Brightidea

Brightidea is idea and innovation management software for collecting, sharing, routing, screening, evaluating, experimenting with, incubating, developing, tracking and reporting on employee ideas. It emphasises global collaboration, breaking down organisational silos and geographic barriers to build a company-wide innovation culture.

Naming experimentation and incubation as distinct stages is what separates this from an idea collection tool, and the distinction is where most programmes stop. Collecting and screening ideas is straightforward; deciding that six of them deserve a small budget and a few weeks of someone's time, then tracking what happened, is the part that requires the organisation to actually change how it allocates effort. Software that models those stages at least makes the gap visible.

The emphasis on crossing geography and silos identifies the real value in a large organisation. The most useful ideas typically come from someone who can see a problem in one part of the business and a solution in another, and organisational structure is precisely what prevents that person existing.

Routing is a small feature carrying a lot of weight, since an idea reaching the wrong evaluator dies regardless of merit.