IdeaScale Launches Idea Incubation

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 23, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- IdeaScale today announced the availability of the latest 2015 version of its cloud-based open innovation platform. The new features and functionality are designed to help organizations develop ideas all the way from the moment of initial inspiration to the idea's fully-baked execution.

Recently, many innovative organizations have adopted crowdsourcing tactics to gather ideas from employees and customers.  However, industry experts have noted that an idea by itself has no intrinsic value, but an idea combined with successful execution can change the world. This is why IdeaScale introduced stages to help build ideas into more robust proposals with the help of the crowd.

"The leading mission-driven organizations of our day need better ways to close the gap between the birth of an idea and the moment when that idea begins to pay off in revenue," said Rob Hoehn, CEO of IdeaScale, "We have dedicated this year to finding new modes for crowd delegation of tasks and the development of an idea into a shovel-ready project."

The new offering was built using open innovation and crowdsourcing mechanics, and incubates ideas through a series of stages to develop a fully fledged product or process improvement.  The key insight is that to be adopted, an idea has to be sufficiently incubated  before it's handed over to the operational side of the business.

Key functionality includes:

• Team Building. Internal entrepreneurs recruit colleagues to help develop the idea. For example, an app idea may need a designer and an engineer to build a prototype.  Through the team building functionality, employees can volunteer to share their skills to take the idea the next level.
• Idea Refinement. Teams develop their ideas into pitches or proposals. Consistent templates make ideas easier to compare and make sure that the teams are focusing on key criteria such as market size and intellectual property. 
• Expert Review & Portfolio Prioritization. Experts across the organization then rate the ideas against the overall strategy to prioritize the innovation portfolio.  This stage includes multiple tools including financial analysis of costs and benefits and assessments of how the idea rates against strategic factors such as availability of resources and overall product strategy.
• Funding. In the final stage, budget owners fund the top ideas to enable them to develop into real products and process changes.  This can either be from established budgets or by using internal crowdfunding to allow the employee crowd to fund their favorite innovations.

IdeaScale's platform is designed for ease of adoption – both for innovation program leaders as well as contributing community members. It is one of the easiest systems to set-up and maintain without requiring professional services staff and the fastest to launch.

IdeaScale Stages is one of many additions that are part of the 2015 product roadmap.  For a live demonstration of Stages in action, please sign up for this IdeaScale webinar http://www2.ideascale.com/stages-demo.  

About IdeaScale:

IdeaScale is the largest cloud-based innovation software platform in the world with more than 25,000 customers and 4 million users. The software allows organizations to involve the opinions of public and private communities by collecting their ideas and giving users a platform to vote. The ideas are then evaluated, routed, and delivered on the back-end, making IdeaScale the engine of innovation. IdeaScale's current client roster includes industry leaders, such as Cisco, the Department of Homeland Security, Marriott, NBC, the White House, and many others. For more information about IdeaScale, visit ideascale.com.

Press Contact: Jessica Day
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SOURCE IdeaScale

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