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 out of this, I will back it." That person is your sponsor.
3. Are you willing to follow through? The number one reason idea programs die is silence after submissions close. People share ideas, hear nothing back, and never participate again. If you are not willing to respond to every submission (even the ones you cannot use), wait until you are.
If you answered yes to all three, you are ready.
Day 1: Pick your challenge question
This is the single most important step. A great challenge question does three things: it points people at a specific problem, it gives them enough room to be creative, and it makes clear what "good" looks like. A bad challenge question either gets zero responses (too vague) or gets 50 ideas that are all impossible to implement (too open).
The Challenge Question Formula: How might we [specific action] so that [specific outcome]? Here are some examples that work well for a first pilot:
"How might we reduce the number of steps in our returns process so that customers get their refund within 48 hours instead of 10 days?"
"How might we make shift handovers smoother so that the incoming team does not spend the first 30 minutes figuring out what happened?"
"How might we cut the time it takes to get a new product sample approved from 4 weeks to 1 week?"
Notice the pattern. Each one names a specific pain point and a measurable improvement. You do not need to be exact about the target number, but having one gives people something to aim at.
Quick test for your question: Read it out loud to someone who is not involved. If they immediately start suggesting ideas, your question works. If they say "what do you mean by that?" or stare blankly, it needs work.
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 small audience
For your first pilot, you want between 10 and 30 people. Not the whole company. Not even a whole department. Pick a group that meets two criteria: they experience the problem you are trying to solve, and they are likely to participate if asked directly.
Good pilot audiences include a single team (the warehouse crew, the IT helpdesk, the regional sales team), a cross-functional group that touches the same process (everyone involved in new product launches), or a group of people who have already complained about the problem you are solving.
Avoid inviting senior leaders to your pilot unless they are the ones experiencing the problem. Their presence changes the dynamic. People filter their ideas. Keep your sponsor informed but outside the participant group.
Write down your list of names. You will need it for the invitation 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
You need a way for people to submit ideas and a way for you to read, sort, and respond to them all in one place. How you collect ideas matters more than people think. A messy process creates extra work for you later (sorting through email threads, chasing duplicates, manually tracking who submitted what). A clean process means you spend your time reading ideas instead of organising them.
The recommended option: use an idea management platform. A tool like Hives.co is purpose-built for exactly this. You create your challenge, invite your participants, and the platform handles the rest: submissions are structured and organised automatically, you can see participation in real time, and when it comes time to evaluate and respond to people, everything is already in one place. You do not need to build a spreadsheet to track who submitted what, and you do not need to send individual emails to close the loop. For a first-time pilot especially, this removes a surprising amount of admin that would otherwise land on your desk. You can set one up in about 15 minutes.
If you do not have access to a dedicated tool yet, you can still run a solid pilot with what you have. Use Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, or any form tool your organisation already has. Set up three fields: Idea title (one sentence), How it works (two to three sentences explaining what would change), and Why it would help (one sentence on the expected impact). That is it. Three fields. No business case. No ROI calculation. You are collecting starting points, not finished proposals. A shared document works too, though you will spend more time organising submissions after the fact.
Whichever option you choose, set a deadline of 5 working days for submissions. Short deadlines create urgency. Long deadlines create procrastination. Five days is enough for people to think without forgetting about it.
Day 2 (continued): Write your invitation
Your invitation email or message needs to do four things in under 200 words: explain what you are doing and why, state the challenge question clearly, tell people exactly how to submit, and tell them what happens next (when submissions close, when they will hear back, and what will happen with the best ideas).
Here is a template you can copy and edit:
Subject line: Quick experiment: we need your ideas on [problem]
Hi [team/name],
We are running a quick experiment. We want to collect ideas from the people closest to [the problem] and actually do something with the best ones.
Here is the question: [Your challenge question]
To submit an idea, [click this link / open this document / go to this form]. Each idea only needs three things: a title, a short description of how it works, and why you think it would help.
Submissions close on [date, 5 working days out]. After that, [sponsor name] and I will review everything and get back to everyone within one week with what we are going to try.
This is not a suggestion box. Every idea gets a response. If you have questions, just reply to this message.
Thanks,
[Your name]
The line "this is not a suggestion box" matters more than you think. Most people have been burned by programmes where ideas disappeared. 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 submissions come in
You sent the invitation. Now the most common mistake is to sit back and wait. Do not do that. A five-day challenge needs a light touch of energy on three occasions:
Day 3 (the day after your invitation): Send a short reminder to the group. Something like: "Just a heads up, we have already received [X] ideas. If you have been thinking about one, now is a good time to write it down. Takes about 5 minutes." If you are using a platform like Hives.co, you can see exactly how many submissions have come in and which teams have participated, which makes these updates easy and specific. If you have not received any ideas yet, reach out to one or two people you know well and ask them to go first. Nothing kills participation like an empty page. One or two early submissions give everyone else permission to contribute.
Day 5 (midpoint): Share a quick update. "We are halfway through and have [X] ideas so far. Some really interesting thinking on [general theme, not specific ideas]. Two more days to get yours in." This creates gentle social proof without pressuring anyone.
Day 7 (closing day): Send a final message in the morning. "Last chance to submit your idea. We close tonight. Even a rough idea is better than no idea." Then close submissions at the end of the day.
If you want 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 shortlist
Submissions are closed. You probably have somewhere between 8 and 40 ideas, depending on your group size. Now you need to turn that list into a short list of 2 to 5 ideas worth acting on. If you used a dedicated platform, your ideas are already structured and sortable, which makes this step significantly faster. If you used a form or shared doc, start by copying everything into a single spreadsheet so you can see it all at once. Here is a fast, practical way to work through them.
Apply the Pilot Filter. For each idea, ask these three questions:
Can we test this within 30 days? If an idea requires a year-long IT project or board approval, it might be a great idea, but it is not right for your pilot. Set it aside for later. You are looking for things you can try quickly.
Does this actually address the challenge question? Some ideas will be good suggestions that have nothing to do with the problem you asked about. Acknowledge them, but do not let them distract you. Move them to a "parking lot" list.
Is the expected benefit worth the effort to test? You do not need a full ROI analysis. Just a gut check. If testing the idea takes two hours and might save the team two hours every week, that is obviously worth it. If testing it takes three months and might save five minutes, probably not.
Any idea that passes all three questions goes on your shortlist. You should aim for 2 to 5 ideas. If you have more, that is a good problem, but narrow it down so you do not spread too thin.
For more detailed scoring approaches, see The Idea Scoring Scorecard: 3 Models for Different Situations and How to Prioritize Ideas When Everything Feels Important.
Day 9: Decide with your sponsor
Take your shortlist to your sponsor. This meeting should take 30 minutes, not longer. Present each shortlisted idea in this format:
The idea: One sentence summary.
Why it stood out: How many people suggested it, what problem it addresses, why it passed your filter.
What testing it would look like: A rough description of the smallest possible experiment. Not a project plan. Just "we would try X for two weeks with Y team and measure Z."
What you need: Permission, a small budget, access to a system, or just time.
Your sponsor picks one or two ideas to test. If they want to pick more, gently push back. The goal of a pilot is to prove the process works, not to change the whole organisation in one go. One tested idea is worth more than five approved-but-never-started ideas.
Day 10: Close the loop with everyone
This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that determines whether anyone will ever participate in your next challenge. You need to get back to every single person who submitted an idea. Every one. This is where a dedicated idea management tool really earns its keep. In Hives.co, for example, you can respond to submissions directly within the platform, and every participant gets notified automatically. No manual email tracking, no wondering whether you forgot someone. If you are doing this manually, block out time in your calendar and work through the list one by one. It is worth the effort.
Here is a template for your closing message:
Hi everyone,
Thank you for contributing to our [challenge question] experiment. We received [X] ideas from [Y] people.
After reviewing all submissions, we are going to test [idea name/summary]. Here is what that looks like: [one to two sentences about the test]. We expect to have initial results by [date, ideally within 30 days].
We also identified [number] other ideas that we want to explore after this first test, including [brief mention of one or two].
For the ideas we are not moving forward with right now, here is why: [brief, honest explanation, e.g., "several ideas required system changes that are outside our control for now" or "some suggestions are already being worked on by the IT team, which we did not know until we checked"]. If you want specific feedback on your idea, reply to this message and I will follow up individually.
This was a pilot. Based on what we learned, we plan to [run another challenge in X weeks / expand to a bigger group / bring this to leadership]. Your participation made this possible.
Thanks,
[Your name]
The key principle: be specific about what you are doing and honest about what you are not doing. Vague promises like "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
If your pilot worked (you got ideas, you picked one, you are testing it), congratulations. You just proved that your organisation has people with good ideas who will share them if you ask a clear question and follow through. That is not a small thing. Many large organisations spend years and significant budgets trying to prove exactly that.
Here is what to do next:
Run the test. Actually test the idea you selected. Give it 2 to 4 weeks. Measure something, even if it is just "did this make things better, worse, or about the same?" Document what happened.
Share the results. Tell the participants what happened. Tell your sponsor. If the test worked, you now have a story. Stories are how idea programs grow. "We asked 20 people for ideas on reducing returns processing time. We got 15 ideas, tested one, and cut the average processing time by 3 days" is a sentence that gets attention from leadership.
Plan your next challenge. If the first one worked, run another one within 4 to 6 weeks. Different question, same process. You might expand the audience slightly. 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 scaling up. After two or three successful pilots, you will have enough evidence and experience to propose a more structured program. If you ran your pilot with forms and spreadsheets, this is the natural point to move to a dedicated idea management platform. The manual work that felt manageable with 20 people and 15 ideas gets painful fast when you are running challenges across multiple teams or collecting 100+ ideas at a time. A tool like Hives.co handles the collection, evaluation, feedback, and reporting in one place, which means you spend your time on the ideas themselves rather than on the admin around them. But regardless of what tool you use, the fundamentals stay the same: clear question, right audience, fast follow-through.
The one-page cheat sheet
Day 1: Pick a specific challenge question using the formula "How might we [action] so that [outcome]?" Find a sponsor who will act on the results. Select 10 to 30 participants who experience the problem.
Day 2: Set up a simple submission method (shared doc, form, or idea platform). Write and send your invitation with a clear deadline of 5 working days.
Days 3 to 7: Send three light-touch nudges: day after launch, midpoint update, and closing day reminder.
Day 8: Sort submissions, apply the Pilot Filter (testable in 30 days, addresses the question, benefit worth the effort).
Day 9: Present 2 to 5 shortlisted ideas to your sponsor. Pick 1 to 2 to test.
Day 10: Close the loop with all participants. Be specific about what you are doing, honest about what you are not, and clear about what comes next.
Days 11 to 40: Test the selected idea. Measure. Share results. 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.
