Entrepreneurs Seek Ways to Draw out Workers’ Ideas

(From the WSJ.com) When Andrew Schuman bought Hammond’s Candies in 2007, the nearly 90-year-old candy company was operating in the red. Mr. Schuman, who says he knew nothing about the candy business, soon learned that an assembly-line worker, rather than an executive, had dreamed up the design of the company’s popular ribbon snowflake candy.

It was an “aha” moment, he says. “I thought, ‘wow, we have a lot of smart people back here, and we’re not tapping their knowledge.’ ”

So last year Mr. Schuman decided to offer a $50 bonus to assembly-line workers who came up with successful ideas to cut manufacturing costs.

“They’re the ones making and packing the candy, so I thought they probably know how to do things better and more efficiently,” says Mr. Schuman, president of the Denver, Colo., company, which has about 90 employees.

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