External Reports
A number of respected analyst and consulting firms are reporting on Idea Management and the role it plays as a critical capability for successful companies.
Since January 2002, Gartner Group analysts have been following closely the area of Idea and Innovation Management. The following reports cover relevant aspects of Idea Management and can be purchased from Gartner Group:
Focusing the Innovation Process (C. Rozwell; 23 January 2002)
This report analyzes some of the critical issues involved in managing innovation through Idea Management processes. Based on research done on real life deployments of Idea Management, the report dwells mainly on the aspect of focusing innovation initiatives on the different value areas of the enterprise.
Survey of Innovation Management Technology (C. Rozwell, K. Harris, F. Caldwell; 21 January 2002)
This report analyzes the different types of Innovation Management solutions that currently exist in the market. It predicts that Idea Management and NPD type solutions will lead this growing market space.
As an active researcher in the field of innovation, PwC was one of the first companies that have identified the relevance of Idea Management as the most critical success factor of innovative companies.
Innovation Survey (PwC Consulting; November 2000)
An in-depth research on the Innovation capacity of Top Times 1000 companies, this 70 page report analyzes the critical capabilities of innovators. The research is based on interviews conducted with top executives across different industries. From the conclusions and statistical reports obtained, it is worth highlighting the relevance of Idea Management as the most critical capability of innovative companies. The other two capabilities found to be critical are: corporate climate, and leadership/ followership.
The Baroudi Group is a specialized strategic analyst in the field of transforming and emerging technologies, who has worked extensively on the field of Knowledge Management and collaboration technologies.
Idea Management Briefing - Capturing the Spark that Ignites Innovation
(The Baroudi Group; April 2002)
This comprehensive study collects valuable insight from real life Idea Management implementations in a number of Industries. The report analyzes deployment best practices, and critical features in successful in Idea Management solutions.
Idea Management is a disciplined approach to generating, capturing, and analyzing ideas within an organization. Provided a company creates a culture that values creativity and encourages employee participation, a formal Idea Management process should improve a company’s ability to innovate, and especially to maintain a steady flow of innovation:
"Leading-edge innovators have learned that, rather than generating lots of ideas, they can derive more benefit from a targeted event driven process that will enable them to capture the best ideas related to an specific issue"
"Targeted and bounded programs produce better results than open-ended idea collection systems"
"A seeming paradox of innovation is that most useful ideas originate from a structured process rather than random occurrences of creativity"
Idea Management technologies can simplify workflows and drastically reduce administrative headaches by:
- providing a universally accessible forum for employees to submit ideas
- reminding people of deadlines and individual responsibilities, such as reviewing idea submissions
- ensuring reliable feedback for participants in the form of automated email updates
- permitting analysis of the organization’s idea pool by integrating with key enterprise systems (e.g., ERP, new product development, HR, payroll)
The Baroudi Group has researched Idea Management software vendors and their customer implementations, interviewing innovation teams at several large companies. This analyst brief covers the following topics:
- ideas and innovation in the enterprise
- the emergence of Enterprise Idea Management
- key benefits identified by innovation teams
- best practices in Idea Management
- Imaginatik’s Idea Central application, as a leader in this space
Background Reading: Request a free copy of the Baroudi Group Report