Investigating Innovation and Idea

Capture Tools
Companies can lose a lot of time and money chasing ideas and testing
concepts in the pursuit of innovation, so they need to successfully identify
and distinguish the good ideas from the not-so-good as efficiently as
possible.
Innovation and idea capture tools capture and categorize information at any
level and allow companies to get really good and important ideas identified
quickly and easily. These tools are best used for enterprise analysis, before
any projects or products officially begin. They allow analysts and business or
product leaders to more effectively analyze feedback and respond to input
from a variety of sources at once by consolidating information and providing
new perspectives.
Some questions facilitated or (sometimes) answered by innovation and idea
capture tools are
Where do we put all those ideas?
Which ideas should we consider?
What issues or products do they relate to?
Which ideas are important?
Where did those ideas even come from?
What’s been done (if anything) so far to drive the idea forward?
After the information is captured within the tool, you and the team can
analyze it by
Capturing, sorting, and categorizing information
Identifying patterns in the information, such as emerging issues or trends
Prioritizing the information and ideas according to relevance, importance,
impact, or value to different audiences
Identifying opportunities to improve services, products, or brand
perceptions or to grow revenue lines across the business
The following sections introduce high-, mid-, and low-tech tools and suggest
some features you may want to look for in various options.
Tools that provide idea or innovation support may alternatively get
grouped into other specialized BA tool categories instead of being
labeled innovation tools, so be sure to explore other places where you
may find great innovation support, including early requirements
definition, solution visualization or modeling, business case
development with portfolio prioritization, and project management.
Looking at the technology spectrum
From a low-tech perspective, whiteboards and sticky notes are always great if
you have to tackle brainstorming or elicitation. Each person puts her ideas on
the notes (or board) and sticks them up on the wall, and then team members
evaluate the collection of notes, rearranging ideas into groups or categories
and determining how best to leverage the information next. Sticky notes are
also great when you need to perform scoping analysis, data and process
modeling, requirements management planning — you name it.
From a mid-to high-tech perspective, the best tools are software-enabled
solutions. Each tool works in a slightly different way. Some options include
single or multiuser web-enabled tools, interactive whiteboards and
smartphone apps, enterprise software as a service (SAAS) tools, and
singleuser
computer tools.
Considering specific features
Look for mid-tech tools that provide help with collaborative generation;
fastcapture
or collection; organization; development; and evaluation of ideas,
such as mind-mapping. If you need brainstorming aid features (such as
leading questions or generation of visual associations), these tools can help as
well. Just keep in mind that, after you’ve captured this information, you and
the team have to analyze it, perform the critical thinking, and come to
informed decisions on next steps. Following are some of your options.
Listening tools
Generally, users (such as external customers or internal employees) manually
enter information (like suggestions and feedback) one idea at a time into
innovation and idea capture tools. But if you need more-automated solutions,
look for higher-tech tools that offer listening capabilities or customer
collaboration web pages. Listening tools tap into social media outlets; listen
for key words, product names, and brand references; and then import and
compile that information within the tool for evaluation and review.
Collaborative web pages allow companies to discuss specific product ideas
directly and in more detail with customers or customer groups who care to
give more constructive or forward-thinking feedback.
Tools that track and grow ideas
If your analysis efforts are going to continue beyond the discovery of the
idea, look for tools that track and grow the discovered ideas. Different tools
may address a broad or niche set of innovation activities. For instance, in
solution development, innovation happens throughout the lifecycle as ideas
progress from conceptual into solution decisions and from feature decisions
into concrete design.
Application lifecycle management tools
If you need to carry your ideas forward to completion without having to
transfer the data and maintain traceability back and forth between systems,
look for application lifecycle management (ALM) tools — a growing trend in
the business analysis world.
These tools support requirements elaboration and definition from start to
finish within one tool, eliminating the need to switch technologies as
concepts develop. They enable business teams, software teams, and project
governance boards to work better together through complete business
solutions and software. These suites start with the initial ideas, suggestions,
or customer complaints and then move them through innovation
opportunities
all the way into development management.