How the right tool can help drive more innovation in your organization

In the first part of our guest post series, we talked about the common challenges companies face when transforming the company's culture.
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In this post, we’ll clarify how a dedicated innovation management tool can help drive more innovation in your organization. We’ll also introduce the most significant benefits you can achieve with the right tool.

More ideas lead to more innovation

Success in innovation requires a systematic process for generating, evaluating, prioritizing and validating new ideas. Although no tool will automatically make innovation happen, it can be a tremendous help in the process of turning new ideas into innovations.
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The right tool supports the entire innovation process from the beginning to the end and encourages employees to come up with more ideas. More ideas lead to more innovation, and although it’s the execution of those ideas that matters, generating new ideas is the first step towards any kind of progress.
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Benefits of an innovation management software

A simple idea management tool is suitable for a wide range of different innovation activities to drive business results in your organization. Having just one versatile tool for managing ideas adds value to the process in several different ways.
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1. Accessibility and real-time results

​Did you know that 97% of people get their ideas outside of the office? Because the majority of ideas are generated somewhere else than at work, you shouldn’t limit the possibilities to participate in the process. To get as many ideas as possible, innovation should be accessible for everyone regardless their location.
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​​Compared to a physical suggestion box, for example, online tools allow people to submit ideas on the go and respond to feedback immediately. All employees can access the same information whenever they like. When they can see the real-time impact of their own activities, it may encourage them to be even more active in the future.
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2. Increased transparency 

The biggest problem with closed suggestion boxes or traditional surveys is that they lack transparency. Once you submit your idea, you have no clue what will happen next and if your idea is ever going to be implemented.

Although there is a time and place for gathering feedback via surveys, these types of closed methods aren’t the best options for continuous ideation.

An innovation management tool increases transparency as you can see the status of each idea at one glance. People are going to be more willing to share their improvement suggestions when they know that their ideas will be seen and that they can affect the progress of their own ideas.
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Another benefit of a transparent tool is that it allows you to assign responsibility. When everyone knows who is working on a certain idea, the person responsible for the idea becomes more motivated to advance it.
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3. Improved mobility and operations

The right tool makes it easy to prioritize ideas and pick the right ones to progress. It helps you analyse your process to identify and eliminate bottlenecks.
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With the help of the right tool, you’ll be able to fix inefficiencies faster and more efficiently. This saves you time and money, increases your profitability and allows you to produce more of the results your customers demand.
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When your entire team can evaluate, refine and develop ideas together, you’ll improve engagement, organizational learning, communication and the sense of fairness.
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4. Cultural improvements

Improved transparency, communication and active collaboration are eventually going to have positive effects on the company's culture.

One of the most important benefits is that an innovation management tool allows you to recognize and reward the most active participants. How you decide to reward your employees is entirely up to you, but you should always try to give positive feedback and acknowledge people for the improvements they’ve made.
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Positive feedback truly helps your employees thrive as it makes them feel their input is valued. This again can lead people to become more confident in their competence. When people feel they’re a valuable part of the continuous improvement process, they’re likely to keep giving better ideas.

Wrapping up

 Although an innovation management tool brings a number of direct and indirect benefits to your innovation process and other parts of your business, implementing a dedicated tool only advances your business if the ideas are actually developed and put in practice.
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Innovation is a continuous process and the right tool helps manage it more effortlessly and effectively. If you don’t yet have a tool for managing ideas in your organization, you can now get started with Viima for free.
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​This is the second part of Viima’s guest post series for KISMC. You can have a look at the first article where we talk about the common challenges organizations face when transforming the company's culture and how to overcome them.

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About the author

Julia Myllylä
Julia represents Viima, the best way to collect and develop ideas. Viima’s innovation management software is already loved by thousands of organizations all the way to the Global Fortune 500 and is free for up to 50 users. She’s passionate about helping leaders drive innovation in their organization and frequently writes on the topic, usually in Viima’s blog.

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