The City of Manor’s open innovation portal, Manor Labs, has been live for a few months turning ideas into solutions. When talking with other cities, I find that the entire concept of open innovation is a bit misunderstood. It is very easy to put up a voting platform to rate ideas, but what happens afterwards? With Manor Labs, powered by the Spigit open innovation engine, the system is user-driven and self-sufficient. This allows our small agency the ability to process large quantities of ideas with limit staff involvement.

Here’s a breakdown of idea stages and functions:

1. Incubation: When an idea is submitted it falls into this stage until it meets the required voting, page view and buzz needed to advance to the next stage.

2. Validation: Ideas that meet voting, page view and buzz requirements automatically fall into this stage. In this stage, a department head will submit a review each idea, and based upon the combination of citizen and departmental feedback, the idea may drop into the next category. If department decides that the idea does not contain enough information to proceed, they can move the idea back to incubation stage and request more information before proceeding.

3. Emergence: In this stage, ideas are reviewed by the Manor Innovation Team (MIT), which is composed of all city department heads. The team reviews each idea on a series of metrics and determine whether to implement or abort the idea. Ideas can also be piloted from this stage before they are fully implemented.

4. Closed: Ideas that fall into this stage are either implemented or aborted. If they are implemented, the idea creator is awarded and more information about how to use or signup for the new solution is posted online. If the idea is aborted, the idea creator receives an open response with reasoning why the idea cannot be implemented.

For more information about Manor Labs or to signup for an account to participate, please visit www.manorlabs.org.