Idea Management on Gartner’s Hype Cycle 2011
Idea Management on Gartner’s Hype Cycle 2011
Gartner has moved Idea Management into “The Slope of Enlightment’ on their newly released Hype Cycle for 2011. That’s great news for the industry and certainly something we experience in our everyday.
Idea Management Definition
Idea management is a structured process of generating, capturing, discussing and improving, organizing, evaluating and prioritizing valuable insight or alternative thinking that would otherwise not have emerged through normal processes. Idea management tools provide: support for communities (in originating and building out promising ideas); administrative support (for capturing ideas and enabling innovation leaders to organize and track ideas); and analytical support (for aggregating, refining, scoring, voting, prioritizing and measuring) for the leaders and participants of innovation or ideation programs.
These tools are typically used for focused innovation campaigns or events, but most also enable continuous idea generation. These tools offer a wide array of approaches to idea management, such as running innovation events or campaigns, crowdsourcing (aka idea marketplaces) and creating prediction markets. Most tools allow participation by internal and external participants and support multiple administrators. Vendors offer owned, hosted or software as a service (SaaS) versions of their tools — and often implementation support and consulting services.
Idea Management Position and Adoption Speed Justification
Companies in a wide variety of industries use idea management as a way to bolster innovation that drives sales of existing products, creates new opportunities to increase revenue, or radically changes process or cost structure. Industries that emphasize new product development were the earliest adopters of idea management tools. In addition to tools from vendors specifically designed to support innovation management, collaboration platform vendors provide ideation modules for their offerings. The growth in vendors and success stories for idea management drive interest in innovation and confidence in engaging employees, customers and others in idea generation and evaluation. The current landscape is studded with many vendors that offer a common set of functionalities. The Web seems tailor made to enable idea management marketplaces across enterprise ecosystems, and continually provides access to new sources of ideas and innovations.
Idea Management User Advice
Organizations establish innovation programs with a great fanfare, succeed at generating ample ideas, and then have difficulty sustaining the momentum through implementation. Users should address the organizational and cultural issues of innovation management. They should also identify the scope, participants and processes envisioned for idea generation programs before attempting to select an idea management tool.
Organizations that plan to use idea management tools as a front end to new product or service development, should also ensure that those tools can be integrated with community, product life cycle and project management tools.
Organizations that consider idea management as part of an overall collaboration platform, should ensure integration with directory services and other technical and functional features of collaboration.
Finally, with the growth and rapid evolution of idea management approaches and technology, organizations should evaluate whether these tools should be internally owned and managed — or whether hosted or SaaS versions are viable options.
Idea Management Business Impact
Idea management tools were initially used to facilitate an online “suggestion box” (adding the advanced synergy, features and functions made possible by the Web), plus events or campaigns implemented under the auspices of innovation programs. Today, these tools are used in broad organizational programs that include internal and external users; full enterprises or individual departments; and organizations looking for product, process or services innovation.
Idea management tools can also enable organizations to segregate sources of ideas (such as employee versus customer ideas); separate types of ideas (such as product versus process ideas); and even aggregate multiple ideas into one.
The proper handling of ideas is one of the most critical aspects of successful innovation programs; users have a large number of choices and, therefore, the requirement to plan and execute well. Idea management tools also facilitate the process of publicizing campaigns and events (so they get a wide range of participants and input), evaluating and building on the ideas submitted, acknowledging the submissions and archiving valuable information.
Idea Management in Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies
Last year, Gartner released its Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2010. Idea Management, included in the analysis, was placed at the latter part of the Trough of Disillusionment. Tough name, although not as dire as it sounds. Rather, a transitional stage in the market evolution of a technology.
Gartner released its Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies 2011. First, know that Gartner publishes dozens of individual sector hype cycles. Each one plots the specific technologies and concepts relevant to that field. But the one for Emerging Technologies spans across multiple industries. As Jackie Fenn, vice president and Gartner fellow notes:
Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies” targets strategic planning, innovation and emerging technology professionals by highlighting a set of technologies that will have broad-ranging impact across the business. It is the broadest aggregate Gartner Hype Cycle, featuring technologies that are the focus of attention because of particularly high levels of hype, or those that may not be broadly acknowledged but that Gartner believes have the potential for significant impact.
The 2011 hype cycle is below, and here are the descriptions of the major stages of it.
1. Technology Trigger
A breakthrough, public demonstration, product launch or other event generates significant press and industry interest.
2. Peak of Inflated Expectations
During this phase of overenthusiasm and unrealistic projections, a flurry of well-publicized activity by technology leaders results in some successes, but more failures, as the technology is pushed to its limits. The only enterprises making money are conference organizers and magazine publishers.
3. Trough of Disillusionment
Because the technology does not live up to its overinflated expectations, it rapidly becomes unfashionable. Media interest wanes, except for a few cautionary tales.
4. Slope of Enlightenment
Focused experimentation and solid hard work by an increasingly diverse range of organizations lead to a true understanding of the technology’s applicability, risks and benefits. Commercial off-the-shelf methodologies and tools ease the development process.
5. Plateau of Productivity
The real-world benefits of the technology are demonstrated and accepted. Tools and methodologies are increasingly stable as they enter their second and third generations. Growing numbers of organizations feel comfortable with the reduced level of risk; the rapid growth phase of adoption begins. Approximately 20% of the technology’s target audience has adopted or is adopting the technology as it enters this phase.
The location of Idea Management in this year’s hype cycle is highlighted. In the estimation of Gartner analysts, it has broken through into the Slope of Enlightenment.
Idea Management’s place among technologies
Gartner describes the scope of their research: An assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of over 1,900 technologies, grouped into 76 distinct Hype Cycles.
From that list, 43 technologies were selected for inclusion this year in the overall emerging technologies hype cycle . The inclusion of Idea Management puts the sector in good company, with the internet of things, activity streams, gamification and NFC payment.
Perspective on Idea Management
In describing Idea Management for the Hype Cycle report, Gartner analyst Carol Rozwell made these observation:
Companies in a wide variety of industries use idea management as a way to bolster innovation that drives sales of existing products, creates new opportunities to increase revenue, or radically changes process or cost structure. Industries that emphasize new product development were the earliest adopters of idea management tools.
She also added this advice:
The proper handling of ideas is one of the most critical aspects of successful innovation programs.
That’s a need we see quite clearly as well. Idea management is a healthy, growing trend among global organizations.
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