IBM® Idea Factory, formerly called Innovation Factory, can help expand your sources of
innovation, provide insight into emerging trends through early user feedback,
foster brand loyalty, and accelerate time to market for new offerings.
In today's global economy, competition is more intense than ever. 72% of
executives rank innovation as one of their top three strategic priorities
(Innovation 2006, Boston Consulting Group). Companies are expanding their
sources of innovation beyond the company walls to leverage the creative
potential of partners and customers. In fact, 62% of respondents to a
reader survey cited collaboration as an important driver of innovation
(R&D Magazine, 2005).
Through global collaboration, companies can differentiate themselves from
competitors. IBM Idea Factory provides a powerful set of capabilities to
help companies deliver winning solutions by fostering collaborative
innovation.
For example, in just minutes an innovator can create a home page for a
trial service like this one:
Idea Factory can help companies overcome common barriers to innovation.
Idea Factory can help companies:
Improve team coordination through the use of the latest Web 2.0
technologies.
Select the right ideas early in the innovation life cycle through
real-time user feedback and rating, thus helping to ensure investment is focused
on improving the winning ideas.
Speed time-to-market by allowing business users to create
product trial Web portals without needing IT help.
Reduce risk by expanding sources of innovation with partners and
customers.
The nature of innovation is shifting from closed-door research and
development initiatives within an enterprise to an open, collaborative
approach.
Idea Factory helps accelerate the delivery of winning
products by enabling companies to:
Build communities of subject matter experts to collaborate on
initiatives. These social networks can be cross-function,
cross-enterprise, and cross-country.
Develop new business offerings by identifying and refining
requirements, designs, and prototypes with a co-creative approach.
Conduct product trials to improve offerings with user feedback.
Idea Factory supports the process of collaborative innovation, which spans
from identifying strategic business imperatives to conducting trials, as
shown below:
Idea Factory leverages technology from across IBM's software brands,
including Lotus®, WebSphere®, Tivoli® and Information
Management. It provides a rich set of Web 2.0 capabilities, such as blogs,
wikis, social tagging, profiles, and information discovery to meet
innovation challenges.
Idea Factory can be delivered as a hosted service or an on-site solution
customized to individual business needs.
For more information about Idea Factory, contact the
IBM HiPODS team.
IBM
Idea Factory: Accelerating Innovation (PDF) (April 2008): This brochure describes how IBM
Idea Factory expands your sources of innovation, provides insights into
emerging trends through early user feedback, fosters brand loyalty, and
accelerates time to market for new offerings.
Creating a platform for innovation by leveraging the
IBM Idea Factory solution (PDF)
(March 2008): This paper describes a generic
approach to creating an innovation platform
and the specific solution developed by IBM
called IBM Idea Factory. The benefits of the
solution are illustrated by the innovation
life cycle, which is a common process that
IBM has observed across a wide variety of
customers and industries. The goal of the
solution is to provide a flexible and dynamic
platform for innovators to collaborate on
ideas and create Web sites for interacting
with interested users.
Cloud Computing (PDF):
This paper describes cloud computing, a computing platform for the
next generation of the internet. The paper defines clouds, explains
the business benefits of cloud computing, and outlines cloud
architecture and its major components. Readers will discover how a
business can use cloud computing to foster innovation and reduce IT
costs. IBM’s implementation of cloud computing is described.
Idea Factory demo (WMV):
A five-minute demonstration introducing the Innovation Factory
interface through a brief scenario. You will need the Windows™
Media Player to view this demo. Download the player
here.
"Guide For Multinationals: One of the great challenges for a
multinational is learning how to build a productive global team:" An
article in the August 20, 2007 edition of
Business Week that talks
about innovation and the HiPODS team. The article describes how IBM
uses Innovation Factory to power its own innovation portal.
