The 9 Essentials of the Best Innovation Management Software 

The ability to bring new products or services to market and improve cost efficiency is a decisive business factor. Entering markets early and using new technologies at the right time can lead to greater profits in the future. This approach also supports long-term success. 

The best innovation management software supports these business-critical activities with ease and automatically. As CRM software supports marketing and sales, an Innovation OS accompanies strategy, innovation, product development, and operation teams. This article explains the essentials and application areas that characterize the best innovation management software.

Definition: What is innovation management software

Innovation management software, or Innovation Operating System (Innovation OS), helps businesses manage their innovation process effectively. It allows firms to optimize their innovation tasks and enhance their overall productivity. An Innovation OS helps organizations manage and monitor their innovation projects, from the initial ideas to their implementation. Additionally, it offers a platform for every team involved in innovation efforts to collaborate and communicate effectively. 

Innovation refers to the creation of something new or improving an existing product, service, process, or business model. Innovation is more than just making new things. It involves turning ideas into action to benefit customers, businesses, and society. This means creating value for these groups.

This new approach will make more money, save money, hurt competitors, and make a company better overall. Innovation management is the systematic approach to increase the chances of success for a business.

Innovation Management is how a company organizes its efforts to innovate. This includes finding market opportunities, generating ideas, implementing new solutions, and managing resources effectively. It includes managing innovation processes to make sure they match the company's goals and budget. It involves planning, organizing, controlling, and overseeing innovation efforts to align with strategies. 

For long, PowerPoint presentations, physical idea boxes, and Excel sheets have been the tools to manage innovation processes. New business software tools, called innovation management software, emerged because those existing tools lacked collaboration, structure, and topicality.

The best innovation management tool covers all aspects of innovation management - not only specific parts of it.

The best innovation management tools digitalize the entire corporate innovation process. This includes market opportunity identification, idea generation, until the successful implementation of new solutions, and resource management.

The best innovation management software eases the planning, organizing, controlling, and overseeing of the innovation processes. This ensures that all innovation efforts align with the company’s goals and best utilize the budget granted.

Plus, superior innovation software provides individual workspaces to different teams where they can grant specific view and editing permissions. This should also allow the teams to use their words, processes, and individual structure.

At the same time, such innovation software can aggregate information. This aggregation of information between teams will provide you with the full picture of all ongoing innovation activities. This benefits any company - be it a large organization or a start-up.

Benefits: Why your organization needs innovation management software

Digital innovation tools enhance traditional PowerPoint presentations and Excel spreadsheets. They also aim to solve problems with generic software and disorganized whiteboard notes.

Each tool has its advantages. However, their cons can make it difficult to manage innovation processes effectively. It can also hinder collaboration and the ability to provide necessary information when needed.

In contrast, the best innovation software unites the specific advantages. On top, they add specific features that spur creativity, scout external developments, or provide a fun-to-use experience. As a consequence, the best innovation software offers significant benefits:

• Provides structure like an Excel Spreadsheet but with better collaboration and audit trails. Preventing version chaos. 
• Supports collaboration like a Whiteboard but with better structure and workflows. Preventing missing follow-ups.
• Provides condensed information like a PowerPoint Presentation but with more interaction to easily switch between the information needed. Enabling the necessary information breadth and depth on demand and as needed.
• Supports communication like messaging tools but is more targeted and easier to find later. Preventing double work and endless messaging without action.
• Provides insights like analyst reports or newsletters but customized to specific topics and in real-time.

At first, innovation management software is a structured database. Storing all relevant innovation intelligence in one place provides you with one single and comprehensive source of truth. Comprehensive innovation intelligence contains relevant competitor, start-up, technology, project, trend, or idea information.

Acting as a single source of truth for all employees and innovation teams, it prevents double work. It also eases the finding of relevant information and helps to identify patterns. In business terms, innovation management software decreases costs and increases cost efficiency.

Second, a digital innovation tool is a collaboration tool, bringing together the right people at the right time. Having the right expertise at hand at the right time might be the biggest challenge for successful innovation processes. A digital innovation tool provides the only access point to streamline knowledge and intelligence.

Having the intelligence centralized in one virtual space eases the sourcing of the right information and experts as needed. This expands to include experts with different backgrounds. Bringing product and market experts together ensures that ideas meet market demands, technical feasibility, and strategic fit. Innovation management software helps to escape from single-minded opinions to evident and traceable decisions.

Third, innovation software is a communication tool. As a communication tool, it allows to reach all employees. By that, the strategic direction and possibilities to bring in their best ideas will become clearer to them. To streamline activities, it is important to establish a common corporate sense and clarify the strategic objectives.

Innovation software helps with this because it explicates such directions and the corporate strategy via roadmaps. With aligned teams, organizations increase efficiency and leverage synergies best.

Fourth, the best innovation management software is a source of inspiration. Identifying the right opportunities and ideas with enough evidence is what distinguishes innovation leaders from laggards. In the past, people attributed this to the excellence and genius of individual members.

The best innovation management software shares this knowledge and makes it accessible to a wider workforce. Each employee will more easily build on the knowledge of others by sharing insights in one central tool.

Plus, the best innovation management software already leverages the potential provided by artificial intelligence. Automating the discovery of opportunities, technological developments, fitting start-ups, or trend peaks is now possible. Furthermore, artificial intelligence will become a viable assistant for refining ideas, building strong value propositions and business cases, or estimating ideas’ market potential. All these developments help companies identify new profit streams more easily and faster.

Fifth, the best digital innovation tool is a task and work management tool, ensuring that work gets done as planned. Only real artifacts - and not ideas - can become innovations. Thorough execution is therefore a critical capability of successful innovation processes. This includes managing resources optimally and managing projects as per their priority.

The best digital innovation tools use workflows to organize work across different team members efficiently. Once you complete a task, we will directly inform the next assignee to continue working. This improves productivity and clarity on tasks that require completion.

Sixth, an Innovation OS is a reporting tool. An Innovation OS helps control budgets, resources, and goals while managing ideas and strategic direction. It adds an overarching layer for better organization and decision-making.

To succeed in innovation, organizations must balance their innovation projects and make sure they align with their strategic goals. An ill portfolio can result in missing chances and significant deviations from the strategic roadmap and desired competitive positioning.

An Innovation OS gathers important information and lets you easily analyze and customize reports with a few clicks. This increases confidence and provides control at any time.

The 3 application pillars of innovation management software

Most simply, innovation success happens when a high market need meets the capability to address this need. As a result, stable and high revenues should exceed the costs.

Searching for such combinations is the biggest challenge. Every company searches for those combinations. As such, each company needs to determine precisely:

• in what markets to play,
• with what ideas to win,
• and how to execute them fast and efficiently.

The ITONICS Big Picture describes these three general pillars of a systematic innovation process. Companies need to know where to play, how to win, and what to execute. To be effective, the best innovation management software supports these three pillars equally well. Put differently, superior innovation software is a combination of market intelligence software, idea management software, and roadmap software. 

1 - Where to Play: Foresight, market intelligence, horizon and environment scanning, trend and technology scouting software

Where to play means determining the focus fields and market areas where a company sees the best chances of success. This step is about fully understanding the core, adjacent, and further away business opportunities.

Foresight, market intelligence, horizon scanning, environment scanning, trend scouting, technology scouting, or competitor monitoring are the names of this innovation activity. In sum, this innovation activity is about gaining the intelligence needed to craft a superior competitive positioning.

The best innovation management solutions support this with three critical features:

1. First, the best innovation management solutions serve as a structured database. It makes it easy to identify patterns, aggregate data, and know who has scouted what.
2. Second, the best innovation management solutions make it easy to present, discuss, and analyze the results. Radars have become the go-to tool for this. Technology, trend, and company radars can display a complex topic landscape easily. They further allow deep dives into details and show easily what is most important now and for the future.
3. Third, the best innovation management solutions support the actual scouting by leveraging artificial intelligence. This eases the time-consuming process of staying up-to-date with everything that is happening. It also eases the assessment of potential business implications.

The ITONICS Innovation OS supports all these three critical features of the best innovation management solutions. The ITONICS Innovation OS allows the creation of custom templates. Those templates capture all relevant information about, for instance, competitors, emerging technologies, trends, opportunities, or the like. The structured form will then allow one to easily search content, identify patterns, provide evaluations, and note business implications.

The ITONICS Innovation OS also provides you with the most modern and interactive innovation radar software. Radars take the information stored and use it to show a comparative view. The view allows to easily compare, for instance, different technologies, opportunities, trends, or competitors.

By this, you will get an easy understanding of what matters most along different categories. Radar owners can then share them easily with others. This way, they can easily inform external or internal stakeholders. Radar owners can easily embed them on web pages outside the software (cf. the example of the EliaGroup).

The ITONICS Innovation OS also automates the scouting. The Innovation OS cuts through the clutter of endless searches. It analyses millions of sources, including news, patents, and scientific publications. Once a significant change is detected, the system sends email notifications and informs about what is driving a change.

2 - How to Win: Idea collection, crowdsourcing, open innovation, start-up scouting software

Knowing 'How to Win' means discovering, analyzing, and deciding on the best ideas and execution strategies.

The best ideas need to fit your strategic priorities. They must have a chance to meet high market demands. You need to have the capabilities to create them. And, they need to promise significant returns exceeding the costs.

These ideas can come from employees, external partners, start-ups, an external crowd, or from external inspirations. The best corporate innovation software supports the systematic idea intake and processing from all these different channels. The best corporate innovation software allows you to create idea campaigns for employees. Yet, they also possess the option to collect ideas external portals.

By collecting a variety of ideas, the chances are highest that no breakthrough idea falls off the table. At the same time, an increasing amount of ideas collected increases the processing efforts.

That is why, the best innovation software has capabilities to streamline all ideas along a thorough workflow. This includes the discovery and bundling of similar ideas. It also includes an evident evaluation process. And, it includes capabilities to easily identify the most promising ideas.   

The ITONICS Innovation OS supports the intake from different channels. This reduces the effort of processing a significant amount of ideas. ITONIS allows you to craft targeted campaigns tailored to your strategic goals and individual processes.

You can personalize any campaign look and feel, information fields, workflows, ratings, and processes for consistent and tailored ideation. Engagement features, such as earning badges or climbing the leaderboards, motivate users additionally. The automatic generation of ideas can further enrich the idea collection. The unique ITONICS AI capabilities make this possible. 

It serves as a gateway for Bosch to receive perspectives from the outside. The ongoing initiative has yielded 1000+ submissions.

Going through all ideas collected, ITONICS identifies and eliminates redundancies for you. ITONICS also enables data-driven decisions and tracks ideation campaign success with dashboards. You can configure individual reports to gain an understanding of each campaign's health. These are then easily sharable with stakeholders to align everyone.

3 - What to Execute: Strategic planning, roadmap, innovation portfolio management software 

What to Execute means crafting a solid action plan. This action plan should show how innovation activities and resources aim to reach the company goals. Roadmaps and an innovation portfolio dashboard typically explicate this action plan.

This then offers the most comprehensive view of a company’s innovation activities. It also unites all teams of the company. This combination of activities across multiple teams ensures alignment and transparency. It allows for identifying blockers early on or making strategic adjustments as needed. 

ITONICS provides you with the leading roadmap software. With it, you can plan, map, and track all innovation activities and ensure all teams move in the right direction. ITONICS roadmap maps all your activities from a start date to a planned end date. Furthermore, you can build relations between the different activities to easily spot critical paths and dependencies. 

Different layers will organize the activities on a roadmap. This provides each team with a specific view of what matters to them and management a holistic view of all team activities. 

ITONICS also provides you with strong reporting capabilities to manage your innovation portfolio. With one comprehensive, interactive, and collaborative portfolio view, you can eliminate spreadsheet and document switching. The ability to use conditional formatting will help you to keep an eye on your budget spending. If it turns red, you will immediately know where you run out of budget. 

The 9 essentials of the best innovation management software

The best innovation management software needs to effectively support the tasks that innovation teams face along the innovation process. However, to fully meet corporate requirements, the best innovation management software also needs to meet nine essential criteria.

1. Ease of use

A great innovation management software should have an intuitive, easy-to-navigate interface. Users across the organization, regardless of their technical expertise, should be able to quickly learn and use the platform. This encourages widespread adoption and minimizes the learning curve.

ITONICS provides an easy-to-understand interface. This allows to add individual views with ease. It also provides every user with what he/she needs to see and access regularly.

2. Flexibility and configurability 

Every organization has unique needs, and the best innovation management software should be flexible enough to accommodate them. Look for software that allows customization of workflows, templates, and branding to align with your organization’s processes.

ITONICS offers a no-code solution to implement your process, vocabulary, and branding easily.

3. AI, automation, and workflows

The best innovation management software leverages AI, automation, and customizable workflows to enhance efficiency and decision-making. AI-driven insights help analyze and prioritize ideas, offering recommendations based on data and trends. Automation streamlines repetitive tasks, like idea routing and reminders, ensuring projects move forward without delays. Customizable workflows allow teams to tailor processes to their specific needs, keeping everyone aligned from ideation to implementation.

ITONICS offers AI capabilities for real-time environmental scanning, developing high-impact ideas with AI, and optimizing innovation portfolios. 

4. Collaboration and engagement tools

Innovation thrives on collaboration. Your software should include tools that encourage team collaboration and engagement. Typical features are comment sections, liking, rating, sharing, newsletters, notifications, or gamification features.

ITONICS offers a variety of user engagement features, motivating employees to participate in innovation activities and driving a prospering innovation culture.

5. Integration capabilities 

The best innovation management software should seamlessly integrate with your existing tools and systems. This can be project management software, CRM, and ERP systems. This ensures a smooth flow of information and reduces the need for manual data entry.

ITONICS offers these integration features by which you can easily connect with any of your tools.

6. Analytics and reporting

Data-driven decision-making is crucial in innovation management. Your software should offer advanced analytics and reporting capabilities. These capabilities allow you to track the performance of ideas, identify trends, and measure the ROI of innovation initiatives.

ITONICS offers custom reporting capabilities. You can also easily connect those with business intelligence tools, such as Tableau or PowerBI.

7. Team spaces and permission control  

Effective innovation requires collaboration, but also secure control over sensitive information. The best corporate innovation tools offer dedicated team spaces. The dedicated team spaces allow individual teams to work according to their custom processes.

At the same time, permission control features ensure that only authorized individuals can access specific projects or sensitive information. This safeguards intellectual property while promoting an open innovation culture.

ITONICS offers a sophisticated role and permission configuration system. It also provides you with the option to provide individual spaces to teams and communities.

8. Single source of truth

Particularly in large organizations, the IT and software tool landscape can be super complex. Having to manage multiple different tools often annoys employees. This can lead to frustration about where to enter and find what information.

The best corporate innovation tools are thus no single-sided solutions. The best corporate innovation tools are holistic systems that support all three application areas of successful innovation processes.

ITONICS offers specific features, helping you specifically with your foresight, ideation, and innovation portfolio management activities and integrates them into one single system.

9. Security and compliance 

Security is a top priority, especially when dealing with sensitive information. Ensure that the innovation management software you choose complies with industry standards and regulations. You should also make sue that it offers robust security features like encryption, data privacy, and user authentication.

ITONICS is one of the first innovation management software companies accredited with ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification. Our security team's goal is to ensure that our customers can innovate securely.

How to choose the right innovation management software

Selecting the right innovation software is a critical decision for any organization focused on fostering innovation. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to know where to begin.

The right software should align with your business goals. It should streamline your innovation processes. And, it should empower your teams to generate real business impact, e.g., saving costs or identifying new profit opportunities. 

1. Define your innovation goals

Before you begin evaluating software, it’s crucial to have a clear understanding of your specific innovation goals. Different companies may have varied objectives, such as enhancing internal idea generation, improving customer feedback integration, or fastening time-to-market for new products. Understanding your innovation needs will guide your software selection process. It ensures you choose a solution that aligns with your strategic objectives.

Reflect and assess how your organization currently manages innovation. Are you using manual processes, spreadsheets, or fragmented tools? Identifying problems in your current workflow will highlight the features you need in your innovation management software.

For example, if ideas often fall off the table, you will need a solution with robust idea management features. If there is a lack of visibility, you will need a tool for cross-team collaboration and permission control.

Key questions to ask:

• What are our primary challenges in the innovation process?
• What tools or processes are we currently using to manage innovation?
• What pain points are we experiencing with our current innovation workflow?
• What are our expected benefits of introducing innovation software?

2. Prioritize essential features

Once you have clarity, it is time to prioritize your ideal innovation management software's must-haves. We highlighted the nine essentials that the right innovation management software should have. We also highlighted the three application areas that the most advanced innovation solutions handle within one single system.

3. Search for representative software vendors and analyze the fit 

With clarified goals, expectations, and the essential features needed, create a long list of representative vendors. Compare the vendors for their ability to meet the nine essentials and your expectations. Based on an initial list, create a prioritized shortlist and reach out to the vendors for a demonstration. The best vendors offer free trials and support you with strong solution engineering.

4. Check your corporate purchasing requirements

Your innovation management software should not exist in isolation. Make sure to check internally and early what your corporate requirements are for purchasing software. You should also make sure that the innovation management software integrates smoothly with the tools you already have.

Inform yourself about the purchasing, security assessment, and IT process. Make sure to get a thorough understanding of the requirements of the different internal stakeholders.

Can you license the software from your department’s budget or is there a general IT budget available? Do you need to pass certain security checks? Make a list of all relevant stakeholders and note their key requirements.

5. Analyze total cost of ownership (TCO)

Innovation management software represents an investment. It is thus important to consider the total cost of ownership beyond the initial purchase price. Costs can include licensing fees, implementation costs, training, and ongoing support or maintenance fees.

Make sure you have a clear understanding of the vendor’s pricing model. You also need to factor in any potential hidden costs. Compare the costs with the expected benefits and build a solid business case. The business case should include cost savings and new profit potentials.

6. Check vendor reputation and support

Finally, consider the reputation of the software provider. A reliable vendor will offer ongoing customer support and updates. Read customer reviews, case studies, and quotes to understand other organizations’ experiences with the software.

Additionally, ensure the vendor provides comprehensive support options, including a knowledge base, customer service representatives, and training resources. A responsive support team can make a significant difference when you encounter challenges or need help with implementation.

Learn here whether ITONICS is the right innovation solution for you.

How to implement innovation management software

To maximize the benefits of using innovation management software, you should plan the implementation thoroughly. This will also ensure that your innovation management software leaves with a good first impression. It is best to write a formal roll-out plan that answers all important questions. 

A roll-out plan outlines the scope, objectives, timelines, communication strategies, support channels, and onboarding approach. With a well-crafted roll-out plan, you can effectively engage new users.

1. Clarify the scope of the software roll-out

There are two strategies you can use to guide your software launch: 

• Company or department-wide roll-out (also called Big Bang roll-out) 
• Soft roll-out (or power user roll-out)

Big bang roll-out: This approach launches the platform to a large user base, for instance, across all sites and departments. Ideally, you perform such a roll-out at non-critical times, such as weekends, public holidays, or vacation periods. The goal should be that the platform is fully available for the end user at the defined time. 

Soft roll-out: This approach launches the platform along a sequence of steps. This approach is more resource-intensive. Soft roll-outs only target a specific (smaller) group of users such as one department, user group, or business unit. This roll-out plan should start with naming the department(s) or business unit(s) that would be the first to adopt the platform.

This approach allows you to collect feedback step-by-step. You can then integrate the feedback to the platform before the whole company gets access to it. In this way, the application owner(s) gain valuable experience early on.

2. Clarify the goals and benefits of using innovation management software

After the purchase of an innovation management solution, you might be fully aware of all features. You should have clarified all the expected benefits, and how to use it. However, when implementing the software, you need to be able to convince your colleagues as well. The goal should be to create a roll-out that is seamless and delightful. 

Try to formalize the answers to two central questions before you start any communication:

• What added value does the new platform deliver to me as a user?
• Is it clear what my role is on the platform, and what tasks I would need to perform? 

You should consider that your users likely already work with other platforms. And, they may view this new platform onboarding as additional work.

You should think about what will interest specific users most. Present them with how the software will address their current pain points and stress the advantages they will gain by working with the system. 

First impressions last. Consider how to make the first impressions on the platform impactful. Users should easily get access to the system. They should also easily know which activities they can and should perform on the platform.

3. Timeline

The implementation plan should include the preparation for the roll-out, the roll-out itself, and the time after the roll-out. The timeline is different for each system and depends on the scope of the use case(s), roll-out scope, and internal requirements. Therefore, the proposed timeline should serve as a guidance. The starting point is a foreseeable roll-out and thus an already configured system.

4. Communication channel(s)

Effective communication is essential for a successful software roll-out. We recommend building a deliberate communication strategy. You should share information before, during, and after the roll-out. This ensures that all potential users have access to the information. 

Emails are an effective way to communicate updates and announcements as all users will naturally have access. We recommend sending newsletters straight from the ITONICS system to build trust with the system. Emails are a great way to communicate with users, but this should not be the only way. 

To onboard users effectively, face-to-face or remote meetings are more personal and engaging. Consider conducting one or several onboarding sessions to introduce the new tool. You can also record those sessions and re-use as training material. 

Most of the communication will center on the user. Use internal “social” media tools, such as Slack, Teams, or Yammer groups to spread the news. In some cases, it is beneficial to expand your communication to external users to create attention.

LinkedIn is a good channel for this and to promote your innovation culture. Remember that the roll-out process does not end after inviting users, so your communication should not either.

5. Support channel(s)

Once the platform is online, you should be ready to receive requests and suggestions for improvements. Ask your users constantly for their feedback to ensure a constant usage. This will drive motivation and user engagement. You should open a channel that make it easy for your users to contact you.

Use the system statistics to track the activity of users on the platform. This will help you plan and monitor your roll-out and set specific goals for platform usage.

Innovate with ITONICS - Just to do it right

Innovation software is a powerful tool that helps your organization stay ahead in a competitive market. By knowing the nine essentials and application areas of it, you can make the most informed decision.

At ITONICS, we understand the importance of innovation and offer a comprehensive innovation management platform. Our Innovation OS embodies all these essentials and covers all the application areas.

ITONICS is the leading innovation software and mentioned by Gartner as the only vendor for automated environmental scanning. Gartner also mentions ITONICS as a representative vendor for Innovation Management Tools such as Continuous Foresight, Trendspotting, Emerging Technology Radars, and Idea Management Tools.