KM & Idea Management

"People have been waiting for five or six years for a reason to latch onto knowledge management... Idea management could rescue knowledge management from oblivion"
- InformationWeek, A Timely Notion Worth Considering

Imaginatik has pioneered the field of Idea Management by using Knowledge Management principles to fulfill the immediate innovation requirements of the enterprise. Our specialized approach provides a practical method that applies the collective knowledge in the organization to address business critical issues.

Ideas - Aligning Knowledge with Objectives

Frequently, traditional Knowledge Management initiatives struggle to establish a direct relationship with business objectives, and fail to deliver measurable results. Our Idea Management solutions allow our customers to obtain a tangible ROI from the collective knowledge in their organizations. Imaginatik's specialized approach to Idea Management applies KM principles to gather, share and apply the collective insight of a company's employees in critical subject areas. The following aspects make Idea Management an effective method to capitalize on the knowledge of your company:

• Ideas and knowledge are focussed towards solving an identified business need and providing real competitive advantage
• Challenges stimulate individuals to reveal their hidden and latent knowledge stores to address business critical issues
• Reward and recognition programs can be easily applied to motivate contributions
• The tacit and explicit knowledge generated is action orientated and is ready to be acted on - not just put in a database for storage
• Ideas are shared and developed in focussed, timely initiatives that enable high levels of contribution and interaction between people with similar interests
• Ideas submitted give a far more accurate profile base to find out who your real experts are
• Return on Investment figures are easy to quantify using standard accepted accounting methods
• Increased innovation through knowledge provides real competitive advantage.
• Imaginatik's specialized approach ensures that the solution is deployed easily to deliver measurable benefits fast

Dynamic Knowledge Systems (Imaginatik Research 2002)
This report analyzes the power of Dynamic Knowledge Management systems and compares them with other types of KM approaches. It describes how Idea Management is an optimal type of Dynamic Knowledge System that can deliver measurable ROI fast.

WP-0602-1 Dynamic Knowledge Systems.pdf
(120kb, right mouse click to download)

The Ideas are Out There...

Traditional Knowledge Management is about extracting, organizing, and especially re-using the knowledge accumulated within an organization. However, using the existing knowledge will only help organizations fine-tune their current intellectual resources. Forward-looking firms should go one step further and look beyond Knowledge Management, into Idea Management.

Good ideas emerge every day at different levels. If you only captured these good ideas somehow, your company could be changed dramatically...

However, there are various obstacles to the capture of ideas and the implementation of good ones:

• time restrictions during discussions and brainstorming meetings
• personal attitude, reluctance to speak in front of an audience, perhaps through fear of reprisals
• lack of formal ways to put the ideas in writing
• people's scepticism about their ideas being taken into account
• lack of management interest and appreciation of innovative ideas
• lack of a method by which to build and mature ideas

Idea Central - a Source of Unlimited Competitive Advantage

Imaginatik has developed Idea Central, a solution that provides a space where employees across the whole company can raise ideas. The major objectives of Idea Central are:

• capturing good ideas - promising incremental or radical benefits - regarding critical business issues, from anybody in the company
• sharing ideas across the organization and supporting interaction among participants to build on them
• providing an efficient review process to evaluate the ideas, with the aim of implementing as many good ones as possible, and come to a prompt decision about future steps
• establishing and abiding by rules regarding the evaluation of ideas, keeping the creators and the audience informed about the process.

The Future is Innovation

"The long-term survival of any company is dependent on its ability to generate and exploit innovative ideas" - KM Magazine

Solving the ideas problem gets into the "heart" of Knowledge Management. Most Knowledge Management work deals with the organization and structure of existing information, which, when done well, helps improve productivity and reduces rework and mistakes.

A company's future, though, is determined by creativity and innovation, and harnessing the resourcefulness of people to create new knowledge.