Power to the People: What is Idea Management and Can it Really Grow Profits?
About 13 years ago I was sitting in a meeting with about 10 other people. We spent several hours discussing what our customers would want and how we would make that happen. There was only one problem with that; we didn't really know.
I got frustrated because we ten, were spending about $5,000 just sitting in this room talking – since we didn't want to write a check for $5,000 to listen to what our customers had to tell us.
It seemed silly to me that we should struggle so much when our customers would gladly LOVE to tell us what they wanted and why they wanted it. Not only that, but we were missing the point that when you ask your customer what they want — and the take the time to tell you, and you take the time to deliver — they will buy it. So there is no "sale" involved. You no longer have to convince them of the value. They know the value because they asked for it.
Granted, doing market research 13 years ago was a lot pricier than it is now. And guess what? The "cost" of gathering customer ideas has gotten even lower with the advent of "Idea Management" tools.
What's Idea Management and Can it Make Me More Profitable?
Idea Management is nothing more than suggestion box 2.0. You've actually been living and working with the principles for years. If you've called in to vote for a performer on American Idol, you've participated in a form of idea management. If you've watched a contestant "ask the audience" on the show "I Want to be a Millionare," you've seen idea management in action there too. The theory is that a crowd of people is smarter than a small group. The challenge has been pulling those "smarts" together to make good use of them.
An extension of this "wisdon of crowds" thinking is that if you could collect their ideas and let them contribute these ideas to your organization; you would become more profitable by simply focusing on what they want you to do — instead of what YOU want to do.
So the answer to the question "Can it make me profitable?" is Maybe.
Don't Confuse Idea Management with Innovation
This entire concept of "Idea Management" might also fall into the category of Innovation and Innovation Management. That said; managing ideas is NOT the same as managing innovation. Ideas are a dime-a-dozen, real innovation can be rare and priceless. So, it's important to distiguish between the two.
Let me preface this by saying that the onslaught of new idea management tools should not take the place of core innovation principles. Tools are just that — tools. Building profitability of your organization or brand is a purely human activity. Software and technology help us look at information, but should not substitute good, sound business sense and judgement.
A List of Idea Management Tools
I've been lurking around the web looking for idea management tools. I'm going to save you the time and the aggravation of finding them by listing some of them here.
If you are using any of these tools, or perhaps have another idea management tool to recommend, I'd love to hear from you. I will use your information and links in my review article – which will either appear here, or on www.smallbiztrends.com
Someone just posted http://www.suggestionbox.com on the “skribit” application on the right. Very cool.
We just launched http://SuggestionBox.com with the goal of becoming the one place people think of and use when they have a suggestion or an idea for improvement. In addition to being a central hub to collect suggestions, we wanted to make the service valuable for companies and help them manage their incoming feedback. SuggestionBox.com provides tools for streamlining the process, combining similiar ideas, assigning teams, internally evaluating, and prioritizing suggestions while allowing the person who took the time to make the suggestion to be kept in the loop regarding the status of their idea.
These are definitely exciting times in the rapidly expanding online feedback space.
Jeff Whitton
Founder, SuggestionBox.com
http://SuggestionBox.com
http://twitter.com/suggestionbox
Thanks for putting this together Ivana. Please keep in mind that just providing a platform for people to post ideas and rank or collaborate on them, without systems in place on the backend to turn those ideas into reality, can merely just create more problems for companies. We at BrightIdea focus on true ROI through end to end innovation pipeline mgmt applications that follow ideas through implemetation….. and not just providing more “suggestion boxes”.
Disclaimer: I am the CEO of Survey Analytics (We are behind IdeaScale – one of the tools mentioned above.)
Great writeup – It’s great that you point out Tools Vs. Process. As usual there is a lot of buzz and everyone has their own agenda (and trust me – I also have my own agenda) — but to the nay-sayers who piss on and dismiss of Idea Management tools as “Fads” — also have their own agenda — the “innovation consulting” dollars might be shrinking.
This entire conversation reminds me of 2005 when Fred Reicheld came up with “net promoter score” and basically attacked the livelyhood of thousands of Customer Sat. consultants — And everyone got into two camps – those for the net promoter score and those against. If you followed the money trail, it will be obvious as to why they were for it and why some were against it.
The same is with Idea Management tools and innovation management.
One suggestion Ivana I have is that you could have at least touched on pricing, markets and scope – for each of the tools you mention.
If someone needs and end-to-end innovation platform — BrightIdeas, Imaginatik or IdeaSpigit is more of a platform choice.
Simpler models like those of IdeaScale, UserVoice and SuggestionBox are cheaper, simpler and more targeted towards feedback management (as opposed to end-to-end innovation management.)
Pricing and Scope are probably two attributes that make most sense to include as part of a list of tools.
-v
http://blog.questionpro.com
Hey everyone – I cannot thank you enough for jumping into this. It’s funny because this was initially going to be a quick and easy article. But as I did just a little research and chatted with a couple of you — I realized it was so very much more than what people were twittering and blogging about.
So – my simple article is really going to be two articles. The follow-up to this article will be themed “How to choose a tool that’s right for you” which will include pricing, platforms etc.
At first, I was disappointed having to divide up the article – but now, I’m thrilled that I didn’t include a lot of information because it’s prompted you guys to chime in. LOVE that. I would also love to hear more comments from you on who your tools are best for and why and when your tool is best for them.
We use http://www.employeesuggestionbox.com and are quite happy with it. It’s easy, affordable and there has been no training involved. So far the employees have adopted it and its working out quite well so far. Hope this helps.
Hi,
I have been working in the area for more than 10 years – helped start the term Idea Management way back when. I would recommend that you add Imaginatik to your list (www.imaginatik.com). Most of the commercial uses of Idea Management concern our client base (think Pfizer, IBM, HP, Whirlpool, Weyerhaeuser). We also developed much of the underlying thinking behind running the process at enterprise scale – there are a ton of white papers freely available on our web site, covering topics like reward & recognition, getting the right balance between volume and quality, etc.
I very much agree with your view that this is not about software – software is just a type of tool, a means to an end. I wrote a blog posting on my blog, InnovationBBL (http://innovationBBL.blogspot.com), on the topic of ‘Naked Software’ (http://innovationbbl.blogspot.com/2005/08/naked-idea-management-software-exposed.html). That was written in 2005 – and still highly relevant today.
Thanks for listening!
Mark Turrell
CEO, Imaginatik plc
http://www.imaginatik.com
Hi
I list a few more Idea Management System vendors on my blog http://www.ideamanagementsystems.com/, if you are interested
Kind Regards
Lauchlan Mackinnon
Hi again,
If you have the chance, if you do publish your expanded article could you drop me an email or leave a note on my blog – I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with!
Good luck,
Lauchlan Mackinnon