The main benefits to participating in a collaborative innovation network include having your voice heard, enjoying the opportunity to help shape the culture and direction of your organization, and being recognized for your valuable contributions. Additionally, some initiatives may offer top participants incentives such as cash rewards, technology prizes, pitch opportunities and mentoring.

There are several ways that you can participate in the innovation process. Browse through the active initiatives, and orient yourself to the general scope and direction of your innovation program. Use the intuitive initiative submission form to provide ideas and insights that address key topics. Review the ideas of your colleagues, and support their submissions through comments and iterative dialogue.

Submissions that have been posted to the innovation platform cannot be edited. Contact a member of Innovation Team to discuss this issue. These team members have limited editing rights to the system and may be able to help under certain circumstances.

Your previous submissions, along with your recent activity and private messages, can be found on the My Activity page.

The status of each idea will be modified as it moves through various stages of consideration. Any idea whose status is marked “Pending” has yet to be reviewed by the Innovation Management Committee. Once reviewed by this group, ideas will move to an “In Evaluation” status, as business owners or other key stakeholders are contacted and asked to provide an initial reaction to an idea. The business owner or stakeholder designated for accountability will be listed in the comment section of the idea. Once the idea has been considered, it will either move to an “In Process” status, indicating that it is being further investigated, elaborated or prioritized, or to “Shelved” status, indicating that the idea is not being pursued at the current time. Once an idea has been fully executed or resolved, then the status will be changed to “Executed”.

To update your profile, navigate to the 'My Profile' page by clicking on the portrait located in the right-hand side of the global navigation bar. On the profile page, you will notice a link in the left hand-column, entitled 'edit your profile.' Fill out the following form and save your updates.

The mail server should allow you to get emails from the system directly to your Outlook Inbox. However, it is recommended that you verify your junk email or filtered inbox in case one has been incorrectly filtered out. If you find a message that has been filtered into your Junk Folder, right click on the email and follow these steps: Click on Junk Email and select Add Sender to Safe Senders List.

An 'action item' is an event triggered by an innovation administrator, assigning a specific activity to idea evaluators and/or subject matter experts. This might include requests for the review, scoring and development of ideas submitted during an initiative.