Ideas are the backdrop of every inventions, product innovation and services. As the products and services takes form and generates expected results, these are transformed into business for the benefit of both consumer and the provider. The increase in product awareness has led to increase in consumer demands for more innovative products, services and techniques which required new and innovative Healthy Desktop Sit Stand Computer Desk ideas. Organizations the world over look for ideas from various sources. This includes the internal workforce, clients, vendors, partners and end-users. However, the advent of the internet and the World Wide Web has facilitated enterprises with a wider reach to capture ideas from a diversified group. Use of an idea management system facilitates enterprises to manage, monitor and implement innovation in a structured way. Being structured, it provides discipline, clear milestones and metrics as against a qualitative and unstructured process.At Ericsson, a collaborative idea management tool called IdeaBoxes enables all employees to innovate everyday across the organization. Implemented in 2008, this idea management system was pulled based and self-organizing. With many and diverse innovation needs across the organization, a structured approach was required to channelize ideas from multiple sources to multiple destinations in the organization. The launch of IdeaBoxes, led to a broad adoption of ideas across all business units, markets, R&D, sales and marketing dept. Slowly, IdeaBoxes grew to become the de facto idea management tool across Ericsson, replacing most local tools. After three years of implementation, the idea database at Ericsson was filled with 15000 ideas, 30000 comments and over 10000 users. Out of these, hundreds of ideas, from incremental to disruptive ones, have been used in the development of new products, services and new processes at different levels within the organization. The Idea Management System that has been defined as a structured and disciplined approach to manage innovation facilitate enterprises to manage idea generation, capture, collaboration, assessment, implementation and monitoring of idea outcomes. Made up of five components, this includes: A Front-End system that helps to capture and develop ideasA Back-End system that will help to implement the idea funnelAn organizational architecture that will facilitate idea generation and capturing processIT systems to support the workflowMetrics for idea pipeline management and determining the business value and monitoring implementation process of the ideas generated. As technology evolved, software solutions were also developed by the IT giants and service providers to support idea management.
