Idea management for organisational Innovation

Abstract

Modern organisations are under ever increasing competitive pressure to maintain market share, enhance product range, improve efficiency and reduce cost. The process by which organisations attain these improvements is through innovation. Over recent years, significant research has focused on the issue of managing the process of developing ideas to eventual organisational innovations. However, the process by which these ideas\solutions are generated and effectively managed is one, which currently operates in an 'ad hoc' fashion.

This paper strives to address this and propose a structured approach to managing idea generation. In order to achieve this, a literary survey of both Innovation and Creativity is undertaken to determine their inter-relationships and core traits. Following this, a methodology is presented to facilitate the organisational management of the Idea Generation process. An integrated software tool to support the Idea Generation process is also introduced. The purpose of this tool is to provide an infrastructure for the effective management of the creation of ideas\problem solutions and their transfer to the Innovation Funnel.