Create an idea-generation process
Sinnott was taking a class in product development at The Wharton School of Business when inspiration struck.
The class was using software that the school had developed to run academic tournaments, but Sinnott saw that it was just what he had been looking for in his business.
“People always bring me new product ideas — slips of paper or articles from a magazine — and I end up with these huge binders of information of stuff that’s not aggregated or organized, and it’s almost too much information to go through, so I’m always looking for a way to sift through these ideas efficiently,” he says.
He recognized that this software could help him do that better by pitting products against each other for evaluation much like the academic tournaments in the class.
He approached the school and got exclusive licensure to use the software, and his new product development plan began.
All of his independent distributors — about 500,000 of them around the world — have the opportunity to participate in the product development process. Each creates a unique user ID and can submit ideas into the system, but it’s limited to one idea per session so the system doesn’t get overwhelmed.
“Generally, the research shows that people tend to have one good idea at a time — and they can come on every single day if they wanted to and put a different idea in if they’re so inclined, but we didn’t want the ability for people to come in and flood the system with 100 of the same idea and cause chaos to the system,” he says.
Once someone submits their idea, then other users begin reviewing it. Simultaneously, the person is asked to review as many as 10 to 12 other ideas. Users rank them on a scale of 1 to 10 — 10 being they like the idea and it has economic potential.
“This software will actually normalize all the ratings,” he says. “Some people don’t like anything, so they rate everything a 2, and some people like everything, and they’ll rate everything an 8, and some people are more in the middle, but this software is smart, and it will understand where these people are coming from, and it normalizes the ratings.”
As people go through these idea round-robins, Sinnott gets the feedback he needs to know how to move forward. Products are typically reviewed a few thousand times before they start to stand out.
“Statistically, the best ideas will rise to the top, and we’ll just skim them up off the system and develop them into new products,” he says.
Initially, he rolled this system out at a major company event to maximize exposure to it, and it took about six months to build up the kind of data to know whether an idea was good, but now it takes only about two months.
“It’s just something that gradually developed,” he says. “Statistically you need thousands to really power this. We’re in that range now where it’s operating really well.”
The system helps ensure Mannatech is getting what would be best for customers because the direct sales associates are out on the front lines every day — much more so than Sinnott and his 400 full-time employees.
“This whole concept is based on open innovation, where regardless of how many brilliant people you have inside your building, you have a lot more brilliant people outside your building. What we’re trying to tap in to is not so much what the employees think because we know what they think — we ask them all the time — but to really find out what the consumer, the people that are buying our products on a regular basis, what are they wanting, what are they asking for?” he says.
“That’s one way to stack the deck in your favor and pick winners as opposed to just randomly going out and sorting through technologies that are out there and hoping you have a winner.”
