Stewart McKie

9 June 2005
www.innomate.biz

Idea Management - Inputs and Outputs

Innomation supports the concept of Idea Management as a pipeline. Ideas enter

the pipeline, are subject to a formal evaluation and improvement process, and
then they exit the pipeline. This is part of what Innomation terms the “innovation
conversion” phase of innovation process management (IPM). But where do ideas
come from and what can they result in?

Ideas originate from vigilance and creativity activities.

Vigilance depends on scanning and feedback as a means of gathering ideas that

can be fed into the idea management pipeline.

Scanning means keeping track of what is going on in the micro and macro envi-
ronment surrounding your business. The micro environment includes your in-
dustry sector and competition, the macro environment includes your the political
and demographic landscape that your business operates in.

Feedback is generated from a number of sources: Suggestions, frequently asked

questions (FAQ), service calls, complaints and so forth. The feedback can origi-
nate from a wide range of stakeholders including employees, customers, suppli-
ers and web communities.

Creativity is helped by processes including creative thinking (e.g. brainstorming

and others), and formal processes such as Open Space and Appreciative Inquiry.
Ideas can also be stimulated by the use of specific campaigns designed to surface
ideas that could for example generate incremental, radical or disruptive innova-
tion.

Ideas can come out of the pipeline suitable for a number of purposes.

The most obvious is for conversion into business cases to create new deliverables
such as products or services. But ideas can also be used to create licensing oppor-
tunities for offer to other business partners (even the market as a whole), to cre-
ate proto-intellectual property (IP) in the form of IP applications or the basis for
new Frames of Reference (FoRs), which in turn act as new input for driving
scanning or creative process activities.

Not every idea is viable and/or valuable when it enters of comes out of the pipe-
line. But it’s seldom the case that an idea that reaches the pipeline is totally use-
less, just out of place.

Copyright Stewart McKie, 2005. For permission to re-use/quote contact sm@tripos.biz