Ideation platforms are designed to help organizations source ideas from a pool of users (employees, customers, outside experts, etc.) that they can potentially develop into shippable solutions.
In our decade-plus experience establishing innovation processes for organizations of all sizes, we learned that there are four things you should consider in an ideation platform:
Features that focus ideation on specific priorities: We found it’s best to avoid platforms that facilitate ideation by asking users to submit any idea they have. While this approach can surface unexpected insights, it often results in ideas on random topics, not ideas relevant to the organization’s priorities. An ideation platform should enable organizations to focus users on specific priorities and restrict submissions to ideas that align with those priorities.
Features to crowdsource idea improvement: An effective ideation platform should let users view each others' ideas and prompt them to co-create instead of moving ideas to evaluation after a single draft. Since most ideas need some adjustments, this step lets authors refine them with the collective intelligence of the entire organization.
Features that provide users insights into their ideas' progress: Users often lose enthusiasm for submitting ideas when they don’t know their status. An ideation platform should keep users updated on whether their ideas are in evaluation, validation, or implementation.
Features that support idea evaluation and validation: Collecting and improving ideas are just the first steps in their lifecycle. After this, they typically undergo a development workflow that helps organizations determine whether to implement them. The best ideation platforms don't stop after collection; they also provide features to support these essential steps.
In this guide, we compare five ideation platforms that meet the requirements outlined above.
To start, we discuss how our platform, InnovationCast, allows organizations to collect ideas that support their priorities and keep users engaged with innovation efforts. Then, we cover ideation platforms like Brightidea, Wazoku, HYPE Innovation, and Qmarkets so you can compare their feature sets.
You can learn more about how InnovationCast supports innovation from idea collection to implementation by scheduling a free demo.
1. InnovationCast
Innovation Management Software for Organizations to Source Ideas on Specific Priorities
InnovationCast is an innovation management platform that supports the entire ideation process. Our platform has helped organizations like DHL, Visa, Vodafone, and Delta Cafés establish effective ideation processes that source ideas relevant to their priorities, rather than just any ideas from users.
Organizations can post challenges to inform users of their priorities, allowing only relevant ideas to be submitted.
InnovationCast encourages idea improvement by allowing users to view each other’s ideas and provide suggestions for improvement. This prevents evaluators from having to send ideas back to the original author for refinement.
InnovationCast offers features like a rewards program and automated email reminders, which keep innovation priorities at the forefront of users' attention.
Let's discuss these features in more detail below.
How InnovationCast Supports Targeted Idea Collection
InnovationCast has two idea collection features:
Innovation Challenges: Organizations can call users to share ideas within a specific timeframe.
Category-based “Always On”: Users can submit ideas related to the organization’s priorities 24/7.
Innovation Challenges
Instead of having an open call for any and all ideas without context on what’s needed and how ideas will be assessed, we recommend organizations use Innovation Challenges to collect ideas.
Innovation Challenges are time-constrained calls for users to submit ideas that address specific priorities. For example, an IT manager might request ideas on cutting operational costs, or a hospital administrator might seek ideas on using AR technology to improve patient experiences.
Within each challenge posting, challenge managers can provide more detailed explanations of the priority, such as:
Why the challenge is important
The types of ideas that are needed
The criteria used to evaluate ideas
Any constraints users should consider when submitting ideas
Resources like market research data, stakeholder interviews, press releases, etc.
This results in higher quality idea submissions than context-less calls because:
It focuses users on the organization's current priorities. For example, if the organization's priority for this quarter is to reduce client churn, stakeholders can concentrate the brainpower of all users on this priority.
Users receive context they don't usually get with open calls for ideas. This helps them understand the nuance of the topic at hand, leading to higher-quality submissions.
Since each challenge has a deadline, users understand which ones are most urgent and are encouraged to get involved before the closing date; calls for ideas that are always open don't create this sense of urgency.
Additionally, InnovationCast can spot when a user is about to submit an idea similar to what someone else has already submitted. The user is then encouraged to help the original author improve their idea rather than submitting the duplicate. This way, idea evaluators don't have to filter through hundreds of similar ideas.
Read more: 5 Detailed Innovation Challenge Examples & Best Practices
Category-Based “Always On” Idea Submission
While we recommend challenges for helping organizations focus on specific opportunities, it’s important to recognize that unexpected insights or opportunities may arise. Having a channel for these ideas is crucial for maintaining a feedback loop from employees to top management.
However, the most important aspect of an open call for ideas is that users should group their ideas into broader categories relevant to the organization. This ensures that all ideas are reviewed by the right people based on their intended goals and outcomes.
Considering this, we designed InnovationCast with a category-based “Always On” feature that lets users share ideas anytime. Most importantly, unlike regular open calls for ideas, organizations are encouraged to set up accepted categories that users must bucket their ideas into when submitting them.
As we can see in the example below, a healthcare company is only looking for ideas on healthcare technology, infection control, patient experience, and sustainable healthcare, so they are asking users to bucket ideas into one of these four categories.
Read more: How to Implement an Effective Idea Generation Process in Your Organization
How InnovationCast Supports Idea Improvement and Co-creation
As mentioned above, an organization can rarely move forward on an idea refinement. Most ideas — even the most impactful — typically have shortcomings that need to be addressed by the original authors before evaluation. These may include regulatory requirements, timeline constraints, or budget limitations.
This is why we created InnovationCast with co-creation in mind. When someone submits an idea, other users can view it and discuss how it can be improved. Does the idea look good or not so good, and why is that? What improvements do you recommend?
Then, original authors can add their colleagues as co-authors and team up to ensure that ideas are in the best possible shape before evaluation.
This improvement step increases the original author’s chances of having their idea greenlit and provides organizations with higher-quality ideas.
Read more: How to Create a Collaborative Innovation Process and Network
InnovationCast Provides Users Visibility Into Their Ideas’ Status After Submission
An essential aspect of fostering a culture of innovation is providing transparency about what happens after submission.
A common mistake organizations make is underestimating the importance of keeping original authors updated on their ideas’ progress. This lack of communication can hurt morale, as authors remain unaware of whether their ideas were tabled, evaluated, or validated. If their ideas are implemented, they may also be unaware of the financial impact on the organization.
When designing InnovationCast, we focused on giving idea authors visibility into their ideas' progress. This involvement helps them feel more connected to innovation efforts and increases the likelihood of responding to future calls for ideas.
When original idea authors sign into InnovationCast, they can:
See what stage of the innovation process their idea is in — refinement, evaluation, validation, or implementation.
Choose to receive notifications whenever something happens to their idea. This could be a colleague recommending ways to improve it, idea evaluators moving it forward to validation, or department managers asking authors to refine it.
View the experiments teams are running to test their ideas and their performance. This could include finance teams running a financial risk analysis to understand whether the idea is feasible or product teams prototyping the idea to see what customers think about it.
Follow their colleagues' ideas and receive notifications about any updates.
Our Badges & Rewards System Keeps Users Motivated to Submit Ideas
Users spend time away from their typical job responsibilities to research, submit, and refine ideas. Due to this investment, we find that organizations with successful ideation programs often implement reward systems to encourage users to continue submitting high-quality ideas.
This is why we incorporated a badges and rewards system into InnovationCast.
Essentially, organizations can reward users in three ways:
They can give users pre-determined rewards (cash prizes, movie tickets, dinners, PTO, etc.) when they reach certain milestones. This could be when a user submits five ideas that were moved forward to validation or helped co-author 10 impactful ideas.
They can introduce points-based rewards, where users get a certain number of points when they perform a certain task. For example, 20 points could be awarded for every greenlit idea or 10 for every significant contribution. Then, when employees reach a points threshold, they can cash out for their favorite reward.
They can give users a percentage of the revenue their idea generated or saved. Due to the financial reward available, this approach naturally sees the biggest increases in user participation. However, this isn’t a viable option for many organizations.
Read more: How to Encourage Innovation in the Workplace
Signals & Scouting Helps Centralize News Sharing
Many employees, customers, and partners won’t have hours to spend researching and submitting ideas. However, it’s still important to draw insights from these users, as this gives you access to a wider base of perspectives.
This is why organizations with the most vibrant, engaged user bases normally offer multiple ways of participating in innovation efforts, not just regular ideation.
To facilitate this, InnovationCast comes with a feature called Signals and Scouting, which allows users to share the latest industry news with everyone else. When other users log into InnovationCast, they can see these Signals on their activity feed and are encouraged to comment on their importance, feasibility, and risk. Stakeholders can view these discussions and decide whether a Signal warrants any action.
This approach allows organizations to continuously surface information on new opportunities and threats, enabling them to react to emerging developments as soon as they arise. Additionally, users can get involved with innovation efforts even if they don’t have the time to research and submit ideas.
Email Reminders and Onboarding Training Materials
Another aspect of establishing an ideation program where everyone is submitting ideas is to remind users of new challenges and prompt them to submit ideas before a challenge closes. Remember, users have daily job responsibilities, and if the organization doesn’t remind them to submit ideas, they may forget.
To address this, we designed InnovationCast with automated email drip campaigns that organizations can use to keep everyone focused on innovation priorities.
Organizations can send users emails when:
New challenges are posted
Someone submits an idea that refinement
A challenge is about to close
A user has been inactive for a specified time frame
In addition, InnovationCast automates the entire onboarding process, so you don’t have to train users on how the software works. Upon joining, users receive tutorials on how to submit ideas, suggest challenges, share Signals, and co-create with others.
Tools to Support Innovation After Idea Collection
Ideation is just the first step in the innovation process. In our experience, most organizations overemphasize it while grossly underestimating the importance of moving ideas into implementation. Once ideas are collected, organizations need systems in place to:
Screen and evaluate ideas
Run experiments to validate whether ideas can realize their expected value
Manage their innovation portfolio
Measure the impact of ideas on the organization
Organizations that equate ideation with innovation management may have no trouble collecting a high volume of ideas, but since there aren’t systems to move ideas forward to validation and implementation, they lay dormant inside the ideation platform.
This is why we designed InnovationCast to support ideas throughout their entire lifecycle, from collection to implementation and impact tracking. Organizations can:
Establish evaluation criteria to determine which ideas to move forward with.
Create assumptions and run experiments to validate or disprove those assumptions.
Set up custom reporting dashboards (and use our Power BI integrations) to measure the impact of different innovations.
Utilize our templates and workflows to set up their entire innovation process in less than four weeks.
To learn more about how InnovationCast can push innovative ideas into implementation, check out our review: 6 Innovation & Idea Management Software (2024 Comparison)
Get Started
Our innovation management software, InnovationCast, has helped companies like DHL, Novo Nordisk, ING, Vodafone, and Visa establish innovation programs that reliably source ideas and turn them into innovative solutions.
Book a free demo with our customer success team to discover how we can do the same for your organization.
2. Brightidea
Brightidea is an idea and innovation management platform that helps organizations collect ideas from employees and external users and supports the steps needed to launch them. Organizations can gather ideas 24/7 through open calls and run time-bound challenges on prioritized topics.
Features
Idea box: Users can submit ideas 24/7 on opportunities the organization should pursue.
Program: Innovation and department managers can crowdsource insights, run challenges, host hackathons, and create shark tank-like competitions.
Lab: Innovation managers can use prebuilt workflows to incubate ideas before implementation.
Transformation: Innovation managers can create and oversee innovation projects, assign tasks, allocate resources, and track metrics to improve decision-making.
Ecosystem: Innovation managers can collaborate with external users, such as startups and educational institutions, to co-create solutions.
3. Wazoku
Wazoku is an idea management platform that allows organizations to invite users to submit ideas and then support the development of these ideas with thorough workflows and project management features. When outside expertise is needed, organizations can use Wazoku’s open innovation platform to connect with outside experts in real-time.
Features
Internal innovation: Wazoku has features to capture ideas using brainstorming sessions as well as evaluate and validate them. Innovation and product managers can also utilize Wazoku’s gamification features and collaboration tools to improve employee engagement.
Co-creation: Users can help original idea authors improve their ideas by voting on them, pointing out areas for improvement, and calling in other user groups like customers, stakeholders, and partners to share their opinions.
Open innovation: Innovation and department managers can use the Wazoku Crowd, which is a SaaS platform where they can source ideas from users outside the organization.
Tech scouting: Innovation managers can learn about new technologies within their industry and potentially partner with other companies and startups.
Pulse surveys: Innovation managers can create and send surveys to customers and learn their thoughts about a particular innovation project.
4. HYPE Innovation
HYPE Innovation is an agile innovation management platform designed for larger organizations looking to establish ideation processes. Beyond idea collection, their consultants help develop innovation strategies and identify key priorities.
Features
Innovate: This functionality enables organizations to manage the ideation process by collecting ideas and insights, promoting collaboration to refine concepts, and using strategic planning tools to validate and launch them. HYPE’s automation features notify participants of new challenges.
Startup scouting: Innovation managers and stakeholders can utilize HYPE’s database to scout high-potential startups for partnerships that address shared problems.
Tech scouting: Innovation managers can scout the latest technologies and assess them as threats or opportunities. This approach allows organizations to stay ahead of competitors in adopting new technologies and pricing strategies.
Open innovation management tools: If challenges cannot be solved internally, innovation managers can use HYPE’s open innovation platform to tap into the expertise of outside experts, including universities, students, partners, and startups.
Trend management: Organizations can stay updated on industry trends by encouraging innovators to share relevant news.
Employee engagement: Organizations can host live events, reward users for their contributions, create leaderboards, and distribute innovation flairs to keep everyone motivated to submit ideas.
5. Qmarkets
Qmarkets is an enterprise innovation management software that allows organizations to bring various teams together within a single innovation ecosystem. It informs organizations about the most important innovation initiatives and invites them to share ideas. Organizations can then use Qmarkets’ innovation tools to validate and launch the best ideas.
Features
Q-optimize: This functionality allows organizations to use challenges and automated email reminders to inform and continuously update their workforce on current priorities, objectives, and initiatives.
Q-ideate: Innovation managers can incubate ideas from collection to implementation and determine which ideas are worth pursuing.
Q-trend: Innovation managers can stay updated on the latest industry developments by encouraging users to share relevant news within Q-trend. Managers and stakeholders can then comment on the significance of trends, fueling the creation of new ideas.
Q-scout: Innovation managers can connect with innovators around the world and invite them to submit ideas that align with the organization’s priorities.
Q-impact: This dashboard allows innovation managers to view the progress of ideas, see which stage of the innovation life cycle each idea is in, and report on the value generated for the organization once launched.
Establish a Culture of Innovation with InnovationCast
If you’d like to learn more about how InnovationCast can help you collect high-quality ideas from your user base and develop them into market-ready solutions, book a quick demo.
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