The Rise Of Innovation Management Tools

Tying the fuzzy innovation concept to hard financials and key performance indicators (KPIs).

"One of the problems that has long bedeviled enterprise innovation is the lack of visibility into its effect. Everyone “feels” like innovation management should have an impact on the bottom line, but any attempts at quantifying concrete benefits dissolve into the ether, producing only frustration. At least, that was the case until recently. Sensing an opportunity, a vendor now provides mechanisms for connecting innovation management directly to HR (employee rewards), operations (KPIs), enterprise strategy (analytics), and finance (top- and bottom-line impact)."

"Idealink supports crisp ROI analysis and integration with HR and financial systems."

"BrainBank’s Idealink platform offers a variety of mechanisms for attaching hard numbers to innovation management, such as embedded costs and benefits calculators for evaluating a submitted idea, connectors to HR and payroll for innovator incentives, and analytics that track the operational impact of innovative projects."

"Idea Management vendors took an important step forward from pure-play knowledge management offerings – by surfacing and managing the best ideas stuck at the level of individual contributors, Innovation Management tool providers like BrainBank have added idea creation as an extension to existing idea discovery and idea management capabilities."

"Connections to social media add value to both users and managers."