b.cognosco

Making idea creation and management explicit is something well worth doing. There's a whole range of thought on facilitating structured innovation. (One example is Robert G. Cooper's Stage Gate methodology, profiled in Product Development for the Service Sector.) A good KM system should intuitively reinforce both effective ideation (idea creation) and efficient development of good ideas. But designing in such capabilities isn't as simple as collecting documents or messages.

This Idea Management resource listing is a good place to start the thinking process for building such a system.

Creativity + Knowledge Management = Idea Management

OK. Let's assume you're creative and innovative, and so are your employees. So what do you do with all of this creativity, all these ideas? You manage them, perhaps with the help of the concepts and software emerging from the growing subset of innovation management known as idea management. Idea management can also be thought of as the crossroads where innovation intersects with knowledge management. As usual, Chuck Frey at InnovationTools.com is already on this: he's launched an Idea Management Resource Center that's worth checking out. [Corante: IdeaFlow]