In the previous articles, we have examined the fundamentals of innovation management, how to measure innovation and get the most of it. In this article - the last article of the same series, we will go through the benefits an organization can get from properly managing innovation, which fundamentally answers the question of why innovation management is so important for organizations and why it is an absolute need.

Innovation is the key factor for the success of an organization. Creative and new products almost always come from an innovative team and management system. Fostering creativity and open and innovative culture is important, but it can be difficult to do so in a consistent and measurable way - this is where innovation management comes in! With proper innovation management and by using a dedicated Innovation Management Software (IMS), you can help your organization build a systematic innovation process. 

There are many benefits you can get from innovation management, below are 9 ways it can improve.

Help to capture ideas from everyone involved in your organization.

With proper innovation management, you will be able to leap the department, location, or language gaps and collect ideas from all the stakeholders involved in your organization. Your employees, customers, suppliers, and partners are the ones who know your business the best. Utilize them to get more ideas, better ideas, and allow ideas to be shared across the organization.

Help to identify great ideas quickly.

IMS will help you involve all the stakeholders in your idea generation and idea analysis process. After ideas are collected, a selection process will begin, where the great ideas will be identified quickly and soon proceed to the implementation phase. 

Help to reduce costs and boost efficiency. 

From the systematically idea generation and selection process, those not-so-great ideas will be filtered out, and only the good ones will be left and continue. The selection process is also a process where an idea finds its market need or market fit, thus can tremendously reduce the cost for market research and cost for a product’s market validation. This in turn helps to reduce a product’s time to market, hence boost efficiency in an organization.

Help to better allocate resources in the form of people, money, and time.

While using an IMS to gather ideas and allow everyone to comment on the ideas, teams can be formed to further develop the idea or a product based on the idea. This way, people will be involved in things that they are most interested in or believe in, hence can get the most potential out of people. Organizations will also be able to allocate other resources, such as money and time more accurately.

Help to gain and maintain the organization’s competitive advantage.

The ultimate goal of every organization is to thrive, either by getting the most profits possible, becoming the leader of the industry, or making the world a better place. Innovation management will help organizations gather and evaluate ideas, pick the best ideas efficiently, monetize on these ideas quickly and increase the speed from idea to product, and from product  to market. 

Help to better engage all your stakeholders.

You can involve all stakeholders in the entire process of innovation management. They will feel more engaged and empowered, hence would want to involve more and contribute more. This is a positive circle where your stakeholders will benefit from their ideas and the realization of their ideas, so does the organization itself.

Help to boost collaboration within your organization.

Allow your employees to share their ideas, come up with ideas together, work together to improve each other’s ideas, and eventually collaborate on the ideas to refine them, and to turn ideas into solutions.

Help to create a culture of innovation.

Once your stakeholders feel their ideas are treated seriously, their involvement is important, and their ideas are valued, they will feel more engaged and in turn would like to contribute more. This way, organizations can create a culture of innovation, coming up with new ideas and brilliant ideas all the time. 

Help to transform organizational culture to an open and transparent one.

An IMS will allow all your employees to share their ideas, see each other’s ideas, comment on them to help refine the ideas, and follow the progress of the ideas. Your employees will feel engaged the entire idea selection process will be transparent. They will feel more motivated in an open and engaging environment.

Innovation management is crucial to the success of a business. To properly manage innovation, you cannot limit yourself to the traditional ways, such as collecting ideas using suggestion boxes, emails, meetings. To do it right and do it efficiently, an innovation management software that is dedicated to collecting, analyzing, curating, and managing innovative ideas should be in place. Schedule a call with us and find out what IDEX has to offer!