To make an effective innovation process, an innovation manager must generate an ecosystem that lets the team communicate efficiently, work on concepts, and share files collaboratively.

FREMONT, CA: Innovation management has begun to attract enterprises from the past decade or so due to its value in bringing game-changing ideas and molding the way organizations do business. Idea management means managing and developing ideas and broadening the act of sculpting ideas into actual innovation. Below given are 3 essential tools every innovation manager needs.

Communication

It's no doubt that communication is the key to successful teamwork. The exact reason why it often doesn't get the attention it needs. Especially when creating a new team, often consisting of members from different departments or even countries, it's essential to know and set-up a communication infrastructure that caters to everybody's needs. The implementation of chat tools like Slack in the company is a great way to get rid of full inboxes and to speed-up project communication. So-called channels provide the possibility to address different topics in different chatrooms.

Task Management

Every company should incorporate centralized storage for all business-relevant files. It's the essence of creating a knowledge pool that will not only be highly valuable for current tasks, but also the projects and employees in the future.  For storing the files, many organizations use local servers, which can often only be accessed from within the company. Besides, the innovation team members might be situated in a different geographical area of the world and might sometimes work from home or co-working spaces. To be productive, no matter where they are working, it can be beneficial if the organization adopts a cloud storage solution, such as Dropbox.

Team Building

When a company sets up a technological and innovative process, usually new teams are created. Employees can come from different areas of work that now has to work together.  There are various methods and tools to accelerate this challenging process. One of them is the Coat of Arms. This supports the teams regarding team building, the division of roles, and managing expectations both within the organization as well as towards its stakeholders.