Your ultimate innovation challenge – what works and what doesn’t

How much time do you spend thinking about your company’s problems? Probably too much, you would say. Yet, when it comes down to planning and developing your collaborative innovation initiatives, the way you identify, frame and share your organisation’s challenges with your targeted community is a key determinant of the success of your initiatives.

A strategy consistently used by leading companies for over a decade, collaborative innovation has proven to be more than a fad: it’s why these companies remain leaders despite disruptive and increasingly competitive business environments. Collaborative innovation has conquered management structures and innovation departments worldwide by its capacity to engage people and deliver results over time.

Idea management software has become a well-recognised and actionable tool for facilitating and enabling innovation initiatives. This software allows you to present your company’s most relevant challenges to communities and focus their cumulative expertise and know-how on solving problems by submitting, improving and evaluating ideas – individually and as a crowd.

The software works with you, whether you seek to improve performance, find new products and methods or develop a widespread, collaborative culture of innovation. But what are your most relevant challenges? Which themes are more common or more easily embraced by your employees? And what techniques can help you both choose and define your challenges?

At Exago, we’ve decided to revisit our clients’ challenges over past years, to understand what has and hasn’t worked in the field in different realities, as well as collecting wisdom from this experience. In the first chapter, we analyse these data and identify some trends and best practices. Based on these findings, we next share samples of our new Idea System Launch, a step-by-step procedure to help you set up your challenges and enhance overall initiative effectiveness.

Read more:
Lessons learnt on 164 real innovation management challenges
Which innovation challenges are more easily implemented?
There is a clear winner theme in ideas’ implementation
Six common mistakes and one advice for innovation challenges
A step-by-step guide to defining your innovation challenges
First, ask what your innovation purpose is
How to pick useful and feasible ‘fights’ for innovation challenges
How to mobilise the right audiences for innovation challenges
Are you building your innovation challenges right?
Set the timing right for your innovation challenges
Five key dimensions for building your innovation challenges

Diana Neves de Carvalho, Exago’s CEO/ dnc@exago.com
Francisco Bernardes, Exago’s head of Innovation Services/ fmb@exago.com