Idea Magnet - the best in class Innovation Platform
Smart companies understand the value of Innovation and it does not change with the macro-economic upturn or downturn. Except for some notable exceptions, innovative companies encourage outside-in thinking -- seeking input from partners, resellers and end users. The end users seldom create or design the new product for the company but provide insights and demand validation that product managers need in their product roadmaps.
Be it collecting a feature-list for a software product's next release, collecting cost-saving ideas to feed into the CFO's cost savings program or considering ideas for new products and services, Idea Magnet provides a backbone for collecting, refining, reviewing and selecting the appropriate ideas. Designed from the start to blend with the enterprise's culture, the platform provides the backbone infrastructure to enable you to focus on decisions rather than the data collection and analysis.
Cultivating Innovation
Collect Everything For every good idea that results in an enhancement or a new product, several hundred others need to be considered and reviewed. Do not erect barriers on the entrance gates, make it easy for users to contribute. And fear not, we are not creating a data overload problem by keeping the doors wide open.
Empower the community The "power of crowds" can be put to good use in coming up with a first level popularity index. Let the community members comment on other ideas and vote on the ideas to promote (or demote) them. Popular ideas will bubble up to the top. We have had several examples
Involve the decision makers -- early and often In geographically dispersed companies and user communities, face-time is precious commodity. With Idea Magnet, you do not need to rely on that quarterly meeting to "review ideas". Line managers, subject matter experts and executives can stay involved in the discussion to extent they wish to using actual participation, RSS feeds or customized alerts.
Idea Magnet can also facilitate connecting subject matter experts with the right authors if they are looking for help or looking for an opinion. Users can subscribe to ideas of interest and similarly users can be assigned an area of expertise either based on skills or community credentials earned over time.
Let ideas grow and evolve You could take a sphagheti on the wall approach, where users suggest and you select. Or you could use the Idea Magnet functionality to let users connect and collaborate on refining the ideas from a concept to a prototype. Users can exchange documents, work on several scenarios, issue surveys, conduct polls in a smaller group setting in order to flesh out an idea concept.
Recognize and reward Community contribution in an innovation program is strongly influenced by how the enterprise recognizes and rewards right behavior. Idea Magnet's built in modules lets you define a variety of community recognition initiatives and reward and acknowledge the top performers.
Configurable: From fully democratic to painfully autocratic Innovation programs have to mirror the company culture. Idea Magnet does well to adopt to your enterprise's guidelines and definitions on participation, openness, accountability and transparency. Designed from the bottom up to be an enterprise tools, it fits well within your corporate eco-system.
Who's invited? You decide. Some of our customers like a "internal" system, limited and accessible to employees only. Some like to open it up to customer and if you prefer, you can also allow anybody to register and sign in. The extent of the community if up to you.
Productizing Innovation
Tasked with managing innovation? Are you tasked with managing innovation within your company? We'd love to hear from you and show you some of the capabilities of the platform in more details. We have several other customers who have gone through the process and can connect you with other folks just like you.
Want to give it a try? With no software to buy or hardware to manage, Idea Magnet is offered as a service to allow you to focus and spend your time on acting on the ideas not spend time collecting and processing them. We like the "toe in the water" approach and let us know how we can help.
Would you like to see this platform in action? Let us know and we can schedule a 30 minute product demonstration!