What is Idea Management?

The rapid rise of new technologies and market disruption on the corporate landscape means idea management is more crucial today than ever before. To remain competitive – and capture groundbreaking insights – companies must give employees an engaging, streamlined, and collaborative means to contribute their ideas.

Defining Idea Management

Idea management is the process of finding, developing, and implementing the ideas that can deliver value for an enterprise. It involves setting clear parameters for idea submissions, identifying the target audiences best positioned to contribute ideas (employees, customers, experts, etc), and facilitating communication between stakeholders and idea managers.

The History of Idea Management

If you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you’re going. This interactive timeline can help you map the future of your idea management efforts by helping you understand the past…

and so, the journey begins...

1770s

Origins of the Suggestion Box

1770s

Origins of the Suggestion Box

The humble suggestion box can be traced back to the 1770s in Britain, when the Royal Navy introduced a suggestion box to enable sailors to submit often controversial suggestions – without fearing reprisals from their superior officers.

1908

Shoichi Saito

1908

Shoichi Saito

The Toyota employee (and later 3rd chairman) whose revolutionary suggestion methodology developed in the 1960s helped lay the foundations for the ‘Kaizen’ system - used in thousands of offices today.

1940s - 1980s

Development of the Kaizen System

1940s - 1980s

Development of the Kaizen System

American manufacturing experts from a variety of sectors are tasked with assisting the Japanese with their rebuilding efforts. Their quality management strategies were adopted and combined with the adaptive, tenacious, and waste-reducing qualities of local businesses to produce the ‘Kaizen’ system – (translating to “change for the better”).

1949

Ray Dalio

1949

Ray Dalio

A billionaire investor and hedge fund manager who refined the notion of ‘idea meritocracy’ – an evaluation approach that emphasizes that the best ideas should always be actualized, regardless of the person who developed them. Dalio's popular ideation and management strategies are explored in his acclaimed book Principles for Success.

1970s

The Colruyt 'Green Telephone' System

1970s

The Colruyt 'Green Telephone' System

Multinational Belgian retail conglomerate 'Colruyt' implements green telephones in their stores. Employees could use these phones to share their ideas directly with management. From there, an idea would be passed on to the relevant decision makers and evaluated for implementation. The 'green phone' system is an interesting analogue precursor to the modern online idea management platform.

“An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.”

Arnold H. Glasgow

1980

Scott Belsky

1980

Scott Belsky

Acclaimed American entrepreneur Scott Belsky is the author of the seminal work Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality. Belsky has undertaken pioneering research in the areas of idea life cycle analysis and idea implementation.

1990s

The Rise of the Internet & Productivity Software

1990s

The Rise of the Internet & Productivity Software

During the 1990s, the meteoric rise of the internet enabled the ‘kaizen’ method of idea management to take place on a much larger scale. The advent of email meant that ideas could be sent anonymously with unprecedented speed. New productivity software and databases - such as ODBC, Microsoft Excel, Lotus, and Access - meant that ideas could be efficiently compiled and modified.

1997

The Formalization of Empathic Design

1997

The Formalization of Empathic Design

D. Leonard. and J.F Rayport codify the 5 stages for empathic design - a customer-centric form of ideation that aims to implement a user's feelings toward a product in the design process. These stages include Observation, Capturing Data, Reflection and Analysis, Brainstorming, and Developing prototypes. These stages would go on to inform the best-practice setup of online idea management platforms.

2000s

The Emergence of Online Idea Management Platforms

2000s

The Emergence of Online Idea Management Platforms

The increasingly disruptive nature of the digital corporate landscape meant that innovation took on a whole new dimension of importance. Companies began searching for more sophisticated collective intelligence solutions to crowdsource and refine ideas. This demand has led to the development of more sophisticated online idea management tools– enabling managers to set the focus for idea campaigns, open them up for submissions, and allow participants to comment and upvote ideas submitted by peers.

Modern Idea
Management

Now you’re ready to carve out your own place in the history of idea management!

Idea Management Methodologies

There are a variety of effective ways enterprise companies can harness the power of idea management to drive growth through innovation. Our sophisticated idea management software will be able to accommodate each of the following methodologies:

Kaizen

A Japanese term meaning “change for the better”, Kaizen is a continuous improvement strategy. It entails employees at all levels of a company combining their skills to bring about incremental improvements. Kaizen serves as an effective method for establishing a culture where ideation is encouraged and silos are broken down.

New Product Development

Ideating around new materials and components that can aid new product development and improve the design of existing products can result in both disruptive and incremental innovation. This approach can mean that existing customer demand is continuously met and market growth becomes attainable via new product development.

Organizational Innovation

Cultivate a culture of innovation and increase its ROI by overhauling structural and process obstacles that hinder change. Empower employees to share new ways of managing, empowering, and motivating the workforce to encourage innovation on every level.

Other idea management methodologies include:

Competitive Ideation
An incentivization approach in which senior executives offer rewards for ideas that enable the company to achieve substantial ROI. These rewards could take the form of a gift, a cash prize, or even the chance to earn a percentage of the ROI the new idea achieves.

Empathy Mapping
A key component of the design-thinking process, empathy mapping involves encouraging customers to submit their experiences relating to the company's products or services. The key 'pain or gain' points expressed by customers and customer-facing staff can generate a map of where innovation efforts need to be focused.

Crowdsourcing
The crowdsourcing approach involves targeting select internal or external audiences for innovation projects, incentivising them to contribute ideas, and leveraging their input to achieve business objectives. Approaches for crowdsourcing idea projects can entail using questionnaires, promotions, or even competitions to encourage contributions.

Idea Management Software to Achieve Your Strategic Business Goals

Employee Suggestion Box

Streamline idea management by implementing an online suggestion box, allowing employees to contribute concepts for new products, services, or process improvements.

Discover: Q-ideate

Using Idea Management for Continuous Improvement

Generate ongoing accumulative benefit for your organization by embedding idea management into your company culture through a digital employee ecosystem.

Discover: Q-optimize

Innovation Management

Discover new ideas for disruptive innovation, market opportunities, and technologies, which can facilitate change management at your company.

Discover: Q-ideate

IDEATE

Leading Global Enterprises Innovate with Qmarkets!

Your Q-360 Suite of Collective Intelligence Solutions

Discover Qmarkets’ next-gen product portfolio, tailored to meet any business need or challenge.

Learn More

For companies that need even more control and flexibility, our max edition can be adjusted extensively to your internal needs, including custom integrations & more.

Learn More