As the business world becomes more competitive and cutthroat, innovation takes a crucial position in product building. Today, companies that fail to innovate risk being left behind, regardless of their size or market share.

Product development is among the most critical areas that require innovation. The success of a product depends on its ability to meet the ever-changing needs and preferences of customers. As such, companies invest significant resources in product development to create innovative products that outperform their competitors in the market.

However, developing successful products is not easy. It requires a comprehensive understanding of the market, customer needs, and industry trends.

What is Innovation Management?

Innovation management is a structured and efficient process of introducing new ideas, products, or processes. It involves identifying opportunities, developing, implementing, and evaluating ideas. Successful innovation management combines creativity, strategy, and discipline.

This process offers a framework for product development teams to consistently generate and implement new ideas. It helps companies improve their product portfolios, strengthen their competitive position, and expand their market share.

Benefits of Effective Innovation Management

1. Improved efficiency: Effective innovation management streamlines the process of idea generation, development, and implementation, reducing the time and resources required to bring a new product to market.

2. Enhanced competitiveness: Companies that innovate regularly can outperform their competitors by offering new products that meet the changing needs of customers.

3. Increased revenue: Successful innovation can lead to increased revenue as new products generate revenue streams that did not exist before.

4. Improved customer satisfaction: By developing new products that meet the needs of customers, companies can increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.

5. Better risk management: Innovation management provides a framework for risk management, allowing companies to identify and mitigate potential risks associated with new product development.

How to Select the Right Innovation Management Tool

When selecting the right tool for managing the innovation process of your team, it's important to keep a few things in mind to ensure you choose the best one for your organization:

• Identify the problem you're trying to solve and the goals you want to achieve with the tool.

• Consider your budget and choose a tool that fits within it.

• Look for a tool that has the features you need, such as ideation, collaboration, and analytics.

• Read reviews and ask for recommendations from other businesses in your industry.

• Choose a tool that is user-friendly and easy to implement.

• Consider the level of customer support provided by the tool's company.

• Take advantage of free trials to test out the tool before committing to a purchase.

List of Top 10 Innovation Management Tools

We have carefully selected the best tools you can utilize to start a structured process for managing innovation in your team after an extensive research. Our list includes tools that help businesses to ideate, collaborate, and execute their innovative ideas. Our selection process ensures that these tools meet the highest standards in terms of features, pricing, and user-friendliness.

FeedBear: A Modern, Minimal, and Capable Innovation Management Platform

FeedBear is an affordable and user-friendly platform for innovation management, designed to help teams efficiently manage their software development lifecycle.

FeedBear provides a quick and user-friendly tool that assists your team in staying organized, collaborating effectively, and engaging your customers.

The main concept of FeedBear is to create a powerful yet simple idea management and roadmap tool that is modern and unmatched in the market.

Many alternatives have excessive features and settings, making them difficult to learn and set up. Our goal is to create a tool that minimizes the learning curve for users and team members. We believe we have achieved this, as onboarding and setup can be completed in just a few minutes.

A secondary, yet important goal of FeedBear is to minimize the workload for product teams in maintaining and utilizing the tool, thus saving time whenever feasible.

Idea Board

FeedBear allows you to create unlimited idea boards for feedback, ideas, feature requests, bug reports, and more. It centralizes feedback from both your team and customers.

• Users can comment and vote on ideas, which can be kept internal or made public.

• Similar ideas are automatically surfaced and suggested to users as they attempt to post a new one, minimizing duplication.

• Align product development with customer needs to increase satisfaction and reduce churn.

• Facilitates collaboration among product, support, and customer success teams to improve the product and meet customer needs.

• Team members have complete control to merge and reorganize ideas, as well as edit, move, or delete them.

Visual Product Roadmap

FeedBear offers a customizable and user-friendly product roadmap for effective communication of your needs. You can personalize columns and statuses to have complete control.

The tool ensures team alignment towards common goals by tracking planned, in-progress, and completed tasks. Also, it provides a simple way to update customers on your progress.

Engage Your Customers

Share your innovation management platform with customers to demonstrate that you value their feedback. Create a sense of community and loyalty among your customers by using comments and discussions to identify their real problems and needs, ultimately reducing churn and improving retention.

Announce New Features and Releases

Keep customers informed of new features and releases using a built-in changelog. This will help close the feedback loop and generate excitement for new features. You can make sure that new features receive attention and real usage from customers, which can help retain them and increase overall satisfaction with your product.

Integrate with Your Favorite Tools

Easily integrate with popular tools such as Trello, Jira, Intercom, Slack, and Zapier. Incorporate your innovation management platform into your current workflow to ensure smooth operation.

Simple and Customizable Design

Our simple and customizable design facilitates a quick start with minimal learning required. Share your idea board on your own domain, website, or application.

Affordable

At just $49 per month, FeedBear is an affordable option for startups and small businesses looking to improve their product development process. You get a wide range of features and benefits at an incredibly low price point. If someone needs it for a bigger team then business starts at $99.

To summarize it:

• Users have the freedom to contribute their ideas and suggestions while others can vote for the ones they favor.
• FeedBear enhances your understanding of prioritization, enabling better decision-making.
• It offers a platform for keeping customers informed about ongoing updates.
• FeedBear automatically provides status updates as you make progress on your product or address customer requests.
• FeedBear stands out with its user-friendly UI, known for its simplicity and ease of use.
• Users can provide feedback without the need for an email, reducing obstacles in the feedback process.
• FeedBear is intuitive and user-friendly, facilitating efficient feedback collection and management.
• Users can swiftly implement new features based on the feedback they receive.

FeedBear streamlines team workflow, providing a user-friendly and effective tool. Its minimal and inventive design makes it easy to set up and work with. Try FeedBear today and experience what it can do for you firsthand.

IdeaScale

IdeaScale is a tool that connects organizations with people who have innovative ideas. The platform allows you to capture, develop, prioritize, and select ideas that are already present in your environment and turn them into projects and data. IdeaScale is appropriate for businesses, governments, nonprofits, and educational institutions that want to generate collaboration and co-create solutions with their communities.

Core Features

• IdeaScale is a cloud-based platform for idea management and innovation.

• Users can create communities to submit, comment, and vote on ideas.

• Responsive design ensures optimal functionality across any device or browser.

• IdeaScale supports custom fields for ideas, profiles, or campaigns, enabling the collection of relevant data.

• The platform employs a stage-gate process for the development, prioritization, and selection of ideas.

• IdeaScale seamlessly integrates with various tools and systems, including Slack, Salesforce, and SharePoint.

• Decent analytics and reporting features provide valuable insights into the performance and impact of ideas.

Pricing

IdeaScale has four pricing plans: Engage, Evolve, Advance, and Transform.

The pricing plans are based on the number of users and the features they can access. The price ranges from $12,999 to $64,999 per year.

IdeaScale offers a free plan for up to 25 users and 5 campaigns, but it has limited features and functionality compared to the paid plans. Users can upgrade to a paid plan anytime if they need more users or features.

For users with specific needs or requirements that are not covered by the standard pricing plans, IdeaScale offers custom subscriptions. Users can contact IdeaScale’s advisors to request more information and get a personalized quote for their custom subscription.

Note: These prices are not mentioned on IdeaScale’s website and are taken from third-party sources. Therefore, users should verify the prices with IdeaScale before making any purchase

KeepSolid Goals

KeepSolid Goals is a software tool that facilitates goal management processes for startups, business owners, and PMs. It enables users to set goals, create strategies and enhance team productivity. The software provides an objective gallery that offers an overview of all the objectives, tasks, assigned team members, key results, KPIs, budgets, and due dates.

Core Features

• Onboarding tools to help users get started with the platform.

• Individual and team objective and key result (OKR) setting to help achieve goals.

• Strategic alignment to align team goals with the overall strategy.

• Key performance indicator (KPI) management to track progress toward goals.

• Goal management to manage and track progress towards goals.

• Analytics and reporting tools to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

• Progress tracking to see how far users have come.

• Budget tracking to track expenses.

• Use mind maps to set goals.

• Check the activity dashboard to see what tasks need to be done.

• Get alerts and notifications to stay on track.

• Collaborate better with team members using collaboration tools.

• Track project costs with cost-to-completion tracking.

• Start quickly with customizable templates.

• See project timelines with Gantt/timeline view.

• Manage tasks with Kanban board.

• Track progress towards goals with milestone tracking.

Pricing

KeepSolid Goals has a single pricing plan that costs $7.99 per user per month.

This plan is suitable for up to 30 team members and offers a 14-day free trial.

KeepSolid Goals does not ask for your credit card details during the free trial, and you can cancel at any time.

Additionally, KeepSolid Goals offers a free plan as well.

Brightidea

Brightidea is an innovation management software designed for innovation teams. It provides a platform to collect ideas from various sources using web portals, mobile apps, email campaigns, paper forms, or voice skills. The tool enables users to evaluate and prioritize ideas based on custom criteria, collaborate on solutions, and track outcomes.

Core Features

• Idea Management: Collect and organize ideas in a centralized platform with idea boards, filters, and tags.

• Project Management: Create and manage innovation projects with clear goals, timelines, budgets, and deliverables.

• Feedback Collection: Collect feedback from various sources with surveys, forums, commenting, and ranking features.

• Idea Sources: Source ideas from both internal and external sources with idea campaigns, suggestion boxes, hackathons, incubator programs, etc.

• Integration: Integrate with various tools and platforms, such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Salesforce, Jira, Zapier, etc.

• Analytics: Measure the impact of innovation initiatives on various metrics with capable analytics tools and generate reports, dashboards, insights, etc.

Pricing

Brightidea.com does not publicly disclose its pricing details. To receive a personalized quote that caters to your specific needs, you must contact them directly. According to user feedback, the initial cost for a flat rate plan is rumored to be $59 per month. GetApp has given Brightidea.com a 4.2 / 5 rating for the value it provides.

Viima

Viima is a tool used by organizations to manage innovation in a simple yet effective way. It helps collect and develop ideas from employees or customers, allowing them to adapt to any process or need, from stage-gate to lean startup, hackathons, and more.

Core Features

• Idea contribution and development: Users can submit their ideas through web, mobile, email, or Microsoft Teams. They can collaborate, vote, and comment on ideas with others.

• Idea ranking: Viima uses a unique algorithm to rank ideas based on popularity, feasibility, and impact. Users can customize their own ranking criteria and filters.

• Campaign management: Users can create and manage campaigns for specific goals or challenges. They can set deadlines, rewards, and feedback mechanisms for each campaign.

• Gamification tools: Viima uses gamification elements such as points, badges, and leaderboards to motivate and engage users in the innovation process.

• Reporting and analytics tools: Viima also provides various reports and dashboards to help users monitor and measure the performance of their ideas and campaigns. They can also export data to other tools for further analysis.

Pricing Information

Viima has different pricing plans based on the number of users and features required. The free plan is ideal for teams just starting with innovation and it allows up to 10 users and 1 board. It comes with self-service support and basic features such as idea submission, voting, commenting, and ranking.

The Basic plan caters to small teams who need more flexibility and control. It allows up to 50 users and 3 boards with email support. It also includes additional features such as custom fields, filters, categories, and integrations. The Basic plan costs $39 per month.

For larger organizations who need unlimited access to all features and users, the Unlimited plan is suitable. It allows unlimited users and boards with priority support. It also includes advanced features such as campaigns, analytics, gamification, SSO, and API. The Unlimited plan costs $1799 per month.

Innovation Cloud

Innovation Cloud is software that streamlines your innovation process, starting from the idea generation stage to the final product development phase. The tool allows you to collect ideas from various sources and assess them based on customized criteria. You can then execute these ideas using project management tools and track their impact.

Core Features

• Everyone can participate in the innovation process.

• Ideation workflow is streamlined and easy to manage.

• Integration with Microsoft 365 and other tools.

• Complete management of the innovation process from start to finish.

• Data is democratized and cloud-native application platforms are used to create engaging experiences.

• Insightful reports are available for better decision-making.

• Customizable workflows, forms, fields, and categories to suit specific innovation processes.

• Collaboration and communication tools such as comments, ratings, notifications, and feedback are available.

Pricing

Innovationcloud.com has a free idea management software that lets you collect, develop, and execute team ideas. You get 15 users, 100 ideas, and 1GB of storage. It has features like idea collaboration, voting, and approval, idea board, idea sharing, access control, activity dashboard, and scoring.

For more users and storage, you can upgrade to the PRO packages. PRO 20 costs 25€ or 30$ per month and includes 20 users, unlimited ideas, unlimited idea folders, and 2GB of storage. It has all the features of the free version plus idea folders, documents and files, discussion groups, and analytics.

PRO 50 costs 60€ or 70$ per month and includes 50 users, unlimited ideas, unlimited idea folders, and 5GB of storage. It has all the features of PRO 20 plus custom fields and categories.

PRO 100 costs 100€ or 115$ per month and includes 100 users, unlimited ideas, unlimited idea folders, and 10GB of storage. It has all the features of PRO 50.

Sideways 6

Sideways 6 is a software platform that facilitates employee engagement in change and innovation processes. It enables employees to share their ideas for improving the business via existing collaboration tools like Microsoft Teams or Yammer. Sideways 6 assists managers in collecting, analyzing, and acting on those ideas, to help with building a culture of feedback and collaboration.

Core Features

• Idea challenges for targeted campaigns.

• Gamification to motivate and reward employee participation.

• Sentiment analysis to measure employee mood and satisfaction.

• Chatbot for idea submission guidance and instant feedback.

• Native integration with popular communication platforms.

• Centralized dashboard for idea tracking, evaluation, and prioritization.

• Automated workflows for streamlined idea management processes.

• Analytics and reporting to measure impact on business outcomes and employee engagement.

Pricing

Sideways 6 costs money and doesn't have a free version. The starting price for the paid version is $2,000 per month, but you can get a personalized price based on your needs by filling out a form on their website. This information was found on a review site, not on Sideways 6's website.

Aha! Ideas

Aha! Ideas is a cloud-based software that enables you to set strategy, capture feedback, prioritize features, and create visual roadmaps. With this tool, you can define your vision, goals, and initiatives based on customer needs and market insights. It allows you to collect feedback from different sources and convert them into actionable plans. Additionally, you can prioritize features based on their value and effort, create roadmaps for various audiences, and track progress across teams.

Core Features

• Ideas portals: online spaces to collect, submit, vote, and comment on ideas from different sources.

• In-app feedback widget: a tool to capture ideas while customers use your product.

• Custom scorecards: assign scores to ideas based on criteria like value, effort, or risk.

• Custom fields: add information to ideas like tags, categories, or statuses.

• Custom workflows: define the stages that ideas go through from submission to implementation.

• Empathy sessions: invite users to share feedback live via video or audio calls.

• Reports and charts: visualize and analyze data from ideas like votes, comments, scores, or statuses.

• Product roadmaps: link ideas to product strategy and show alignment with goals and initiatives.

• Integrations: connect ideas with other tools like Jira, Trello, GitHub, or Slack.

Pricing Information

Aha! Ideas offer two plans: Essentials and Advanced.

The Essentials plan requires a minimum of three paid users and costs $39 per user per month. It provides unlimited portals for crowdsourcing feedback. The Advanced plan also requires a minimum of three paid users and costs $59 per user per month. In addition to the features of the Essentials plan, it offers advanced analytics, custom fields, integrations, and more.

Aha! Roadmaps is a product management suite that includes Ideas Essentials for crowdsourcing feedback. The Starter plan costs $59 per user per month, while the Premium plan costs $99 per user per month. The Enterprise plan costs $124 per user per month, and the Enterprise+ plan costs $149 per user per month. You can upgrade your Roadmaps account to include Ideas Advanced for an additional cost.

MindMeister

MindMeister is an online tool designed for capturing, developing, and sharing ideas in a visual way. It is ideal for brainstorming sessions and organizing thoughts. MindMeister enables users to create an unlimited number of mind maps using different layouts, themes, and icons. It also allows for real-time collaboration with team members through chat and comments.

Core Features

• Mindmap templates for brainstorming ideas.

• Mindmap editor for creating and editing mind maps.

• Attachments for adding notes, links, images, or videos to ideas.

• Project management with MeisterTask integration for turning mind maps into project plans and assigning tasks and deadlines to team members.

• Publishing and embedding for sharing mind maps online or embedding them on websites or blogs to get feedback or showcase work.

• Images, videos, and more for making mind maps engaging and memorable by inserting images, embedding YouTube videos or audio files, or adding emojis and stickers to ideas.

• Import and exports for importing mind maps from other formats such as MindManager, Freemind, or XMind and exporting mind maps as PDFs, images, or text outlines.

• History mode for tracking changes made to mind maps over time, seeing who contributed what, and restoring previous versions of mind maps.

Pricing

The Basic plan is free and includes up to three mind maps, real-time collaboration, import functionality, and email support.

The Personal plan costs €4.99 per month (or $2.49 per month with a lifetime deal) and provides unlimited mind maps, advanced export options, file attachments, custom themes, statistics, and reports.

The Pro plan costs €8.25 per month and offers team management, branded presentations, custom styles, group sharing links, and priority support.

The Business plan costs €12.49 per month and includes everything in Pro, plus an admin control panel, user groups, and custom domain mapping.

Crowdicity

Crowdicity is an idea management solution that allows organizations to gather and handle ideas and feedback from stakeholders like customers, employees, and others. Its cloud-based nature provides the convenience of collaboration across teams and locations.

Crowdicity's social features, such as commenting, voting, and gamification, aid in teamwork and improve engagement.

Core Features

• Set and launch challenges, refine ideas with stage gates, and automate idea progression.

• Manage ideas by capturing, categorizing, and prioritizing them with criteria like votes, comments, ratings, or tags. Collaborate on ideas using social tools.

• Use analytics tools to track and analyze challenge and idea performance. Metrics include engagement, diversity, impact, and innovation. Reports and insights inform decision-making.

• Access Crowdicity on any device with a web browser or app. Get notifications on challenges and ideas via email or push messages.

• Control access to Crowdicity by inviting users or using SSO/LDAP. Assign roles and permissions based on involvement.

• Integrate Crowdicity with email providers to send/receive emails from the platform. Customize templates and branding to match the organization.

• Customize landing pages and UI. Attract users with custom pages for challenges and ideas. Personalize Crowdicity with themes, colors, logos, and images.

Pricing

Crowdicity has three pricing plans: Starter, Professional, and Enterprise.

The Starter plan costs $99 per month or $999 per year and is for small teams or projects. It includes up to 100 users, 1 challenge, basic analytics, and support.

The Professional plan costs $499 per month or $4999 per year and is for medium-sized organizations or departments. It includes up to 1000 users, 5 challenges, advanced analytics, and support.

The Enterprise plan is for large organizations or networks and has unlimited challenges and users, custom features, integrations, analytics, and support. The price for the Enterprise plan is only available upon request.

Idea Note

Idea Note is a tool that organizations can use to collect, develop, prioritize, and act on ideas. It is a web-based software that allows users to create and launch idea campaigns, invite participants, evaluate and rank ideas, and track their progress.

Core Features:

• Create and launch different types of idea campaigns with customizable settings.

• Organize and visualize ideas on interactive boards with filtering, sorting, and grouping options.

• Evaluate ideas using various methods such as voting, rating, commenting, and assigning reviewers/experts.

• Turn ideas into actionable projects with clear goals, milestones, and progress tracking using metrics and reports.

• Use ready-made templates or create custom templates for different types of ideas.

• Invite and engage team members or stakeholders to collaborate on idea campaigns, share ideas, and comment on others’ ideas.

• Measure and analyze the performance and impact of ideas and projects with idea analytics.

Pricing

The Free plan is for small teams of up to 10 people who want to manage their ideas. It has no limit on guests and includes all the features needed to collect, engage, manage, and automate ideas.

The Business plan starts at $49 per month for 15 people and can handle up to 2,500 people. It's good for bigger teams or organizations that want to do multiple idea campaigns and projects. The plan includes all the Free plan features and more advanced ones like custom branding, integrations, analytics, and support.

The Enterprise plan is for big companies that need a personalized solution for their innovation needs. It has all the Business plan features plus dedicated account management, custom development, security, and compliance.

Conclusion

After exploring various innovation management platforms, it's safe to say that FeedBear is one of the best tools out there. With its combination of affordability, ease of use, and functionality, it's hard to beat.

FeedBear offers a centralized idea board, a customizable public roadmap, and a changelog all in one place. Its clean and modern design is a plus, and the ability to communicate with customers is a game-changer.

If you're looking for a simple solution without adding another subscription, FeedBear is definitely worth trying. It's an excellent tool for collaborating with customers and ensuring that you're building the right features.

• FeedBear is affordable and easy to use.

• It offers a centralized idea board, a customizable public roadmap, and a changelog all in one place.

• The tool has a clean and modern design.

• It provides the ability to communicate with customers.

• FeedBear is an excellent choice for collaborating with customers and building the right features.