invite? The Audience Planning Worksheet covers this in detail.
Day 2: Set up your submission process
Keep the submission form simple. You need four things: a title (10 words or fewer), a description (what is the idea and how would it work), the expected benefit (what problem does it solve or what does it improve), and one optional field for anything else (a link, a photo, a reference).
Do not ask for ROI estimates. Do not ask for implementation timelines. Do not require a business case. Those things kill participation because most people do not have those answers at the idea stage, and requiring them signals that only polished, executive-ready ideas are welcome.
If you have a platform like Hives.co, set up a challenge in it. If you do not, create a simple form using whatever tool your organization already uses (Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, even a shared spreadsheet). The medium matters less than the structure. What matters is that every submission goes to one place, everyone gets the same form, and you can sort and review them efficiently later.
Set a clear deadline. Five working days from launch is ideal for a first challenge. Long enough to give people time to think and submit, short enough to maintain urgency. Put the deadline in the challenge brief and in every communication.
Day 2 continued: Draft your launch email
Your launch email needs to answer five questions in this order: What is the problem we are trying to solve? Why does it matter right now? What are we looking for (and not looking for)? How do you submit? What happens next?
That last question is critical. Tell people exactly what will happen after they submit. "All ideas will be reviewed by [names] during the week of [date]. Every submitter will receive individual feedback by [date]. Selected ideas will begin implementation in [month]." Naming that directly builds trust. For more email templates, check out The Communication Template Pack: 4 Emails Every Campaign Needs.
Days 3 to 7: Keep it alive while it runs
Launching a challenge and then going silent is the single most common mistake. People submit in the first 24 hours if the topic excites them, but most people need a nudge, a reminder, or social proof before they participate.
Here is a simple cadence: Day 3, send a brief update ("We have received X submissions so far. Here is one theme emerging: [theme]. Keep them coming."). Day 5, send a targeted reminder to anyone who has not submitted ("Two days left. Here is the question again. Here is what we are still looking for."). Day 7, close the challenge and send a thank-you note ("The challenge is closed. We received X ideas. Here is what happens next and when.").
Do not go dark between launch and close. Even a brief "here is how things are going" message on Day 4 signals that someone is paying attention. That signal matters more than you think.
For more tactics for keeping energy up during a live campaign, our guide How to Keep Momentum During an Active Campaign has additional approaches.
Day 8: Sort and evaluate
Now you have a pile of ideas. Resist the urge to read them all carefully right away. Start with a fast triage pass. For each idea, ask three questions: Does it address the problem stated in the challenge? Is it something that could realistically be acted on? Is it different enough from other submissions to warrant separate evaluation?
Sort ideas into three piles: Worth evaluating in detail (roughly 20 to 30 percent of submissions), Not moving forward and you can explain why (roughly 50 to 60 percent), and Interesting but needs clarification before you can evaluate it (roughly 10 to 20 percent).
For the "worth evaluating" pile, apply a simple scoring framework. Rate each idea on impact (how much would this improve the situation if implemented), feasibility (how realistic is it given current resources and constraints), and alignment (how well does it fit with our priorities). A 1 to 5 scale on each dimension is enough. You do not need a complex weighted matrix for a first challenge. The goal is to identify 3 to 5 ideas worth pursuing, not to rank all of them perfectly.
For more detailed scoring approaches, see The Idea Scoring Scorecard: 3 Models for Different Situations and How to Prioritize Ideas When Everything Feels Important in the Idea Program Toolkit. But for your first challenge, keep it simple. Impact, feasibility, alignment. Pick the top 3 to 5. Do not spread too thin.
Day 9: Make your decisions
With your evaluation done, you should have a short list of ideas worth acting on. Now the hard part: making actual decisions.
For each selected idea, answer: Who owns this? (A specific person, not a team.) What is the first concrete step? When will that step happen? How will you know if it worked?
If you cannot answer those four questions for an idea, it is not ready to move forward yet. That does not mean it is a bad idea. It means it needs more definition. Put it back to the idea owner with specific questions: "We like the direction. Can you clarify X and Y?" or "This is interesting but we need to understand the cost implications before committing. Can you estimate?"
Be honest about the ideas you are not selecting. Write down the actual reason for each. Not "not aligned with strategy" (which means nothing). The actual reason: "We tried something similar in Q2 and it did not work because of X," or "This would require budget approval from [name] and we do not have that right now," or "Good idea, but the impact is too small relative to the effort needed."
Day 10: Close the loop
This is the day that determines whether your next challenge gets more participation or less.
Send individual feedback to every submitter. Yes, every single one. For selected ideas: "Your idea was selected. Here is what happens next: [specific next step] by [specific date]. [Name] will own the implementation. We will share an update in [timeframe]."
For ideas not selected: "Thank you for submitting [idea title]. We reviewed it against [criteria]. The reason it is not moving forward right now is [specific reason]. This does not mean it is a bad idea, it means [honest explanation]."
For ideas that need clarification: "We found your idea interesting but need more detail on [specific aspect]. Can you provide [specific information] by [date]?"
Generic responses like "thank you for your contribution, we will consider all ideas going forward" mean nothing and everyone knows it. For more on giving feedback that builds trust, see How to Give Feedback That Builds Trust (Even When the Answer Is No).
After the pilot: what to do with what you learned
Your first challenge is done. Whether it produced three excellent ideas or one mediocre one, you now have something you did not have before: real data about how your organization responds to structured idea collection.
Take 30 minutes to write down: How many people participated versus how many were invited? What was the quality distribution (strong, okay, weak)? Where did the process feel smooth and where did it feel clunky? What would you do differently next time?
Share the results publicly, not just with the evaluation team. "We ran a challenge on [topic]. X people participated. Y ideas were submitted. Z are moving to implementation. Here is what we learned." This builds credibility and sets expectations for the next round.
If the challenge worked reasonably well, plan the next one within 6 to 8 weeks. Do not wait for it to be perfect. Each successful challenge builds momentum and credibility. Our The 30-Day After-Action Checklist can help you capture what worked and what to adjust.
Consider expanding gradually. Your first challenge might involve 50 people in one department. Your second could involve 100 across two departments. Your third could be cross-functional. Scaling slowly lets you refine the process before the stakes get higher.
Keep a running list of potential challenge topics. Every conversation with a department head, every recurring problem in a team meeting, every customer complaint pattern is a potential challenge. When someone says "I wish someone would figure out how to fix X," write it down. That is your next challenge question.
Common fears and what to do about them
"What if nobody participates?" Start with a targeted audience (not the whole company), a specific question (not a vague prompt), and a short timeline (5 working days). If you do these three things and still get low participation, the problem is usually one of two things: the audience does not trust that anything will happen with their ideas (which means you need to build trust first with a very small, very visible win), or the question does not resonate with them (which means you need to ask something closer to their daily work).
"What if we get bad ideas?" You will. Every challenge produces a range. That is expected and healthy. A few strong ideas, a bunch of decent ones, and some that are not useful. The triage process (Day 8) handles this. The mistake is not getting bad ideas, it is failing to respond to them respectfully.
"What if leadership does not support it?" Run it small enough that you do not need formal leadership approval. A 50-person challenge in one department is within most managers' authority. Once you have results, use them to make the case for something bigger. Leadership responds to evidence, not proposals.
"What if we collect ideas and then cannot implement them?" Be honest about constraints from the start. "We are looking for ideas that can be implemented within existing budget and within the next quarter" sets realistic expectations. And always be transparent in your feedback: "This is a great idea that would require X investment. We cannot do that right now, but we are documenting it for when resources become available."
The tools question
For your first challenge, you do not need specialized software. A form, a spreadsheet, and email will work. But if you plan to run more than two or three challenges, the manual work adds up quickly: tracking submissions, managing evaluations, sending individual feedback, reporting results. That is where a purpose-built platform like Hives.co saves real time. It handles the collection, evaluation, feedback loop, and reporting in one place, so you can focus on the ideas instead of the administration.
The real goal of your first challenge
The goal of your first challenge is not to transform your organization. It is to prove that structured idea collection works, even in a small way, and to build the credibility and muscle memory to do it again. One implemented idea from one challenge is worth more than a hundred ideas sitting in an unread spreadsheet.
Start with a real problem. Ask the people closest to it. Give them a simple way to respond. Evaluate honestly. Decide quickly. Close the loop with everyone. Then plan your next challenge.
That is it. No steering committee. No six-month roadmap. No 40-page business case. Just a clear question, a small group, and the discipline to follow through. If you can do this once, you can do it again. And again. That is how real idea programs get built.
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