According to our recent survey of 115 innovation executives, most companies have just scratched the surface when it comes to utilizing software to manage innovation programs. “We’ve got a long way to go,” confessed an innovation executive at a $40 billion global telecommunications company.
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According to the survey, conducted by Innovation Leader in Q1 2016, the most widely-deployed innovation software packages are those that assist with “idea collection.” Those idea collection tools, utilized by 62.3 percent of respondents, typically enable companies to gather, sort, and evaluate ideas; often, idea collection tools include voting or discussion features as well. Those numbers were remarkably aligned with data from our 2015 Innovation Benchmarking Report, conducted in partnership with the consulting firm Innosight, which found that 62.2 percent of companies were utilizing “idea capture” tools. (This survey on software was not sponsored or fielded with the involvement of any software provider or consultancy.)
Companies that have deployed these idea collection tools are able to track innovation projects throughout their lifecycle. “We use a hosted solution for idea collection and execution that allows us to track ideas through [our] stage-gate process,” said an innovation executive at a $2 billion energy company. The products “are increasingly important to our workflow,” noted another innovation leader at global healthcare brand.But the data uncovered an interesting fact: the innovation tools being deployed at a majority of companies aren’t innovation-specific software packages, but rather Microsoft Excel and other software products like Salesforce that are already available within their organization.
Over-the-Counter Solutions
According to the survey, the majority of respondents are using “repurposed applications” that have been modified or customized internally. More than half of respondents, 58.8 percent, stated they were using Microsoft Excel, Salesforce, Sharepoint, or other “over-the-counter” software applications to manage their innovation programs.Most respondents using these general purpose software applications cited their simplicity and ubiquity inside the organization. “Everyone has it, and everyone knows it,” said one respondent about using Microsoft Excel for idea collection.
Others said they chose over-the-counter tools due to concerns about the complexity and cost of outside solutions. “It’s so painful to deal with external software implementation and integration,” said an innovation executive at a $14 billion power company, “that it’s just an easier path to purpose something like Sharepoint or Excel.”Others agreed, noting that over-the-counter solutions can easily be customized. “Our tools are mainly low-tech, and have been heavily customized to meet our needs,” noted the top innovation officer at a $600 million consumer products company.
In addition to Excel and Sharepoint, respondents noted that Salesforce, Yammer, and other applications already in use within the enterprise have been repurposed to accommodate the needs of the innovation team.
Not without Limitations
That being said, many respondents acknowledge the limitations of the over-the-counter approach, and they’re hunting for something better. “Excel is cool because it is very flexible,” noted an innovation executive at one of the largest companies in Spain, “but there must be a better way.”
“We recognize that this is sub-optimal and that we are in a transition stage,” noted another respondent who was using Excel at a healthcare company.A few told us that innovation-specific software purchases were likely in the near future. “Sharepoint is dreadful,” said the innovation officer at a $13 billion financial services firm, adding “[we] will be looking for new crowdsourcing software shortly.”
As innovation programs get their feet under them, and start to have an impact within their organization, they may gravitate toward more capable software applications.Why is that? Chris Townsend, chief marketing officer at Imaginatik, a software and services firm, explains that as innovation efforts grow, reliance on basic tools “is increasingly untenable: there’s too much manual data manipulation, insufficient process support, lack of decision-making tools, no meaningful analytics, etc.” Gretchen Hoffman, a longtime marketing executive in the sector, says that many companies gravitate towards innovation-specific software to better track outcomes and “to help quantify the impact of investment.”
The chief innovation officer at a $3.4 billion consumer-products company noted that his firm’s generic software approach offered “little to no insight or ability to see across the multiple front-ends within the enterprise,” and said that an innovation management tool might be in his company’s future.
Overcoming Opposition
For innovation software providers, the survey data highlight both the challenges and the opportunities. “It shows that we have some way to go in educating and demonstrating the benefits of an innovation management platform,” acknowledges HYPE Innovation VP Marketing Tim Woods.
A complicating challenge to innovation software providers is the lethargy of large corporate customers. Several respondents admitted this was a problem. “We could use more specific tools,” acknowledged an innovation executive at a $48 billion biopharmaceutical company, “but big companies are always behind!”Others noted their internal corporate culture was a greater obstacle to tool adoption than the tools themselves. “This is not a critique of the tools, which typically work well for their intended purpose,” remarked one respondent. “It speaks more to the culture needed to advance good ideas.”
Another respondent admitted that his company’s idea management tool worked well, but implementation within his culture and workflow were the problem. “The way in which it was moderated and administered resulted in rapid abandonment.”Nike’s Director of Sensing Innovation, Jordan Rice, agrees that understanding one’s culture and implementation capacity is critical. “Most of the tools are only as good as the amount of time someone spends maintaining and organizing,” he says.
Other respondents similarly acknowledged that obstacles to success are typically related to the culture and implementation, not the tools themselves. “We found it very difficult to have our new-idea teams leverage our innovation technology to track and progress ideas, so the tool was never really used,” said one respondent.
Home-Grown Tools
But buying software isn’t the only solution to innovation management; some choose to build. Nearly half of our respondents (48.3 percent) said they were using internally-developed “home-grown” tools.
For example, the chief innovation officer at a $16 billion financial services firm said, “We’re using a custom-designed, home-grown tool to collect ideas, vote, rate, discuss, assign, track, collaborate, and approve.” According to this executive, their custom tool also has dashboards that provide executive views of the innovation pipeline.The same was the case at a $24 billion data storage giant. “It’s ideal to run everything for innovation management [across the enterprise] through a single tool, or set of tools which are extremely well integrated,” noted the innovation leader there. “We couldn’t find a set of reasonably-priced tools to do this across ideas, portfolio management, patents, university research, etc., …so we built our own.”
Not coincidentally, home-grown tools were commonly developed and implemented at software and technology companies, where a culture of custom development prevails.Home-grown tools were also common at companies where custom solutions were needed further along in the pipeline, long after the initial idea-collection phase. “We needed an in-house tool to track the filing and formal review and approval process for patent filings,” noted the innovation officer at mid-sized software company. “So we built it.”
Other Tools
Portfolio management and idea execution tools—which typically enable companies to evaluate, approve, assign, and track ideas—are being used by 39.5 percent of respondents.
Though that’s a smaller number than those using idea collection tools, it appears that respondents using portfolio-management tools were more committed and invested in their utilization. “So far, the most powerful feature is the automation of some idea evaluation, as well as the idea analytics,” noted one respondent. “It’s very powerful to have visibility into our portfolio; we’ve barely scratched the surface of all the value we can get from the platform…”Others agreed, noting that—like any enterprise software application—it takes internal commitment to extract real value from an innovation tool. “If the organization is behind it, the value can be pretty remarkable,” noted the innovation director at $5 billion industrial manufacturer. “The opportunities for savings that emerge from our global workforce, and the new-business opportunities they’ve recommended, far outweigh the cost of the tool we implemented.”
When Deployments Don’t Go Well
When we asked executives about how successful their roll-out of innovation-specific software had been, 86.5 percent said they felt it was being leveraged well. But 13.5 percent said they didn’t feel the software was being effectively utilized. Why?
Complexity was one reason. One executive said that the user experience “was terrible, and so no one used the tool.” Another described the software he purchased as “wonky and difficult to use. We also struggled to translate the metrics into something usable by the organization. It eventually fell by the wayside in favor of simpler tools we had developed ourselves.” Another executive said that configuring and implementing project portfolio management (PPM) software “was much more complex than we understood it to be in the evaluation process.”Others said that keeping up employee interest levels and momentum with idea-collection tools was a challenge, as was maintaining and organizing the ideas being submitted and cultivated. “We learned that innovation is not so much about finding great ideas, as it is about moving them ahead,” one respondent said.
Getting software deployed and ensuring people use it, in summary, can be a major investment of time — which some executives said distracted them from projects that could move the needle for their business. “Generating solid ideas is a process, and the low-hanging fruit goes away quickly,” an insurance industry executive explained. “The idea collection/generation tools typically require lots of work for very little return.” Managing software could leave innovation leaders feeling like they weren’t innovating, “they are serving as team-IT lead. That’s broken,” said an executive from a large apparel company.
Conclusions
Companies seem to be taking a “walk before we run” approach. This enables the innovation team to understand exactly what they need in terms of tools, and perhaps develop some strategies for getting the tools—and the data they generate—adopted widely throughout the organization and delivering value. More importantly, the “walk before we run” approach may ultimately help them ascertain what gaps exist, which then create the incentive and business case to upgrade to more professional innovation software tools.
For vendors serving the corporate market, it remains a challenge to demonstrate the benefits of upgrading from over-the-counter tools. But winners in the space may actually need to embrace the fact that companies are happily using Excel, Salesforce and Sharepoint. Instead of fighting the battle to supplant Excel, vendors may want to consider providing a suite of value-added services that are tool-agnostic, whether training or consulting, and once inside the organization, they can better advocate for software sales and deployments. Simplifying deployment and reducing integration headaches—as well thinking through how the tool will prove useful over the long-term—will also be important ways for vendors to differentiate their offerings.
