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Bristol-Myers Squibb breeds Innovation with Imaginatik's Idea Central

Bristol-Myers Squibb breeds innovation. . . with Idea Central

At a recent business conference, IBM produced a customer video of Bristol-Myers Squibb and their use of Idea Central, the leading Idea Management software from Imaginatik.

In the video, first Marsha McArthur, Manager of Market Research & Innovation at Bristol-Myers Squibb, talks about the business benefits of the technology as it supports the management of creative ideas. Then Mark Turrell, Chief Executive Officer of Imaginatik and IBM Business Partner, talks about the concepts behind "Idea Central."

Watch the video (4 minutes)

Summary of video content

Innovation is the lifeblood of pharmaceutical companies, which must deal continuously with expiring patents and the revenue impacts of low-priced generics coming onto the market. To speed the rate of innovation, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) has adopted an Idea Management application that enlists the creativity of the whole company. In these two videos, spokespersons for BMS and for Imaginatik, the Business Partner that created the Idea Central application, describe its workings and results.

The application Idea Central is a powerful Idea Management system built on a web platform, with multiple functions. It is used to communicate the company's strategic objectives internally, to collect, develop and select employees' ideas, and to preserve them in a global depository.

Idea generation With an active idea-sharing environment, BMS is using Idea Central primarily to collect revenue-generating ideas -- that help increase revenues from existing products, speed the release of new products, and grow the business. The application's flexible, interactive nature facilitates brainstorming and collective development of new ideas throughout the corporation.

Strategic focus Specific idea-generation campaigns are linked to identified customer needs and the strategic priorities of the company. A recent campaign called the "War on Diabetes" garnered 450 ideas from around the world, which were distilled and rolled into a prominent external campaign. "The real benefit of Idea Central is to focus people's creativity on critical business problems -- so it becomes an enterprise innovation tool."

Evaluation The workload of reviewing and assessing large volumes of ideas is significantly reduced, freeing time for implementation. For example, starting with 5,000 ideas gathered in group brainstorming sessions, the application was used to evaluate and prioritize them, generating lists of the best ideas by various criteria such as the top ten with a strategic fit, the top ten unique in the marketplace, and the top ten by brand.

Extended collaboration Future plans include extending this application to physicians and other companies that interact with BMS to accelerate and multiply the creation of new knowledge.