Deliver Breakthrough Innovations with Idea Management Software

Today’s business environment is marked by demanding customers and intense market competition. In such a scenario, innovation is one of the best means to attain competitive advantage. However, innovation is not just about creating new products. It means reinventing, restructuring and reengineering business processes, workflow management and products. Innovation also means discovering and creating not just new market trends, but also completely new markets where unaddressed and unfulfilled needs might be present.

Untapped markets, ideas, customers are something that is ever present. Hence, the need of the hour is to find the right idea and introduce it at the right time that too in the right market. In short, enterprises need to know the pulse of their present as well as future employees and customers.

That was what Xerox did when Procter & Gamble collaborated with it to make its document output process more efficient. Xerox documented, measured and tracked P&G’s end user processes and discovered a new process to enhance productivity, reduce waste and generate savings. From 45,000 copiers, printers, scanners and fax machines in 200 facilities world wide with each device being shared by only four employees, Xerox was able to slim P&G’s print and copy fleet to 10,000 with on average, 14.3 employees using each device. Thus, the collaboration between P&G and Xerox benefitted P&G substantially as it has been able to reduce printing costs by 21 percent, paper consumption by 30 percent and energy costs by 30 percent. Moreover, today P&G print eight million fewer pages and its employees print emails, presentations and other business documents directly from their Smartphones.

Xerox’s achievement is something that every enterprise can easily attain. What is required is an idea management solutions managing innovation that offers a complete set of features for managing, screening and even implementing viable ideas. Here is a look at some of the benefits of idea management software.

• New competitive products and services
• Process improvements
• Improved collaboration and decision making across teams
• Competitive advantage
• Identify hidden talent and new areas of growth
• Enhanced Brand Value and Brand Loyalty
  

Thus, an idea management tool gives enterprises the right platform where they can bring all concerned parties together and encourage them to collectively look for a solution that is acceptable to all. They can easily turn an ideation platform into crowdsourcing software that allows better transparency, viable solution and faster updates. Idea management software allows increased interaction resulting in a collective pool of smart brains, which thus allows delivering breakthrough innovations.

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Public Welfare & Open Innovation

What does it take to build a bus stop? Whilst many would have qualms of thought hovering around the constructional details, the truth is all that matters is ‘the very thought’. An idea! That’s what the University of Utah/Utah Transit Authority; the United States did with its open innovation contest named Next Stop Design. The objective was to work with neighborhood residents and design an improved and better functioning bus stop. The purpose was also to evaluate the feasibility of an OI approach for transit concerns and to understand how the people would contribute in urban planning and government decision making. The visitors and online browsers of Next Stop Design website were encouraged to submit their ideas keeping in mind aspects such as weather protection, accessibility and access to transit information. There were more than 260 ideas that were submitted and approximately 11,000 votes helped in choosing the winner.

This is or can be the future of idea management when managed and executed systematically. It is necessary that companies understand that each single person has something to contribute today. Individuals and consumers today are much more conscious and aware of what is happening around them, about their needs and the preferred way to arrive at them. Progressive companies and smart entrepreneurs capitalize on this aspect by resorting to mass idea capture management idea techniques. This has helped them in new product development and even introducing better social welfare programs.

However, when it comes to laws and regulation, everyone wishes there was a leeway to put in their views. Everyone has a say on a criminal code that seems irksome or a taxation policy that might appear extremely rigid. The question is in this new age of innovation and high-end innovation products, can one use open innovation to make new laws.

Thinking on similar lines United States California State Assembly member Jared Huffman,  declared an open innovation contest, providing the public with a chance to come up with new laws. The contest encouraged local residents to create new laws pertaining to existing situations or probable ones and submit them explaining its feasibility, objectives, benefits and implications. According to Jared Hufffman “This contest is a way for me as a legislator to tap into that incredible resource of knowledge and creativity. It’s one of several ways I try to maintain a constant dialogue with my constituents about public policy.”

This kind of open innovation and crowdsourcing innovation provides a new form of citizen engagement and an unprecedented scope for individuals to get involved with every level of the government. This further helps to impact public thinking, guide policy decisions and attain enhanced access to data and better services.

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Retain Customers with Idea Management System

The modern day business scenario is characterized by fierce competition, advanced and changing technologies and demanding consumers. These are some of the factors that have made innovation a crucial aspect for most companies. In today’s world, where knowledge is accessible and widespread,enterprises still cannot completely rely only on their own research. Organizations are gradually coming to terms with this fact that irrespective of the company size certain creative inputs and predictive insights can be found outside the enterprise’s physical boundaries. Hence, most companies are willing to involve external parties in their innovation practices. This process is termed as open innovation.

In the recent past, crowdsourcing has been a popular medium for open innovation. It has been used not only to give shape to critical projects efficiently but also to arrive at solutions that otherwise seemed impossible. The process has immensely influenced the business scenario since its inception in 2006, when the term was coined first by Jeff Howe in Wired Magazine. The process entails in presenting an agenda to the mass at large and encouraging them to contribute with their suggestions, ideas and inputs.

Recently, Nivea, Germany the multinational skincare cosmetic brand utilized the crowdsourcing technique for new product development. For this the brand wanted to make use of consumer insights beyond generic market research. Going forward, the brand effectively monitored hundred of social media websites in various languages in order to understand the crowd feedback on deodorants and their utilities. With the help of this social intelligence and actionable insights the brand introduced Nivea’s Invisible for Black and White, a revolutionary deodorant eradicating stain issues and is available now in the retail outlets today.

Crowdsourcing can be efficiently used as a medium of idea capture of idea management when backed by rewards and incentives. Dove, the leading name in women’s skin care and personal care products did something similar in order to promote its products. The brand asserts that women using Dove moisturizing soap can notice a remarkable difference in their skin tone in terms of evenness and radiance. The company announced an open competition where women using Dove soap can upload their pictures on the company website and can win a chance to become the next Dove face. The objective here is to enhance sales and induce the a “feel good factor” of being the face of a leading personal care brand.

Most enterprises are reaping in the positive impacts of crowdsourcing. However, the process has been under the scanner for the few who view it in a sceptical manner. The ones that have been constantly harnessing the power of open innovation, ideation and crowdsourcing have realized that they can tap into the vast talent pool and can attain their objectives within a set-time, budget and in a creative way. The success to open innovation however is in the fact that everyone irrespective of their background is capable of “out of the box” thinking.

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Crowdsourcing – The New Idea Generation Tool

Most forward thinking companies have resorted to a new medium for business expansion and product development apart from marketing and branding activities also known as Crowdsourcing. The term was initially created by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine back in 2006 and defined this to be the phenomenon of sending out various tasks to the public at large to get the most productive solution in return.

Simply put, crowdsourcing is a new face of idea management for companies. The management idea is useful because it does not rely on a single person or a specified team for the success of a product development campaign or developing a social welfare plan. Furthermore the diverse ideas that it generates provides solutions for unresolved problems as well as ideas for a better future. Open innovation and crowdsourcing is being used across all industry verticals today namely engineering, science and technology, advertising, automobile, banking, entertainment and many more.

Netflix Prize, an online DVD-rental service announced an open innovation competition for attaining the best collaborative filtering algorithm that will predict user ratings for films, depending on previous ratings. This competition was launched by Netflix and got completed back in September 2009. The prize amount was $1,000,000 which was reserved for the entry that reveals Netflix's own algorithm for predicting ratings by 10%. The company offered a training data set of over 100 million ratings that almost 480,000 users gave to nearly 18,000 movies that in turn happened to be one of the largest real-life data sets available for research. The forum managed by Netflix has witnessed lively discussions and contributed immensely to the success of this competition. This open innovation exercise reveals that an essential aspect of crowdsourcing is that the top teams are not only including academic researchers, but also laymen with no prior experience in collaborative filtering.

Another crowdsourcing project that highlights that each and every individual has a unique suggestion to offer was made by the National Library of Australia. The library came up with Australian Historic Newspapers that encouraged the public to enhance, correct the electronically translated text of old newspapers. This service was made available on August 2008, and by March 2010 more than 12 million lines of the text have been enhanced by the public. This has been the first library project globally through crowdsourcing that helped libraries and archives enhance the digital resources.

The main objective of open innovation and crowdsourcing is to capture ideas that make a difference and come up with unique ideas and services that would benefit to all. This apart, crowdsourcing reinforces the fact that every individual is capable of revolutionary thinking and fosters a culture of knowledge sharing.

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Open Innovation In The Auto Sector

Progress and success depends on ideas. And when it is about ideas and “out of the box” thinking, the “closed room” approach has ceased to work. Forward thinking companies have realized this truth and hence are resorting to open innovation techniques.

Recently, the automobile industry has been using innovative products and solutions for new product development and enhancing existing services and products. Previously, this industry majorly banked on market research and trends offered by an external agency for new product development. In addition, with the success of social web certain auto brands also have been using social media platforms as a means of idea capture.

Leading French automobile manufacturer Citroen joined hands with Facebook recently on an app and encouraged the audience to share their views on ‘C1 Connexion’, the UK’s first ever crowdsourced car. The app got launched in April 2012 whereby the company encouraged Facebook users to participate in the open innovation contest. The participants were asked to determine the way the car model should look, the devices needed and their details with multiple possibilities. This comprised of the number of doors, exterior and interior color combination, communication systems such as Sat Nav System. This open innovation contest was open for a month and finally the car details given by the audience was revealed in May 2012 before it went into production.

This apart, auto majors like BMW, Germany has been making use of open innovation to gather ideas on how to expand the product pipeline and incorporate creative ideas to the ideation process. It came up with a Co-Creation Lab, a platform where interested participants and car enthusiasts are free to share their views and ideas about next-generation cars. Since its inception the lab has hosted innovation contests. A notable one is the BMW Group Interior Design Contest that encouraged the crowd to share creative inputs for customizing car interiors. There was no restriction on the participants and the winners were chosen by an expert panel. As a result of this mass idea sharing the idea that won was the ‘Color Matching Camera’ that is placed inside the car and spots the clothes and colors of an individual.

Thus when companies are thinking and going all global it is crucial to reach and connect to the audience at large. Idea management techniques, crowdsourcing and open innovation, automatically help individuals to establish a deeper connection with a company. This apart, idea management is also about growing together professionally and propagating an atmosphere of knowledge sharing.

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