How to Improve Management of Ideas

Abstract

Innovation has a more and more important role in all industries, leading to a growing interest on the efficient management of the innovation process. For a better understanding of this process, it has been organised in 5 stages: idea generation, idea selection, idea development, idea implementation and revision.

This work provides a short review for each one of these 5 stages of the innovation process, its tools, methodologies and processes.

The AutoEuropa case study, described in this work, illustrates an innovation process in which a large number of tools and methodologies have been used with excellent results. In this case, a prototype idea management system has been used with a strong impact on the results, specially, at the organisation and productivity level of the idea management team.

For a better understanding of the current practices of innovation management, a survey has been developed, distributed and analysed. The survey results provided information on which are the tools and methodologies more used and graded the organisations as active, watcher or passive. From the analysis of the results, it was possible to detect significant correlations between the use of the different tools and confirm that the organisation described in the case study had made a strongly innovative initiative.