Case Study: Dick’s Sporting Goods achieves rapid employee-driven product innovation and strong engagement with IdeaScale

Dick’s Sporting Goods Looking to Employees for Product Open Innovation

DICK’S Sporting Goods, a family-run full-line sporting goods retailer with more than 500 stores nationwide, wanted to tap employee creativity to accelerate new product ideas. To build an internal “open innovation” community and hit participation targets (roughly 10% engagement from product development and home office staff), they launched Concept Locker — a DSG-email-only platform where employees could submit ideas, comment, vote and earn rewards.

The company supported the launch with intranet banners, emails, videos, in-person signup tables, SWAG and a town-hall push. Moderators actively commented and voted to stimulate discussion, and small rewards drove buzz. Results: the town-hall exceeded its 150-signup target with 306 users, and after three weeks Concept Locker had 533 registrations and 66 idea submissions; a follow-up challenge grew the community to 747 users and produced 58 additional concepts.

Dick’s Sporting Goods

Kimberly Bikowski

Product Development Innovator