In order for a business to be successful, and particularly in today’s competitive, globalized economy, they must be innovative. All businesses should invest in innovation management software if they want to not just be successful, but actually manage to survive. They must have management techniques in place to ensure creativity and innovation is possible across the board.
What Is Innovation Management Software?
There is a common misconception that innovation means new products. This isn’t true at all. In fact, it is about making small changes to the various parts of the business, including its existing operations and products. It is about small little changes, in which everybody participates. This includes the Research & Development department and managers, but also every employee. This then needs to be captured in innovation management software, which can then sift through the various responses and determine what is and isn’t a valid idea.
McKinsey and the Boston Consulting group has conducted a study that demonstrated 70% of managers believe innovation to be one of the three most important strategic priorities for their business. Innovation management is about creating a system in which good ideas can actually take shape. The vast majority of organizations have started to use some of the basic innovation techniques, following a step by step approach:
- All employees are encouraged to contribute towards ideas.
- Ideas should be targeted towards something specific like services, organizational structure, markets, or products.
- The ideas that are received should be evaluated to determine whether they can bring a financial return if implemented.
- Ideas that pass the criteria at step 3 then have to be developed and tested.
- If the tests are successful, the idea is fully implemented.
With 70% of companies understanding that innovation is vital to remain in business in the competitive, globalized environment of today’s world, the reality is also that only very few businesses properly implement innovation management, and understand that every single idea is a valuable one. In many cases, ideas can be generated and they are often excellent ideas. However, top management then stops taking the initiative for turning an idea into a reality. This, as a result, means the ideas are worthless as well.
Almost exclusively, companies that are known all over the world are also companies that innovate properly, all the time. Take, for instance, 3M, a global IT giant. The world respects 3M for their IT products, which are all nothing short of innovative. There is a simple reason for this: the organizational culture at 3M encourages all employees to ensure at least 15% of their working time is dedicated to creating new techniques and ideas. All companies can learn from this approach, not in the least because it is proven to be successful. Luckily, it seems that many businesses are indeed paying heed to this, and have started to create a company culture that is inclusive, in which employees are engaged and encouraged to share their thoughts.
