What is innovation management?
Innovation
management is a strategic business approach that includes the capture,
planning, organization, promotion, and control of innovative ideas.
Innovation depends heavily on an influx of positive, new ideas. But
creativity is only the first step. Effective innovation management
relies on established processes to ensure that ideas have the best
possible chance of becoming successful innovations.
Although different organizations may take slightly different approaches, the standard innovation management process follows this basic structure:
Submit
As previously mentioned, creativity is the first step of innovation management. But once an idea exists, it needs to be accounted for and placed on the journey toward successful innovation. Working within an innovation management tool, the idea’s originator submits the idea, creating a digital record that will be used to evaluate and manage the idea through the entire process.
Store
Once submitted, the idea is then stored within the system where authorized users can easily access it, retrieve it, and collaborate over it. Proper idea storage is essential to innovation management, providing a single, centralized location where new ideas can be vetted and pursued.
Organize
Having a central location to share and manage ideas is a good start, but once ideas are stored, they need to be correctly organized into relevant categories. Categorizing ideas helps ensure that possible innovations are being reviewed by the right stakeholders.
Collaborate
With the ideas organized into relevant categories, they can now be reviewed and discussed. Top innovation management tools include reliable collaboration options, in which submitters and stakeholders can ask questions, provide feedback, make suggestions, and even cast votes for the ideas they would most like to see move forward.
Manage and evaluate
The collaboration step helps weed out high-risk/low-reward ideas and gives everyone involved a chance to refine top suggestions into something workable. With the ideas clarified and distilled, stakeholders can perform a final evaluation before pushing toward development, and idea managers can make the final decisions on whether to approve or reject specific ideas. Approved ideas are attached to tasks, and the innovation management tool can continue to track the idea through the different development stages, providing status updates across the entire lifecycle.