What do you get when you mix Web 2.0 and social networking
concepts with a patented and customizable innovation process framework?
According to Norwegian start-up company Induct
Software, the result is a Software-as-a-Service-based platform (SaaS) that
lets companies practice open innovation as part of an accessible Web-based
community.
Based on the work of researchers and professors in the open
innovation field, Induct aims to counter the premise of traditional innovation
tools, most of which target company employees and are software versions of the
old-fashioned corporate suggestion box, according to David Burns, Induct
Software's CEO, formerly CEO of Fast
Search & Transfer (FAST), a maker of search-engine technology that is
now a division of Microsoft Corp. Conversely, Induct, a true Web-hosted
platform, applies enterprise Web 2.0 technologies and social media practices to
make an Innovation Community accessible to internal company employees, as well
as external customers, partners, retailers and suppliers, as long as the
appropriate security constraints are put into play.
"Traditionally, innovation has been an internally focused
discipline where people inside a company try to come up with new ideas, but
there's a huge amount of information locked away on the outside," Burns says.
"We want to let them participate in the process."
Using Induct's familiar "Facebook-type" interface,
participants share ideas, collaborate and get feedback. Users can participate
in discussion threads and post their own homepage profile, which advertises
their specific skill sets to the rest of the Innovation Community. In addition,
the software's process design framework ensures that all valuable ideas are "bubbled
up" for input and action by managers and executives so valuable innovation
suggestions aren't lost at the lower levels of the organization.
"Because innovation management is relatively new and not
formalized, the solutions are pretty much cobbled together and not consistent
across a department or even a division," Burns says. Induct's Web 2.0 style of
user interface really appeals to people because they are used to it in terms of
how to build a community, compared with other innovation platforms like Invention Machine's Goldfire,
which are aimed more at the research and scientific communities, he says.
The other key differentiator of Induct is patented
technology that links a type of innovation to a customized ranking algorithm
an approach necessary, Burns says, because different types of innovation need
to be treated differently. Induct has defined several types of innovation,
including product innovation, process innovation, organizational innovation and
technology innovation and embedded ranking algorithms for each into the Induct
platform. This approach enables companies to evaluate their particular
innovation in the best light for optimal decision making, he says.
The software, which has been pilot tested in Norway, is
available immediately from Induct as a hosted service, starting at $15 per
user per month.
Tweet This
3 
