CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
19 May 2009
Product News
New Sopheon Software Links Idea Development to Strategic Product Planning and Execution
Sopheon announced the introduction of an addition to its software system, Accolade. Called Idea Lab, the new solution is the result of a partnership between Sopheon and Hype Software, a German-based supplier of idea management software for product development. According to Sopheon, the offering expands Accolade’s capacity to strengthen the early stages of product innovation, and creates the first software solution in the industry to provide all-in-one support for strategic product planning, ideation and innovation process execution.
A Complete, Virtual Laboratory for Idea Development
Sopheon’s new Idea Lab software provides the adopting organization with a comprehensive set of consistent, sustainable processes for successful ideation. Idea Lab can be used to launch and manage campaigns, publicize and motivate participation, and to establish communities of innovators within which ideas can be solicited, shared and evaluated. The solution enables easy examination of the fit between newly generated concepts and roadmaps and other plans, ensuring that the ideas selected for development are aligned with market, technology and corporate- growth strategies. Idea Lab supports scoring and filtering of ideas, as well as voting-based assessment. The software contains process elements that also allow submitted ideas to be challenged and expanded. High-value ideas are forwarded into a gated process for concept development. The remainder can be stored in Idea Lab’s idea bank for future consideration.
In most companies, ideation efforts suffer from a lack of focus: too many ideas and not enough resources to implement them. Organization and prioritization are essential to the generation of value. Idea Lab allows users to electronically arrange promising ideas by categories such as innovation type, product line, enabling technology or target market, making it easy to find those that are relevant to specific business issues. Ideas can be ranked, merged or rejected, and similar ideas can be organized inside portfolios for further evaluation. Contributors are incented by the solution’s built-in reward and recognition mechanisms.
An Incubator for Breakthrough Product Innovation
Individual effort generates good ideas. Collaboration generates great ones. Idea Lab offers a rich mix of features that encourage and facilitate knowledge transfer and collaborative ideation. Ideas can be shared with targeted users or made visible to innovation communities throughout the enterprise for system-aided feedback and discussion. Idea submitters are made aware of individuals within the organization who have related interests. The software provides an ideation commons where these contacts can easily converge, exchange thoughts and initiate action. The resulting dialogue and work collaboration not only help further shape existing ideas, they can spark additional ideas that build on initial concepts and potentially turn them into transformational innovation.
Idea Lab fosters serendipity by automatically showing the user previously submitted ideas that are similar to his/her submission, and notifying him/her when new ideas of potential interest enter the system. The software features Idea BrowserTM, an embedded navigation engine that enables easy discovery within Idea Lab’s repository of concepts, campaigns and idea challenges, oftentimes inspiring further ideation.
Innovation Strategy, Ideation and Execution in a Single Solution
New ideas are rarely in short supply. Most organizations have an abundance of them. But generating ideas and being able to turn those ideas into revenue and profit are two entirely different things. One of the greatest shortcomings of traditional idea and innovation management software is that it focuses only on the generation, organization and, in the best cases, evaluation of ideas. There is no systematic alignment of ideation with strategic planning, and no support to help users traverse the potential “dead zones” that separate the generation of ideas from getting those ideas into the developmental pipeline and through to the market.
Because Idea Lab is a component of the Accolade software suite, it is easily connected to the solution’s broader capabilities, including product planning, product portfolio management, and innovation process automation and governance. This integration surmounts the challenges of transitioning from one process stage to another. At the front end of the innovation cycle, Accolade’s Vision StrategistTM component delivers automated support for the development of strategic product plans. The plans feed into Idea Lab, where they become part of the litmus test for evaluating the strategic fit and viability of submitted ideas. The most promising concepts seamlessly migrate from Idea Lab into the user’s Accolade-supported gate- or phase-based innovation processes, ensuring that they are not fumbled in the hand-off and reducing the time it takes to turn ideas into products. Accolade also subsequently supplies the product portfolio management, commercialization and post-launch support required to manage newly created products until they are retired from the marketplace.
“Innovation isn’t about the number of ideas an organization generates,” said Bryan Seyfarth, director of product marketing for Sopheon. “It’s about business outcomes and results. With the addition of Idea Lab, Accolade allows organizations to draw a direct line between ideation and revenue and profit growth.”
Idea Lab is available immediately for purchase and implementation as part of the Accolade software suite.
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