Community Forum – What tools do you use for innovation programs?

The innovation management tools market offers technologies that help organizations streamline operations for their innovation programs.  Most products offer similar core capabilities around ideation, collaboration, stage-gate workflows and reporting.  An IRI member is conducting market research around tools in this space and would like to know if IRI members are using COTS (commercially available off-the-shelf) products to capture the front end of innovation and your perception on the performance of the tools

2. If COTS product, what is the vendor name/platform?  Also, would you recommend this product to others?  

• Sopheon Accolade (Two responses: Yes; Yes It is flexible and provides a visual framework for the processes my company has in place.)
• Bright Ideas (Yes, depending on circumstances. The product is modular with a lot of capabilities, but it is also expensive depending on which/how many modules are used. The cost might be hard to justify for smaller companies.)
• Smartsheets for some, and inhouse for general innovation idea submissions. (interfaces nicely with BI tools)
• Value Innovations, Inc – Value Innovation Process and enabling tools (Yes, it has been used in several Fortune 500 and mid-size  companies and start-ups.)
• AHA (Maybe – very simple. Doesn’t really do full innovation management but it is what we have right now)
• Current product was developed in house, however we did use a COTS provided by SmartOrg. (I would recommend that companies have a portfolio view of their innovation program so they can conduct regular portfolio analysis)
• PowerBi and other inhouse items to support stage gate. (Gives a good view of where resources are spent.)
• Microsoft Teams (Two responses: Yes; Yes, only because it doesn’t involve an incremental cost.)
• Hype Enterprise (Yes. It is actively developed further, and we have a very close relationship with the vendor. Great user community.)
• Computer Associates – Clarity.  Though our version is highly modified for us (It is pretty good.  Not great, but we don’t see that there is any product out there.)
• SalesForce (No, not user friendly and very basic for innovation pipeline management.)
• SharePoint (No, we use because it’s standardized within our company, not because it’s the right tool.)

6. What future feature categories are you considering?

• Full integration with our databases containing critical information necessary to visualize the portfolios.
• 1.  Identifying transformation (disruption) axes bringing changes to all major industries and markets 2.  Using Text Mining to capture relevant data/information in real time (Collaboration with Text Mining Solutions in the UK)
• Incubation Management, Document Storage for legacy, financial modeling for impact
• Automated data scraping
• Ability to size Front End Innovation projects
• Looking at AI in pilot studies
• Crma
• Additional content. ML/AI. Recommendation engine. Integrations
• We are currently looking to get some automated charting capabilities to help with project portfolio reviews.