Submit an idea

Contribution is the work. Submitting an idea is step one to joining a cohort.

If you see a workflow at Balsam that could move differently with AI, and you want to help build it, that’s what this page is for. The CoE forms cohorts around people who want to contribute to specific workflows. Your submission is how you enter the conversation.

Two ways to submit

“I want to join a cohort to build this.” You’re putting your name on an idea you’d work on. A few paragraphs. Emphasis on the value it would create. Cohorts form when enough related ideas — and enough people — gather around the same workflow.

“I have a project and want help with it.” You own the project; you’re asking the CoE for support, not joining a cohort as a contributor. Same shape of submission, different intent.

One thing we don’t do: submit ideas for other people to do. This is for ideas you want to work on yourself. If you think a colleague should take something on, talk to them first.

What a good submission looks like

Concrete. Specific. Names the value.

For example: imagine someone proposes building a system that turns Balsam’s internal documentation into role-specific user guides — starting with NetSuite for finance teams, then expanding across other tools. The value: humans onboard to new tools faster, and AI agents can onboard themselves to how Balsam works. The hard part: documentation is scattered and often stale. The plan: prototype locally first, graduate to Confluence.

What makes that useful — a clear target, a named audience, a theory of value, an acknowledgment of the hard part, a sketch of how to start. That’s the shape we’re looking for.

The four core workflows

Future cohorts form around the four pipelines that run Balsam:

• Content Production — campaign brief to published asset.
• Product Data & Lifecycle — trend, vendor specs, PIF, PIM, multi-channel launch. (Cohort 1 is here.)
• Marketing & Campaigns — plan, execute, measure, reallocate.
• Order to Delivery — purchase through ops, shipping, customer service.

When your idea lands on one of these, we group it with other ideas on the same workflow and a cohort begins to form.

Who can submit

Anyone at Balsam. Operators, leaders, anyone who sees a workflow that could work differently. You don’t need to have the full solution — you need a real problem and the willingness to work on it.

What makes a good submission

A good submission names:

• A workflow that is constrained today. Not “we should use AI for X” — “here’s how this work moves now, here’s where it gets stuck.”
• Who feels the friction. The people doing the work, the people downstream, the customer.
• What a better outcome looks like. Concrete enough to test against.
• Why now. Is there a decision coming up? A season? A strategic bet this enables?

A good submission doesn’t need a proposed technical solution. Often the most useful submissions describe the problem cleanly and leave the “how” open.

The form

What happens after you submit

Within one week, the CoE triages your submission.

Three possible outcomes:

1. Accepted to backlog. The CoE writes it up as a one-pager for the Operating Council. You’re credited. You’ll be invited to contribute if it becomes a cohort.
2. Routed. Sometimes a submission is better handled by an existing team (IT, a pod, the AI Council). The CoE routes it with an introduction and a copy of your brief.
3. Parked with reasoning. If the submission doesn’t fit (too early, too narrow, duplicates ongoing work), the CoE responds with the reason. You can iterate and resubmit.

No submission goes silent. Every one gets a response.

How priority calls get made

The backlog is public. Every submission is visible, every one-pager is visible, every decision is recorded.

Priority calls are not a free-for-all. The Operating Council (a subset of Balsam’s Leadership Team) reviews the backlog monthly and picks the next cohort. Criteria:

• Fit with Balsam’s strategic objectives. The workflow matters to a real business outcome.
• Readiness. A core owner willing to give real time. A sponsor willing to clear blockers. Data and access available.
• Capacity. Balsam has the downstream build capacity (internal or external) to land what the cohort produces.
• Portfolio balance. Not too similar to the current cohort; mix of depth and reach over time.

The Operating Council’s reasoning is recorded. If your submission isn’t picked this month, you’ll see why. You can resubmit with updated context.

How to get picked

Clear submissions move faster than ones that need translation. Submissions with a willing sponsor move faster than orphans. Submissions that show prior work — a mapped workflow, a prototype, a conversation you’ve already had — move faster than pure ideas. Submissions that already have cross-functional interest tend to run better cohorts when they start. None of this is scored, but all of it helps.

Frequently submitted ideas

If you’re thinking of submitting something, check the backlog first. A similar idea may already be in flight.

Questions

Open an issue on this repo, or ping the CoE operating team in Slack.