Top 10 Innovation Management Solutions

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From idea collection to implementation, Ideawake provides an end-to-end innovation management solution to transform employees into innovators and ideas into financial impact.

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How Ideawake Compares with Other Alternatives

At Ideawake, we understand the impact that investing in the right ideas have on a company’s repeatable growth. That’s why we created a platform that gathers a complete set of features to tap into the knowledge of your employees.

Different from other innovation management solutions in the market, Ideawake supplies innovation leaders with proven processes, innovation best practices, and successful case studies. This helps you to make the best use of the platform and achieve your business goals faster.

Instead of providing you with just a tool to collect ideas, Ideawake provides you with all the resources you need to transform ideas into measurable growth. As a result, Ideawake’s average customer sees over $1,000,000 in financial impact in the first 6 months of using the software.

But if you still want to check other software alternatives to make a more educated decision, check below a list of the best alternatives for different needs:

Top 10 Innovation Management Solutions

1

Ideawake

Ideawake is the leading innovation management solution in the market. We help some of the best companies in the world, including HP and US Bank, to increase their bottom line through the power of effective innovation.

With Ideawake, when employees identify an opportunity to innovate, they can use the platform to post a challenge and invite co-workers to collaborate. These co-workers receive an email notification, and can instantly add insights, provide feedback to posted solutions, rank entries, and chat with other employees in real-time.

Both the idea development process and the user interface are intuitive, which results in large adoption and engagement rates. Ideawake also offers user support through video chat, webinars, and even in person when necessary.

Besides all the idea management features such as crowdsourcing, analytics, gamification, and real-time chat, Idewake also offers corporate accelerator programs. These are 4-to-12-week programs that take selected ideas through an immersion accelerator that guides teams through validation, prototyping, and piloting.

The platform also has single sign-on capabilities for SAML based Active Directory to provide additional security to your company’s data.

If you are looking for a top-notch innovation management solution that addresses your needs from end-to-end, try Ideawake and get ready to watch your team become a team of world-class innovators.

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2

Rever

This next solution is designed specifically for assembly and industrial manufacturing companies. Rever is for businesses that want to involve frontline workers, such as building construction staff, in the continuous improvement of operational processes.

Rever allows frontline employees — the ones who know the challenges better — to use their mobile devices to take pictures of issues and upload them in the system. They can tag managers and other team members, who can collaborate with ideas.

Besides file uploading and real-time chat, Rever offers convenient features such as idea ranking, status tracking, analytics, and workflow management. This software is an excellent resource for industrial companies looking to increase frontline employees’ engagement, boost productivity, and even increase job safety.

Rever is the go-to option for industrial companies looking to boost operational performance by activating the untapped potential of frontline employees.

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3

InnoCentive

InnoCentive has a different approach to idea development and management. Instead of facilitating innovation through internal collaboration, the platform connects organizations facing challenges with expert problem-solvers outside the company. InnoCentive can be considered an innovation marketplace.

To obtain innovation insights, users submit problems that they need help with. Then, InnoCentive team decompose the problem and transform it into an actionable challenge for the expert problem-solvers to work on. The solvers’ network is composed of more than 400,000 creative experts that come from a variety of backgrounds.

Once a few solvers give their ideas on how to address a challenge, users can evaluate them and choose a favorite approach. Every challenge can be posted anonymously, so you don’t have to worry about disclosure.

The software also offers resources for you to post a challenge internally, for your own employees to share their ideas. If you are looking to broaden your company’s creative horizons, you should try InnoCentive to get insights from a network of experts.

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4

Hype Innovation

HYPE Innovation is another idea management software designed to help companies gather, develop, and implement innovations as a team. The cloud-based software provides users with a complete set of features that include discussion threads, idea ranking, voting features, project tracking features, key metrics, and participation reports.

HYPE Innovation allows users to customize the idea development steps for every campaign. Campaign owners can define teams, project duration, discussion methods, and implementation channels for each idea posted. In addition, users can use filters to limit participants’ selection by department, skills, or even geographic location.

The software also includes an idea evaluation tool to help managers prioritize ideas. However, this tool is only available for HYPE Enterprise clients.

If you are ready to make a large investment, HYPE Innovation might be a good option to streamline your innovation management needs.

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5

NanoNotion

The next software in the list, NanoNotion, has an old-style system but offers a good set of innovation management features. The platform is built on Microsoft Azure, which means that it works well with other Microsoft applications.

The ideation process starts when a user submits an idea, which the platform calls a “Notion”. A Notion can contain supporting materials, including content from SharePoint, One Drive, or URL.

As other employees come across a Notion and interact with it, the idea owner receives recognition points. The ideas with higher engagement, get more visibility from upper-level management and get a better chance to be implemented.

NanoNotion’s features include knowledge bookmarking, statistics availability, selectable metrics, commenting, archiving, tagging, voting, and advanced searching. However, most of these features are available only through the Enterprise add-on.

If you are looking for an innovation management software that plays well with Microsoft applications, and you don’t bother with an old-style interface, you should try NanoNotion.

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6

Crowdicity

Owned by Medallia, Crowdicity is a well-established innovation management software.

With a complete set of features, that include live chat, idea sharing, file uploads, configurable polls, and content filters, the platform is available in both English and German. However, Crowdicity lacks some quantitative tools that are offered by other alternatives.

Crowdicity allows employees to submit ideas and assign team members to collaborate. Then, team members can vote on their favorite solutions, which pushes the best ones to the top.

Even though Crowdicity has a robust user interface, planning the innovation workflow might be a challenge for new innovators. That’s because the software does not provide users with insights on idea management best practices and processes.

So, if your team has significant innovation management experience, Crowdicity is an excellent option for you.

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7

QMarkets

The next innovation management software on the list, Qmarkets, offers excellent resources for both internal and external crowdsourcing, depending on the plan you choose.

With a highly customizable platform, Qmarkets allows users to configure an innovation process funnel from scratch. This is an excellent resource for savvy and experienced innovators, but it might represent an extra obstacle for beginners.

Just like the other tools, Qmarkets allows users to vote on their favorite ideas, creating a prioritization ranking for implementation. This creates a graphical view of idea campaigns and idea funnels, which makes it effortless to track progress.

The company is known for offering exceptional customer service in all the countries that they operate. This can be a huge plus for companies outside the USA since not many vendors offer high-quality customer support worldwide.

If you decide to try Qmarkets, you will be well-served with an effective way to capture ideas across all company departments and locations.

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8

Codigital

Codigital is a great alternative for small-to-medium sized businesses. One cool thing about Codigital is that besides streamlining companies’ idea development, the software also offers resources to facilitate the engagement of a large audience during conferences, seminars, or workshops. But of course, that depends on the plan you choose.

This platform’s approach to innovation management is all about getting the input of various employees regarding the solution to one specific challenge, and with that, shape the ideas until there is a consensus.

To start an innovation process, a team member asks a question, such as “How would you improve our website?”, and other team members start giving their contributions.

The structure of this software makes it a suitable tool to conduct market research as well, which can be a notable plus for some companies.

Codigital works best for companies that want to address pre-determined challenges. It is also a nice addition to growth teams.

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9

Confluence

This next software, Confluence, is Atlassian’s knowledge management solution. Confluence works well with all other Atlassian products, including JIRA. So, if you already use them, this will significantly facilitate implementation.

This platform is ideal for companies looking to streamline innovation through effective project management.

Confluence is an open workspace that allows employees to create dedicated idea rooms and invite team members to collaborate. Users can create and share ideas through meeting notes, product requirements, and research reports. And other employees can review and give feedback directly on documents.

Confluence has many features that cover not only innovation management, but also document management, product management processes, and even content management.

So, if you think your team will benefit from all these functionalities, that’s a great alternative for you. But if your team does not need access to these other resources, they might just make operations confusing.

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10

Miro

The last solution on the list has a different approach to idea management. Miro features a digital whiteboard that enables distributed teams to effectively brainstorm and plan projects together.

The solution enables users to write down ideas, leave feedback on other team members’ inputs, and even add supporting content to the board, such as spreadsheets and interactive prototypes.

Users can create a board from scratch or choose one of the pre-loaded templates that they offer. The platform also comes with an integrated library of wireframes, icons, and other content to help employees on the idea development.

This software is a great alternative for product management teams since the whiteboard can also be used to build story maps, customer journeys, and product roadmaps. It is also an interesting option to facilitate remote teams during ideation processes.

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What to Consider When Choosing an Innovation Management Solution

Investing in a decentralized innovation framework is key to any company wanting to thrive in the increasingly integrated world. There are innovation opportunities everywhere, but you need your people to work together if you want to come up with the best solutions.

Without structured innovation processes, ideas don’t get prioritized, and they end up dying on your employee’s minds. And within these ideas could be the one that is missing to propel your organization to the next level.

With that, taking advantage of an innovation management solution is a no-brainer. But which alternative to choose? Well, there are a few factors you need to consider when choosing the ideal software for your company:

  • Your company’s specific innovation requirements

  • The number of employees that you want to participate in innovation processes

  • What features and functionalities you need

  • How much effort you want to put on the ideation administration

  • The timeframe in which you want the software to be set up and working

  • Value-added services you want for more convenience

  • Your budget for this investment

Ideawake supports the needs of every business looking to streamline innovation management.

You just need a few clicks to start tapping into the wisdom of your workforce and drive better business results.