The management of ideas is a continuous activity: an important component of hackathons, product development and other creative enterprises. Ideas consistently flow and must be categorised, stored and managed appropriately to avoid their loss, and enhance their potential to mature into deliverables.
What is Idea Management Software?
Idea management software will help your team in all steps of ideating, in evaluating ideas, collaboration and motivation, defining to-do’s, reducing time for managing ideas, while saving you up to 80% of time usually spent on the idea management process, according to recent research made by our company.
Key functions of Idea Management Software
- Ideate. Generate and capture ideas from various sources.
- Prioritize. Rank ideas based on their potential impact and feasibility.
- Collaborate. Work together with team members, partners, and customers.
- Set up tasks. Convert ideas into actionable tasks.
- Reduce time. Streamline the ideation process to save time and resources.
Importance of Idea Management Software
Idea management software is crucial for making ideation accessible and structured. In addition, idea management software is a critical component of a successful digital transformation within a company. By integrating digital tools and processes, companies can streamline innovation, enhance efficiency, and maintain a competitive edge in their industry.
A powerful idea management software will inevitably offer a number of features that will facilitate a smooth and productive brainstorming process. They are the following:
Ideation tools.
Online brainstorming tools enhance collective ideation sessions by helping team members generate and organise ideas together.
Group feature.
That’s why we created the group feature. Now, it’s much easier to group ideas together on a board so they align. AI can also help you label and better organise your ideas from your brainstorming sessions to clarify its meaning.
Smart prioritization.
Prioritization algorithm used to identify ideas’ balance of effort and impact. By prioritising what your team may find most valuable, you can focus on the most important ideas first.
Priority quadrant.
Brainstorm ideas to prioritise and make them visual using a priority quadrant in order to see which things you should tackle first.
Access control.
Allow external guests to work with your teams on the same board enabling better teamwork through project access control control.
Documentation.
Attach additional documentation to specific ideas, providing context and supporting information.
Depending on the specifics of your chosen product, optimal results can depend on whether you have an extensive list of criteria for making your ultimate choice on your software for ideas. For example:
Intuitive. The software needs an interface that anyone on the team can get to grips with.
Customization. Look for software that you can configure to customize workflows, forms and dashboards.
Integration. Make sure it integrates with your existing tools (project, communication, Jira and so on) for seamless usage.
Scalability. Select a solution that can be scaled as your organisation needs to add more users and more complex processes.
Security. Ensure the software has robust security measures to protect your ideas and data.
Support and Training. Find a provider that provides substantial support and training so that you can get the most out of the software.
Price. Consider cost compared with your budget and the features on offer.
Implementing idea management software offers numerous benefits.
Enhanced productivity.
You can streamline the brainstorming and ideation process, allowing teams to focus on execution.
Better organization.
Keep ideas structured and accessible, preventing valuable concepts from getting lost.
Efficient prioritization.
More people-hours put on the ideas that would actually do good.
Improved collaboration.
Facilitate seamless collaboration between team members and external partners.
Efficient execution.
Convert ideas into actionable tasks, ensuring they are implemented effectively.
Higher engagement.
More active engagement from all those entrusted with responsibility for higher education will ultimately promote a more open and creative campus.
Accelerated innovation.
Promotion of a culture of continuous innovation and improvement in your company.
This technique was once used daily to develop innovative schools that served the needs of students at the beginning of the school year. But now, it’s most helpful for organisations on the verge of rapid change. You’ll find it useful whether you’re adapting to a rapidly shifting world (as schools have been for the past three decades), settling into business as usual (after changing your profit model, for example), or launching a ‘moonshot’ to seize new opportunities and be competitive.
The role of idea management in brainstorm sessions.
Idea management is a process that takes a lot of resources, especially during the stage of brainstorming in which many members of a team work together to provide as many ideas as possible. Idea management software helps bring structure to the stage of ideation, so that you are always clear on which direction the ideas are headed towards.
Indeed, large teams can produce a plethora of ideas all at once, sometimes making the brainstorming session unproductive or lose focus. However, with the support of idea management software, ideas can be captured in the right order. It will be easier to review the data recorded, prioritise these ideas and then select the best one for further actions. If the software enables idea grouping and categorisation, the brainstorming session will be focused and productive.
How Idea Management Software helps with prioritization?
One of the main benefits of idea management software is that it can help with prioritisation. Brainstorming often generates many ideas, but not all of them are equally important or feasible. Idea management software can help to evaluate and rank ideas against criteria such as impact, feasibility and alignment with organizational goals.
Prioritisation algorithms and visual tools such as priority quadrants help teams determine which ideas and features should be turned into actionable plans first. This way team resources are put to their most productive use, and ideas that can get up and running have a chance to do so.
Priority Quadrant and Achieved Impact Feature
One useful feature of ideation software is the prioritisation quadrant, which lets teams visualise what ideas they should work on first, based on both impact and effort.
Furthermore, by using the feature to track the real-world results of ideas that you’ve put into action – what we term the achieved impact – it is possible upon conclusion of the ideation period to gauge success and extract new inputs for your next ideation.
Application of Idea Management Software
Real-world use cases based on the Impactor App.
Ideation for product development.
An idea management software helps a tech company to gather feedback from customers works by having users submit ideas and then vote on them. In this way, it can find out which features the next product update should have.
Private ideation and internal innovation.
An NGO uses idea management software to collect ideas from volunteers and staff in the organisation. The NGO can prioritise the collection of ideas to build programs that can help the community in a more effective way.
Conclusion
Add idea management software to your organization and you’ll see your ideation and innovation efforts much more effectively. If you want to run ideas programmes with the public (customers), or privately (employees and internal groups), the right software will help you capture ideas, prioritize them, and turn them into actions.
By using the correct tools, you will improve workflow, encourage collaboration and foster broader impact.
