Innovation Management Software Categories

What is the process behind the development of innovation management software? Each innovation management software company has a slightly different approach, incorporating and interpreting a basic list of categories. These categories are: idea management, innovation life-cycle management, product development management, environmental innovation management, and “outside-the-box” innovation management. In subsequent articles, we will explore each of these categories in greater depth; this article will provide a basic overview of each category.

Idea management is essentially how incoming data, whether from customers, employees, or other sources, is organized into a comprehensible form. Visualize a massive corkboard covered with post-it notes. Idea management automatically sorts through all of these post-it notes, gathering up all the related notes, and discarding those that have absolutely no relevance to the topic at hand.

Innovation life-cycle management software allows companies to create a more predictable process of innovation. With clearly defined stages of thought and action, innovation takes place on a kind of schedule. Because innovation can be abstract, these stages can be thought of as a linear process, from the initial concept to the final form.

Product development management software is similar to the life-cycle management category, although it concentrates on delivering an actual tangible product at the end of the process, as opposed to a fully refined concept.

Environmental innovation management software is not necessarily focused on so-called ‘green’ initiatives, but rather places its focus on the surrounding commercial and intellectual environment. Essentially, environmental innovation management checks up on a company’s competitors to make sure that the ideas being generated are unique to that company, and have not already been developed by another firm.

“Outside-the-box” innovation management software is designed specifically to engender creative thought. The very name of the software is indicative of its relative rarity and corresponding complexity. Generating inspiration among a group of people requires not only understanding the industry in which those individuals are engaged, but the particular ways in which the individuals respond to stimuli.

Tomorrow, we’ll be speaking to Janelle from software company BrightIdea and asking her how these categories affect the way the company designs their software.