Brightidea’s API & GE’s ‘Spinnable’ Data Visualization

Brightidea's Application Programming Interface (API) allows customers to access and pull data collected by Brightidea software. API's are critical for creating, maintaining and updating a large amount of data for use in everything from complex reports to Sharepoint and LDAP integrations. But, it's not all boring excel charts and user management. Often times, customers' use the API's for interesting new creative outputs as well.

As part of the Ecomagination Challenge, GE recently utilized Brightidea's API to create a detailed graphic visualization that conceptualizes and sorts through more than 1,300 ideas. Like a 'spinnable' solar system of ideas, GE's interface features a timeline of rings holding clickable idea spheres, which, when clicked, give you an overview of the idea, a link to the idea, the number of votes & comments and sometimes even a picture of the submitter.

The idea circles vary in size and color, depending on the idea popularity (based on comments and votes) and innovation category. An opaque 'halo' shows the amount of comments on the idea. Sorting through the data is easy by date range and innovation category which adds and removes ideas instantly. With a simple click and a spin, the visualization reveals more and more ideas, with a seemingly endless amount to explore. See for yourself here!

VIDEO: HP Introduces Brightidea Powered Campaigns on Mobile Devices

Good ideas can happen anywhere; during your morning commute, on the treadmill, and even in the supermarket. Creativity is not limited to a desk between the hours of 9AM and 5PM, Monday through Friday. Brightidea has long realized these fundamental points surrounding innovation and creativity. That's why Brightidea offers a mobile web version of its software so customers can have their WebStorm powered Campaigns accessed anywhere, anytime.

Using a web-browser on a mobile phone, users can seamlessly submit, comment, and vote on ideas on a BlackBerry, iPhone, or any other web supported mobile device. To introduce potential users to accessing our software on a mobile device, James Mercer of HP produced the below 5-minute demo video.

As one of Brightidea's most prominent customers and partners, HP often runs campaigns and finds interesting ways to utilize different features and functions of Brightidea software. This video highlights the functionality of one of HP's internal innovation campaigns, Idea Nursery, on a mobile device and provides some excellent visibility into innovation at work—mobile style.

In addition to using a web browser on a mobile device, Brightidea launched the first ever idea management app designed exclusively to power innovation on-the-go in February 2010. Brightidea Mobile, which offers increased functionality and simple, initiative user-interfaces, is designed specifically for the iPhone and is available exclusively for Brightidea customers. And make sure to check out the Brightidea Mobile powered GE iPhone App for the recently launched Ecomagination campaign here!

About the Author: Alyssa Brent is the 2010 summer marketing intern at Brightidea's New York office. She is contributing to the Power of Innovation Blog as a guest-writer covering current events and customer success stories.

 

"Targeted" vs. "Broad-Spectrum" WebStorms

This post is a part of the  'Innovation Management Practitioners Blog Series.'

When considering launching a WebStorm, there are many options and features to consider. We’ve talked about features in our last post - now let’s consider two types of WebStorms, targeted vs. broad spectrum.   First let's start by defining our terms. A WebStorm is Brightidea’s web-interface for idea collection and collaboration that facilitates three main front-end functions of idea management- Voting, Submitting, & Commenting- often referred to as an Idea 'Challenge' or 'Campaign'. A targeted WebStorm is topic specific and will often have a defined time period with a predetermined start and end date, while broad spectrum WebStorms are very general in terms of topic focus, and again, often, but not always, are ongoing with no specific timeline.

In the case of a targeted WebStorm, participants are asked to submit ideas on a specific initiative, question, or business challenge. “We are seeking to cut shipping costs by at least 25%,” for instance. On the other hand, one could set up a WebStorm with a much broader topic, or multiple broad themes, that simply request “give us your ideas.” In reality, the broad spectrum WebStorm is like the web-based version of the age-old ‘employee suggestion box,’ a general repository for any kind of suggestion that usually sat tucked in a corner of the company cafeteria or near the water cooler. It was there, yes, but it represented at best a half-hearted attempt on behalf of the employer to give employees a way to submit a suggestion or idea and stopped there.  No one really knew what would happen to a submission and in most cases, never heard a response or knew if ideas were ever actually implemented.

While there are exceptions, in most cases, a series of targeted WebStorms are far more successful at achieving real innovation results through a high-level of participation and strong implementation rate.

Here are four reasons why:

1.   Helps Secure Executive Buy-In

 

-A focused WebStorm is driven to find solutions to real business needs. This motivates senior executives to support the campaign, of which typically they are the initiators and sponsors. That support is critical to the resource allocation that makes marketing and elevating the visibility of the WebStorm much easier.

-Convincing senior executives why a WebStorm is valuable also involves stressing the importance of follow-through on idea submissions and provides a level of credibility needed to support evaluation and increases the likelihood of implementation.

2.   Creates Community Focus

-Targeted use-cases not only make identifying, but also communicating, objectives to the community easier. And when potential participants better understand the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of the WebStorm, the quality of idea submissions increases.

Q/A with Jeffrey Phillips: How to Find the Right Next Step for Every Idea

Most companies say that they would like to be more innovative. But in practice, transforming ideas into concrete innovations often leads to unforeseen challenges. To shed some light on these issues, we spoke with Jeffrey Phillips of OVO Innovation, author of the book "Make Us More Innovative."

Phillips will also be the keynote speaker for our August 12th Innovation Leaders Birds of a Feather (BOF) event at the Sony Headquarters in San Diego. Earlier this year, we kicked off our BOF "Next Step for Every Idea" Tour in New York City with a great event that brought innovation managers across industries together. We are looking forward to another lively and productive gathering in San Diego. If you are interested in joining us, please email Celia at Brightidea.

Upfront, Phillips shared his insights on avoiding the common pitfalls of idea evaluation and how to get the most out of an innovation campaign.

Brightidea: In one of your recent blog posts, you describe idea evaluation and prioritization as a common failure point in innovation processes. What are the top three reasons projects fail at this stage?

Jeffrey Phillips: I don't know if there are "three" main reasons, but there are different cases we should review.

Lack of Criteria

The first case is the instance where an executive demands new ideas and a team rapidly springs into generating those ideas. Coming up with ideas is usually fairly easy.  However, without a strategic framework, a well-defined problem definition and a set of criteria to compare ideas, objective evaluation is difficult.

Establishing a set of objective evaluation criteria prior to idea generation requires the team to slow down and carefully consider the problem it is trying to solve.  To determine what the "best" idea is, a significant amount of insight into the problem is essential.  For example, should the selected idea promote a disruptive or an incremental solution?  Should the idea be one that can be implemented quickly, or over time?

Bias in the Selection Process

In another case to consider, a set of evaluation criteria exist, but the decision maker attempts to ignore them to select a specific idea as the "best" one.  Typically this happens because the individual has knowledge that the rest of the team doesn't have, knows what the executive team will be willing to invest in, or simply wants to short-circuit the process.  Often, bias in the assessment process will result in the selection of ideas that don't fully address the problem or solve only part of the challenge.

Lack of Diversity

Even with good selection criteria, the evaluation team needs to reflect a range of perspectives and capabilities.  Therefore, an evaluation team that is too homogeneous can be a pitfall.  A technology idea evaluated by technologists may have a high score, but that doesn't mean the idea makes sense financially or that the idea can be launched through existing channels.  Ideas should be evaluated by a small, engaged but diverse team of people who represent all the business functions that will be necessary to build, launch and sell the new product or service.

Of course there are other additional factors and scenarios that can constrain effective idea evaluation.

Brightidea: So what can companies do to make sure their evaluation processes show concrete, valuable results?

Brightidea’s Coding DNA Series: Tools That Keep Us Honest.

This is the first post in a new series focusing on code development, design, and technical productivity central to Brightidea's innovation management software.

Several tools exist that allow administrators to examine performance at all stages of the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC). The metrics these tools provide are critical to identifying trends in workflow processes, and output- whether you are modifying existing code or developing new features & functionality.

These tools help track the performance of our developers, and the growth of our code over time. And it works. Here are a couple of examples why.


During the implementation stage of the SDLC you want to see the most code growth. This is when your Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) classes are built. If you are using the Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework then your controller should be almost completely finished. The Model and View classes will be mostly skeleton files but slowly start to be fleshed out.

Once your project starts to reach the alpha and beta stages you'll begin to see growth slowdown and move more into an update stage. This is where most of your refactoring and bug fixing will take place. There might be large spikes of new code here and there, but should be mostly due to new features or feature changes. If you find that growth is not slowing down, then you probably need to go back to the design stage in the SDLC and make sure you spend more time planning than coding.

5 Features to Consider for Innovation Challenges

This post is apart of the  'Innovation Management Practitioners Blog Series'.

At Brightidea, customers have literally hundreds of features and software functionality to choose from for a given campaign (or WebStorm, as we like to say). Many are standard features that are used in most cases, and built into our 'out-of-the-box' product, but several features and add-ons exist that are available to administrators which can, if used right, serve to enhance and enrich a campaign. The sheer number of options, and the flexibility that comes with them, allows a level of customization that sets Brightidea's WebStorm apart in the marketplace.

Here is a list of 5 features of Brightidea's software that administrators may or may not want to take advantage of when setting up their campaign. The features can either help make the campaign more successful, or, when used too soon, incorrectly, or in the wrong use-case, can discourage participation and negatively affect the community and ultimately, overall campaign results.

 

1. Demote:

Gives users the ability to demote ideas.

Provides a more accurate representation of the community's perceived value of an idea.

Cultural sensitivities may diminish willingness to contribute. When trying to nurture a culture of innovation, one must take into account differing perceptions across your entire audience, and something as seemingly small as demote voting does diminish participation in certain environments.

Innovation Management Practitioners Blog Series Launches

Brightidea is excited to announce the launch of the 'Innovation Management Practitioners Blog Series.' Once a month, our resident innovation expert, (and Vice President of Professional Services at Brightidea) James Pasmantier, will sit down with me to talk about the issues, topics, and trends relevant to innovation practitioners.

At Brightidea, James oversees the success of all client innovation campaigns, in particular focusing on best practices and large-scale rollouts. He is head of the Professional Services Group which consults Brightidea customers on everything from innovation best practices, deployment strategies, and setup & configuration for campaigns. James and his group work with a wide range of customers, from top global companies to start-ups, ensuring each one has the proper tools, knowledge and support they need to be successful.

James recieved a Masters of Business Administration from Columbia Business School and a Bachelor of Arts from Johns Hopkins University. As an innovaiton management expert with over 12 years of experience, James has worked to create and foster cultures of innovation at UBS, AMEX, Austrade, Centrica, Bayer, Emerson, Conifer Health Solutions, Cisco, McGraw Hill, Tecom, WMS Gaming, Swift, and many more.

This series will provide practical insight and timely, relevant tips on how to collect, manage, and implement ideas more effectively. Whether it's a one-time public campaign or a large-scale internal rollout, James's expertise is grounded in the real-world realities of managing innovation. And that makes all the difference.

 

Insights: Business Processes and Innovation

This is an excerpt from a post that first appeared on Logipi.com by Anna Kurg. The interview was conducted with James Pasmantier, Vice President of Professional Services at Brightidea, Inc. In it, James outlines some thoughts around business processes and innovation as a source of competitive advantage.

Brightidea Presents at IBM’s Innovate2010

What tools really help companies bring great, successful products to market? Last week, IBM's Rational Software partners gathered at the IBM INNOVATE 2010 conference in Orlando, Florida to present their answers to this question to thousands of customers.

The event was the perfect stage to announce the new Advanced Business Partnership of IBM and Brightidea. Together they showcased their solution to a mission-critical challenge for successful product development: How do you make sure the products you invest time and effort in are the right ones?

By integrating Brightidea's leading Innovation Management software with IBM Rational Focal Point, the two companies have created a comprehensive tool that enables businesses to convert great ideas into revenue driving products faster and more efficiently. In this video, James Ransdall, IBM's North American Business Leader, Innovation and PPM Solutions, and Brightidea's VP of Alliances, Ken Maier, explain how.

"Even if you have the best tools to build the next best thing – if it's not the right thing, it does not matter how good your tools are," explains Ken, and James adds, "So, we're trying to help people figure out what's the best thing to build."

The Brightidea/IBM partnership allows companies to source and rank large amounts of ideas more easily before selecting only the right ones with Rational Focal Point's uniquely effective technology.

The result, according to Ken and James, is an extremely intelligent decision making and execution process that will take good ideas to successful products faster than any other solution.

Read more on this annoucement.  

Innovation Executives Gather for “A Next Step for Every Idea” Tour Kickoff in NYC

 

Matt Greeley, CEO of Brightidea, sets the tone for each Birds of a Feather Event (BOF) event by stating the mission statement for BOF. Here is a summary:

 

The Brightidea Innovation Leaders "Birds of a Feather" Meeting is not a sales event. It is a peer to peer discussion on innovation management among Innovation Executives and Managers at top global corporations. BOF allows a forum to exchange ideas and best practices on implementing innovation in large organizations. The ability to share experiences is what makes BOF powerful.

 

This year, BOF's "A Next Step for Every Idea" tour was launched in New York City. Hosted by Nielsen at their NYC Headquarters, the first of several planned workshops filled to capacity with 45+ attendees that included innovation practioners from Adobe, AMEX, Bristol-Meyer Squibb, Cabot, Kraft, UBS, among others. The day provided a unique interactive forum which offered innovation leaders and experts the opportunity to discuss relevant topics and trends in an intimate, open setting. André St-Martin of Emerson felt that the event offered "innovation facilitators a chance to interact with other folks faced with similar challenges in their organization, and exchange on learning's and best practices."

 

The caliber of presenters was also a major draw. Ann Marie Dumais, Senior Vice President of New Product Introductions at Nielsen, Lisa Underkoffler, Principal Product Manager at Adobe, and Nicholas J. Webb, the CEO of Lassen Innovation and author of The Innovation Playbook each presented unique perspectives and real-world experiences that gave attendees incredible insight into how innovation is practiced and cultivated.

Ann Marie Dumais kicked off the morning with a presentation on the "Road to Innovation." She highlighted the four important types of people that are vital to the innovation process: creators, challengers, helpers and doers, and the BPQ (Better Products Quicker) and Innovation Platform which addresses the steps required to successfully launch a new product. Additionally, she touched upon lessons of innovation which included having an effective manager, clearly defining the problem you need to solve and the necessary steps you will take, and recognizing the different strengths and weaknesses of your team members.