The Innovation Process

Getting the most out of Idea Spotlight

Idea Spotlight provides businesses with idea software and innovation management tools to better access and manage the innovation within their business. This web-based solution is accessible by everyone within a community and provides the social and collaboration tools to ensure that all ideas are given a voice. The goal is to help foster a culture of open innovation, with all community members encouraged to contribute: where feedback is open and honest, good ideas are nurtured and talent recognised.

However, our innovation software is only as good as your business processes and engagement with the tool. We want you to succeed, here’s how…

Scoping Requirements

This initial phase should be used to define what the business wants to achieve by using Idea Spotlight and to establish what needs to be done to make this happen. Ask questions such as: Who should be involved? Should there be a phased deployment of the system? Are there any technological considerations?

Download our Useful Resources Guide

Insight

This is the next phase of scoping and should be the first stage of engagement with key individuals. Now is a good time to start defining user groups, gathering use cases and outlining challenges.

Read our Five Essentials When Implementing an Idea Management System

Idea capture and filtering

In this phase you will start crowd-sourcing ideas, encouraging employee engagement with Idea Spotlight and then begin to filter the ideas that are coming through the system. As a business you need to decide how to manage this idea process – by setting gate processes and limits, when to involve decision-makers and moderators and managing feedback.

Download our guide Getting started: The First 90 Days of Idea Management
Read our guide to Writing a Great Idea Brief

Make happen

Start selecting winning ideas and tracking their progress. Decision-makers should be signing-off ideas and the decisions should be fed back to the crowd and assigned appropriate owners. Create an integrated implementation process that incorporates realistic timelines and goals.

Read our guide to Giving Meaningful Feedback

Analyse ideas

Use the data and metrics tools to analyse the ideas that are coming through Idea Spotlight. Find out which topics generate the most ideas, who your key contributors are, at which stage ideas spend most of their time and start tracking ROI. Don’t forget to recognise and reward your key innovators and contributors!