In order to innovate successfully in the coming year and beyond, we’ve seen that good innovation leadership, clear goals and putting people first are just some of the essential elements that innovation managers should have under their belts. The fourth element is this: the creation of a strong ideation factory.

In an era of technological advancement and digital transformation, corporations are recognising that one of their biggest strengths is their workforce. In fact, in 2018, CEOs ranked culture as the most important strategy to improve innovation performance, and the trend is growing.

The strongest ideas can come from anyone and anywhere. The more diverse and inclusive your company culture, the more fuel you will have for your creative process. You should also incorporate methodologies such as gamification to ensure continued engagement and enthusiasm to achieve the goals of your company, in a collaborative way.

For this, there must be open channels for the best ideas to find their way to you. Create dedicated spaces for protected and exploratory innovation to capture your people’s best ideas and insights on an ongoing basis.

You need to equip yourself with the right tools to achieve this, and there are several devices that can help you in this process. From basic research to collaborative innovation initiatives, through to open innovation, these tools support business innovation depending on your specific goals.

Collaborative innovation as an ideation tool

A proven way to build an innovation culture is through collaborative innovation. By inviting people to take part in your innovation challenges, share ideas and improve the ideas of others, this approach has a strong impact in creating a cooperative community.

It also enables you to rally all your best minds to find answers and solutions that are relevant to your C-level and your key challenges. Collaborative innovation readapts mindsets and structures progressively and on a daily basis, helping your company evolve continuously as a living organism.

To get everyone involved in driving your innovation agenda successfully, an established collaborative innovation software enables your company to promote engagement and transparency, maximise the talent pool and find solutions faster with less costs.

However, not all ideation tools are made equal. Taking all this into consideration, you should look for solutions that allow you to:

• Achieve quantity without foregoing quality
• Encourage different types of participation
• Reward the best contributors
• Combine, improve and select ideas, even in large amounts, with smart crowd evaluation mechanisms
• Gather results and present them clearly throughout the initiative and at the end of the process.

If you’re still unsure whether you should invest in an innovation management software, answering these 3 questions might help.