| TL;DR – Innovation and IP teams often lose ideas in emails or spreadsheets. Unclear submission steps stop many from being shared. Even captured ideas stall in review, sometimes letting weaker concepts move forward while better ones are overlooked. Idea management software solves these issues by creating an organized workflow, improving visibility, and ensuring consistent tracking across the pipeline. In this blog, we reviewed the 25 best idea management software for 2025, starting with the TIP Tool™ by Triangle IP for its simple, patent-aligned workflow. Explore the full list to find the right fit for your innovation and IP captures. |
You’ve probably seen this before. Teams submit ideas, but many never make it past the starting line. They often get lost in email chains or buried in spreadsheets. And the ones that somehow got collected, stall during manual review or vetting processes, causing high-value innovations to be overlooked. Meanwhile, low-value or low-patent-worthy ideas move forward and drain the budget (which you often realise very late).
This frustration is pushing more organizations toward structured idea management software, a market projected to reach USD 4.41 billion by 2034. And why not, there are so many benefits of idea management software, a couple like they could speed up evaluation and improve team collaboration, so strong ideas move forward quickly. That’s why we compared 25 leading platforms, starting with the TIP Tool™ by Triangle IP, followed by HYPE Innovate and Brightidea.
Before making your choice, it’s equally important to consider factors like ease of use and how effectively the tool engages your collaborators.
We made a detailed guide on factors to evaluate an idea management software. You can explore all criteria here before moving forward to the idea management software solutions we’ve identified for you.
And if your team is just getting started, you may also want to explore the 5 Best Free Idea Sharing Platforms to test lightweight options before scaling.
Best Idea Management Software Every Innovation-Led Enterprise Should Know (2025)
With 70 percent of organizations now focusing on building a stronger innovation culture, choosing the right platform matters more than ever. But to help you make sense of what’s out there, we reviewed 25 standout platforms that keep things simple, give you clear visibility into your workflow, and support IP-aligned decision-making.
Here are the top idea management software tools to consider in 2025.
- The TIP Tool™
- HYPE Innovate
- Brightidea
- IdeaScale
- Wazoku
- Ideanote
- Innosabi
- Braineet
- InnovationCast
- ITONICS
- Sideways 6
- Ideawake
- InspireIP
- OpenIdeaL
- Nosco
- LaunchPath
- Medallia Ideas
- Traction Technology
- Miro
- MangoApps
- Kickbox
- HeroX
- Qmarkets
- IdeaConnection
- Canny
Let’s begin with the TIP Tool™ by Triangle IP. It’s a great benchmark for what good idea management software should offer.
The TIP ToolTM
The TIP Tool™ by Triangle IP offers a structured and dependable way for enterprises to capture ideas and advance them with clarity. It replaces scattered emails and disconnected tools with a single, organized space where ideas can be documented, reviewed, and developed.
Designed by Thomas Franklin, a patent attorney with more than 25+ years of experience, the platform reflects a deep understanding of how easily valuable ideas can be lost without a consistent system. His expertise shaped a solution that brings order, visibility, and steady progress to idea management. It provides a process that is straightforward for inventors and trustworthy for the teams responsible for developing their best innovations.
Benefits and Supporting Features
Innovation moves faster when ideas are easy to capture, evaluate, and advance. The TIP Tool™ Idea Manager does this by eliminating bottlenecks and keeping teams aligned. Here’s how those strengths translate into meaningful benefits for your organization:
Make Idea Capture Smooth, Clear, and Stress-Free
The TIP Tool™ makes capturing ideas incredibly easy, even for first-time users. Instead of overwhelming inventors with long forms or complex workflows, the Idea Manager keeps things simple with a short, intuitive idea form.
Fields like title, summary, scores, and more, are easy to fill in. The system even auto-generates idea numbers, so no one has to think about formatting. Creators can also keep ideas private in draft mode until they are ready, making the early stage feel comfortable and stress-free.
Plus, the TIP Tool™ enables enterprise-wide idea capture with Pre-Approval Links. Admins whitelist a company domain and share a secure link. Anyone with that email domain can self-register. Onboarding becomes fast and simple while admins maintain full control.
Effortless Collaboration From the Very First Step
Adding co-inventors and managers is as simple as typing in their email addresses. If they’re already users, they’re added instantly; if not, they’re invited automatically when the idea is published.
The TIP Tool™ makes collaboration easy from day one. Teams can co-edit idea summaries, update fields together, and upload supporting documents at any stage. Changes sync in real time during Internal Vetting and Drafting, so everyone stays aligned without version conflicts.
The Summary Pad strengthens collaboration further. Users can see who is editing, track authorship with color coding, bookmark revisions, and review the full edit history using the TimeSlider feature. Everything including comments, edits, and documents remains centralized. This keeps discussions organized and supports a smoother, more transparent innovation workflow.
Role-Based Access That Keeps Everyone in Sync
The TIP Tool™ uses defined roles such as inventor, manager, and prosecutor. Each role determines the actions a contributor can take. These may include creating ideas, updating fields, managing portfolios, or moving items through workflow stages.
Admins can assign these roles and manage onboarding, adjust portfolio permissions, and configure fields to match organizational needs. This role-based structure keeps everyone aligned and reduces confusion. It also ensures each contributor sees only the information relevant to their responsibilities.
Stay Organized Even When Ideas Flood In
You can give a structured idea numbering to give every submission a clear identity. It makes it easy to sort and revisit ideas as they move through the workflow. Tags add another layer of organization. Hard Tags created by admins and Soft Tags added by users help teams organize their ideas effectively. They can group submissions by product, technology, business unit, priority, or any other category they need. With numbering, tags, and clearly defined workflow stages working together, large organizations can locate ideas quickly. They can review submissions without searching through emails or spreadsheets.
Know Exactly Which Ideas Need to be Prioritized
Instead of guessing which ideas deserve attention, the Idea Manager provides value and patentability scoring fields. The Value Score helps teams understand the business impact of an idea. The Patentability Score is predicted using art unit trends and examiner analytics, giving an early sense of its potential at the USPTO. Managers or counsel can adjust these scores as needed, which helps teams make smarter and more informed decisions.
A Clear Workflow That Keeps Ideas Moving Forward
Every idea progresses through clearly defined stages: Idea Capture, Patentability Search, Internal Vetting, Patent Drafting, Patent Review, and Filed. It’s instantly visible where each idea stands and what step comes next. This structured flow reduces bottlenecks, improves accountability, and keeps the innovation pipeline moving at a healthy pace.
All Your Idea-related Documents in One Central Home
Inventors can upload disclosures, diagrams, PDFs, videos, drafts, or any other files needed to explain or develop the idea. These files stay linked as the idea moves through different stages. Collaborators always have access to the same materials. Nothing gets buried in inboxes or scattered across shared drives.
No More Duplicate Edits or Version Chaos
One of the Idea Manager’s biggest strengths is how it handles updates. Any change made to an idea automatically appears in every filing that includes that idea. This is especially helpful when you update the summary. Legal teams always work with the latest and most accurate version, without needing to redo the same edits multiple times.
Privacy & Security Built Into Every Step
Security is not an add-on in the TIP Tool™. It is built into the way the platform works. The system never stores passwords or credit card details. All payments go through Stripe’s trusted and secure processing. Every piece of portfolio data is fully encrypted, which means even the Triangle IP team cannot view it. Disclosures and documents are stored safely on encrypted AWS servers in the US. Teams can upload sensitive information with confidence instead of relying on email. It gives your innovation process complete peace of mind from start to finish.
Best Suited For
The TIP Tool™ Idea Manager is built for any innovation-driven team, from early-stage startups to large enterprises. It is especially valuable for enterprises, individual inventors, and patent practitioners who need a structured, reliable workflow for managing innovation.
Pricing
The TIP Tool™ offers three pricing options to fit every innovation team, from startups to large enterprises:
- Free Plan: This plan is free forever and perfect for getting started. It includes up to 10 users, 5 GB of storage, and a single portfolio.
- Premium Plan: Priced at $50 per month. It is designed for growing teams with up to 100 users, 20 GB of storage, and three portfolios.
- Custom Plan: This one is built for large organizations with specific needs. It allows flexible limits on users, storage, and portfolios.
You can start free and scale as your innovation grows. Contact the team to create your plan.
User Review
The TIP Tool™ is loved by users, earning an impressive 5 rating on G2.
Source:G2
Customer Success Story
A global tech company strengthened its innovation pipeline after adopting the TIP Tool™ Idea Manager. Replacing emails and spreadsheets with a structured workflow led to a 30% rise in submissions, 95% vetting success, 25% faster filing, and a 20% boost in patent success. Easier capture, better collaboration, and clear prioritization drove these gains.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Sign up for an interactive demo of the TIP Tool™ and explore its features firsthand. The demo playground comes with pre-filled data, allowing you to easily navigate and experience how the tool works in action.
You can also sign up for a free trial.
HYPE
HYPE Ideation is an enterprise-focused idea management software that helps organizations bring order and consistency to their innovation efforts. It provides a structured process for capturing input, engaging employees, and advancing high-potential ideas, ensuring nothing valuable gets lost. Designed to strengthen collaboration and align contributions with business priorities, HYPE Ideation supports companies in building a scalable, sustainable innovation program backed by expert guidance and a global community of practitioners.
Source: HYPE Innovation
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Ensures every idea is captured and submitted with clarity: Supported by guided submission fields, AI-assisted campaign creation, and a Web Clipper that brings external content directly into the platform.
- Helps teams evaluate and select the best ideas quickly: Enabled through customizable evaluation forms, visual scoring dashboards, and AI summaries that condense submissions for faster decisions.
- Turns promising ideas into actionable outcomes: Powered by an intuitive Idea Board for organizing ideas, transparent progress tracking, and built-in communication tools to keep participants aligned.
- Boosts employee engagement and meaningful collaboration: Driven by structured feedback methods, community-based engagement triggers, and targeted outreach to participants throughout each campaign.
- Supports long-term, scalable innovation programs: Strengthened by strategic alignment features, expert consulting support, and access to a global community of innovation practitioners.
Best Suited For
HYPE Ideation is ideal for enterprise innovation teams, continuous improvement programs, and organizations seeking company-wide employee idea participation.
Pricing
Not disclosed on their website.
User Review
HYPE innovation is rated 4.8 out of 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Fujitsu’s European division launched Activ8, a customer-centric co-innovation program powered by HYPE Innovation’s platform. The initiative connects clients with Fujitsu experts to solve real business challenges through structured ideation, evaluation, and prototyping.
Activ8 helped Fujitsu strengthen client relationships and make innovation a core part of service delivery. The results were impressive: £25 million in direct revenue, a 10x ROI, and over £500 million in new business opportunities.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
HYPE offers a demo upon request, but a free trial is not available.
Brightidea
Brightidea is an idea management software that helps organizations run continuous, structured innovation programs. It enables teams to collect input from employees, maintain an organized flow of ideas, and support a consistent process for developing new initiatives. The platform focuses on making idea participation simple, improving visibility across innovation efforts, and helping companies build a reliable pipeline of improvement and growth opportunities.
Source: Brightidea
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Helps teams collect ideas quickly and with minimal setup: Supported by a ready-to-use Idea Box that allows employees to submit ideas instantly through a simple interface and mobile access.
- Creates a steady and organized innovation pipeline: Enabled by an always-on suggestion system, drag-and-drop management, and built-in evaluation tools that keep ideas flowing in a structured way.
- Improves visibility and control over innovation efforts: Powered by analytics that track participation and impact, along with clear workflows that show progress from submission to outcome.
- Scales to support growing innovation programs: Made possible through a modular platform that expands as idea volume increases, without requiring complex configuration or extra systems.
- Supports team-level and department-level idea programs: Driven by Department Idea Box, which routes ideas into the right streams for quick action, prioritization, or project consideration.
- Strengthens decision-making with a clear development process: Enabled by a stage-gate workflow that guides ideas through evaluation checkpoints and ensures consistent approval criteria.
Best Suited For
Brightidea is best suited for organizations that want a simple and structured way to collect employee ideas and build an ongoing innovation pipeline. It works well for companies running continuous improvement programs, team-level idea initiatives, or enterprise-wide innovation efforts.
Pricing
Pricing isn’t publicly disclosed on the official site.
User Review
Users have given a rating of 4.3/5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Haskell used Brightidea to replace a scattered SharePoint setup with a centralized innovation hub. During its “Big Pitch” challenge, the company collected 49 ideas, received 828 votes, and advanced several concepts into patents and real-world deployments. Brightidea reduced administrative work, increased engagement across more than 2,000 employees, and helped turn early-stage sketches into practical, patentable solutions.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
You can request a live demo on the Brightidea website to see its workflows, idea processes, and reporting dashboards in action.
If you want to try the platform yourself, Brightidea also offers free trials for its Whiteboard and IdeaBox tools.
See how Brightidea compares to other platforms in our Brightidea alternatives guide.
IdeaScale
IdeaScale is an idea management software that supports organizations through every stage of the idea lifecycle. It helps teams collect input from their communities and organize those insights in a structured way. The platform guides users as they refine concepts, evaluate their potential, and move the strongest ideas forward. It also makes it easier to prioritize suggestions and convert them into actionable projects that create real impact.
Source: Ideascale
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Helps you collect high-quality ideas with the right context: Supported by custom fields, multimedia attachments, and similarity search that improve clarity and reduce duplicate submissions.
- Makes idea participation easy for every contributor: Enabled by mobile-responsive design, flexible anonymity options, and simple voting and commenting tools.
- Strengthens collaboration around each idea: Driven by peer-to-peer recognition, social integrations, @mentions, and annotations that help people build on one another’s input.
- Improves access and engagement across diverse teams: Supported by multilingual translation, email submission, and notifications that keep contributors involved from anywhere.
- Keeps submissions organized and manageable at scale: Powered by a moderation dashboard and integrations with MS Teams, Yammer, and Slack to streamline review and communication.
- Allows organizations to customize idea collection to their process: Enabled by configurable submission forms and SSO access that align with existing workflows and user systems.
Best Suited For
It fits enterprises, government agencies, and institutions that run open innovation programs or collect input from employees, customers, or public contributors.
Pricing
IdeaScale tailors its pricing to fit the specific features, scope, and needs of your company.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.5/5 on G2
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Doctors Without Borders partnered with IdeaScale to create “Think Up,” a global innovation community that helps staff share ideas, debate solutions, and address urgent humanitarian challenges. The platform strengthened collaboration across 72 countries and led to impactful initiatives, including a COVID education app, MSFeCARE clinical support, and a telehealth system for MDRTB patients.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
You can request a live demo directly from IdeaScale’s website, and new users can also access a free trial upon sign-up.
See how IdeaScale compares to other platforms in our IdeaScale alternatives blog.
Wazoku
Wazoku is an idea management software that provides organizations with a central home for collecting, reviewing, and developing ideas. It replaces scattered tools like spreadsheets and inboxes with a structured, transparent, and collaborative process. Wazoku helps teams run campaigns, surface high-value ideas, and involve employees, customers, and partners in problem-solving. The platform supports a more open and democratic approach to innovation and helps organizations build a long-term culture of participation and continuous improvement.
Source: Wazoku
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Centralizes all ideas in one place for easier management: Enabled by a cloud-based platform that replaces spreadsheets, inboxes, and scattered tools with a unified, global repository.
- Helps organizations discover and progress high-value ideas: Supported by structured screening, refinement tools, and processes that guide ideas from capture to evaluation and selection.
- Aligns idea efforts with strategic goals: Driven by campaign and challenge workflows that focus teams on specific problems and business priorities.
- Improves collaboration across teams and communities: Powered by commenting, sharing, and social engagement tools that allow groups of any size to co-create stronger ideas.
- Connects the right people to the right ideas: Enabled by AI-based recommendations that match influencers, experts, and decision-makers to relevant submissions.
- Creates a transparent and democratic idea process: Supported by open visibility into submissions, progress updates, and recognition features that reward participation.
- Encourages long-term engagement and innovation culture: Driven by ongoing campaigns, open idea channels, and tools that keep contributors aware of outcomes and impact.
Best Suited For
Large or scaling organizations with complexity.
Pricing
Wazoku offers tailored pricing packages based on your organization’s needs and scale.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.4 / 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Precyse Technologies used Wazoku’s platform to solve a major industrial IoT challenge: activating RFID tags from 100 feet while extending battery life beyond five years. More than 500 global solvers contributed, leading to a passive wake-up technology that improved range, reduced energy use, and enabled smarter asset tracking. The solution helped Precyse innovate faster, at lower cost, and with stronger market impact.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available upon request, but a free trial is not offered.
Ideanote
Ideanote is an idea management software that helps businesses collect, develop, and prioritize ideas in one organized workspace. It provides a simple, structured way for teams to capture input, move ideas through a clear process, and act on the strongest opportunities. Designed to support continuous improvement and employee engagement, Ideanote gives organizations a central place to manage ideas at scale and drive ongoing innovation.
Source: Ideanote
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Gives your business a central home for ideas: A unified workspace and organized idea collections make it easy to capture input from anyone, anytime.
- Moves ideas forward with structure and clarity: Custom forms, flexible funnels, drag-and-drop boards, and automation guide each idea through the right steps.
- Improves decision-making with clear evaluation: Comments, ratings, likes, views, and AI-based similarity detection provide transparent insight into the strongest ideas.
- Creates an engaging culture of participation: Stakeholder involvement, leaderboards, feedback loops, and gamification features encourage ongoing contributions.
- Keeps teams aligned as ideas develop: Real-time updates, visible status changes, and integrations with tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams keep everyone in sync.
- Speeds up innovation through data and automation: Advanced analytics, reporting, and AI workflows help teams review, prioritize, and implement ideas more efficiently.
Best Suited For
Ideanote is best suited for organizations that want a simple and structured way to collect ideas and move them through a clear review process. It works well for teams that focus on continuous improvement, employee input, and ongoing innovation efforts.
Pricing
Ideanote offers three plans:
Free: For up to 10 users.
Scale: From $6 per user per month.
Ultimate: From $899 per month for 100 users.
User Review
It is rated 4.7/ 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Enreach used Ideanote to streamline how ideas and feedback were collected across products and teams. The platform made it easy to gather input, validate suggestions with colleagues and users, and improve ideas collaboratively. More than 1,500 ideas were collected and developed, supporting better product decisions and faster innovation. Ideanote is now used across 10 products and 15 teams.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Ideanote offers a free trial for the Free and Scale plans. Organizations interested in advanced features can book a live demo, which is also included with the Ultimate plan.
Innosabi
Innosabi Idea is an idea management software that helps organizations collect, evaluate, and develop ideas from employees across teams and locations. It provides a central place to work on improvements, solve challenges, and support continuous innovation. With AI-assisted insights and a collaborative environment, Innosabi Idea enables companies to make better decisions. It also helps them run innovation initiatives and strengthen an internal culture of participation and problem-solving.
Source: Innosabi
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Helps organizations collect and understand employee insights: AI condenses and summarizes topics so teams can quickly review submissions and identify what matters.
- Improves decision-making across products, processes, and workflows: Custom filters and structured input make it easier to compare suggestions and choose high-value improvements.
- Breaks down silos and supports collaborative problem-solving: Employees can surface challenges, join discussions, and connect with the right people to co-create solutions.
- Drives continuous improvement across departments and locations: Configurable workflows help teams manage idea submissions, track progress, and ensure ideas move toward action.
- Builds a stronger culture of innovation: Campaigns, recognition features, and shared initiatives keep employees engaged and motivated to contribute.
- Provides clear visibility into innovation performance: Dashboards, KPIs, and reporting tools offer a clear overview of activity, outcomes, and progress across initiatives.
Best Suited For
It fits companies that run internal innovation initiatives, continuous improvement programs, or collaborative problem-solving efforts across multiple teams or locations.
Pricing
Pricing is not disclosed on their website.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.5 / 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Munich Airport uses Innosabi’s platform to drive employee-driven innovation across its workforce. Since adopting the software, the airport shifted from collecting many ideas to developing stronger, high-quality submissions supported by transparent processes. In 2024, employees submitted 100 ideas, completed 205, and earned €32,000 in rewards. The platform now supports a culture of trust, engagement, and continuous improvement.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Innosabi Idea does not list a public free trial on its website. Demo is available.
Braineet
Braineet is an idea management software that helps organizations collect, evaluate, and develop ideas from employees, customers, and partners. It provides a central place to manage innovation activities, turn concepts into actionable projects, and support a structured approach to prioritizing the most valuable opportunities. Built for enterprise needs, Braineet enables teams to streamline idea generation, strengthen collaboration, and drive measurable innovation results from a single, integrated system.
Source: Braineet
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Centralizes idea collection across your ecosystem: The platform brings input from employees, customers, and partners into one organized space for easy submission and review.
- Breaks down silos and supports cultural change: Employees can share quick wins, best practices, and experiments, helping teams replicate value across business units.
- Helps you identify and prioritize high-potential ideas: Stakeholder voting, structured evaluation, and clear scoring make it easier to spot the most viable opportunities.
- Turns ideas into actionable projects: A collaborative workspace allows teams to refine concepts together and move them toward execution.
- Supports a measurable, results-driven innovation process: Built-in portfolio management helps track progress and understand the business impact of innovation efforts.
Best Suited For
It works well for innovation teams that manage company-wide initiatives and need a single system to support collaboration and decision-making.
Pricing
Pricing is not disclosed on the website.
User Review
Braineet is rated 4.5 / 5 in Gartner Peer Insights.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Sodexo uses Braineet’s Innov’Hub to centralize innovation, break down communication barriers, and strengthen engagement across its global operations. The platform helps teams share knowledge, access training, and participate in challenges from one place. Innov’Hub has become the core of Sodexo’s innovation activity, improving collaboration, supporting sustainability efforts, and enabling employees worldwide to find resources and contribute more effectively.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
It offers a free demo, but a free trial is not available.
InnovationCast
InnovationCast is an idea management software that helps organizations capture ideas, run innovation challenges, and collaborate across teams to solve business problems. It provides a structured system for gathering input, refining concepts, and developing stronger solutions through co-creation. Designed to support continuous innovation, InnovationCast centralizes idea activity, encourages participation, and helps companies turn insights into meaningful outcomes.
Source: InnovationCast
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Helps teams generate stronger, more relevant ideas: Challenge-driven campaigns and custom submission forms guide contributors toward ideas that align with business goals.
- Supports collaboration across teams and locations: Co-creation tools, discussion threads, and cross-boundary participation help people build solutions together.
- Encourages continuous idea sharing: “Always-on” idea collection gives employees a simple way to submit insights whenever they arise.
- Improves problem-solving across the organization: Dedicated spaces for challenges and solutions connect the right people to specific issues and reduce duplication of effort.
- Keeps idea pipelines organized and scalable: Categories, tailored processes, and team-managed areas ensure different types of ideas follow the right workflow.
- Raises idea quality through structured feedback: Feedback-based voting, significant contributions, and visible improvements make ideas stronger over time.
Best Suited For
- Innovation managers who want to automate workflows and focus on driving ideas forward.
- CINOs and transformation leaders managing large innovation portfolios and data-driven decisions.
- CEOs and CFOs using innovation to boost productivity, growth, and transformation.
Pricing
InnovationCast offers flexible plans:
Starter: From $1,199/month.
Standard: From $2,499/month.
Plus: From $3,499/month.
Enterprise: From $5,999/month.
Plans scale with features such as unlimited members, SSO, custom branding, multi-community access, advanced analytics, and dedicated support.
User Review
Users rated InnovationCast 5/5 on Software Advice.
Source: Software Advice
Customer Success Story
VU used InnovationCast to launch Impact Lab, a collaborative crowdsourcing platform that engages students, lecturers, and staff in solving complex societal and campus challenges. Through focused innovation challenges and transparent co-creation, VU collected high-quality ideas, refined them collaboratively, and validated concepts with multi-disciplinary teams. The initiative sparked a lasting culture of innovation, generating impactful apps, campus solutions, and ongoing participation.
Read the full case study here
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available upon request, but a free trial is not offered.
ITONICS
ITONICS Ideation is an idea management software that helps organizations collect, evaluate, and develop ideas from employees and external contributors. It provides structured workflows, collaborative tools, and AI support to improve idea quality and align innovation efforts with strategic goals. Designed for both internal and external crowdsourcing, ITONICS helps teams organize campaigns, refine concepts, and turn the best ideas into measurable impact.
Source: ITONICS
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Organizes ideas into clear, strategic workflows: Interactive campaign dashboards and structured pipelines ensure ideas match business priorities and move through the right steps.
- Improves idea quality with AI assistance: ITONICS Prism provides guidance, detects similar ideas, and adds evidence-based evaluations to support stronger decisions.
- Supports collaborative problem-solving across teams: Co-creation tools, communities, and shared workspaces help contributors build and refine ideas together.
- Enables external crowdsourcing for broader innovation: A dedicated portal allows organizations to collect ideas from customers, partners, start-ups, and universities.
- Encourages everyday participation and engagement: Gamification, rewards, shared insights, and topic subscriptions help foster a culture of continuous innovation.
- Connects innovation activities at scale: Flexible categories, customizable processes, and expert involvement allow different teams to manage their own idea pipelines efficiently.
Best Suited For
- Enterprises and innovation leaders managing global programs and portfolios.
- R&D and strategy teams using data-driven insights to spot trends and shape growth.
- Organizations building an innovation culture through collaboration and shared visibility.
Pricing
ITONICS offers flexible plans for teams of all sizes:
- Team: For small teams, includes standard templates, radars, and email support.
- Professional: For large teams, adds custom workflows, dashboards, AI, and SSO.
- Enterprise: For global organizations, includes API access, BI/PLM/EA integrations, MFA, and 24/7 support.
- Educator Plan: 6 months of free access for professors and researchers.
User Review
Users rated it 4.4/5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Würth Group uses ITONICS to unify innovation across three core companies, creating a shared platform for trends, ideas, and strategic alignment. More than 2,000 employees collaborate on future topics, improving transparency, engagement, and decision-making. By replacing siloed processes with one innovation workspace, Würth accelerates opportunity validation and unlocks cross-company synergies that strengthen its long-term competitiveness.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available, and new users can access a 30-day free trial.
Sideways 6
Sideways 6 is an idea and innovation management software that helps companies capture, manage, and implement employee ideas at scale. By integrating directly with tools people already use—like Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, and Workplace from Meta—it makes idea sharing effortless. The platform streamlines evaluation, shortlisting, and project delivery while keeping employees engaged and informed at every stage.
Source: Sideways 6
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Captures ideas through tools employees already use: Integrates with Microsoft Teams, Viva Engage, and Workplace by Meta to make idea submission effortless.
- Helps teams manage high volumes of ideas efficiently: Categorization, qualification steps, and pipeline organization streamline large-scale idea management.
- Identifies high-potential ideas with a structured review process: Crowd input and expert evaluation work together to surface the most promising suggestions.
- Turns strong ideas into actionable projects: Implementation features track progress from early concept to final delivery.
- Keeps employees engaged throughout the journey: Milestone updates, communication tools, and recognition features keep people informed and involved.
- Measures impact and ROI with clear analytics: Reporting tools highlight trends, track progress, and quantify the value of implemented ideas.
Best Suited For
Large enterprises and multi-location organizations, especially in industries like retail, travel, utilities, and built environment.
Pricing
Lite Plan: Free for up to 10 users; $3/month or $30/year per user for 11–500 users.
Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for unlimited users.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.4/ 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Primark uses Sideways 6 to power FWD Th!nk, a company-wide idea program that enables 80,000+ employees to share improvements through Microsoft Teams and simple submission channels. The program has generated 3,500+ ideas across 10 markets, delivering multimillion-pound impact, including a product that exceeded sales forecasts by 130%. FWD Th!nk has strengthened employee engagement, recognition, and continuous improvement across the business.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available, and the Lite plan offers a 14-day free trial.
Ideawake
Ideawake is an idea management software that helps organizations collect targeted ideas, collaborate with participants, and evaluate solutions through structured workflows. It enables teams to identify the top-performing ideas that drive measurable results by combining crowdsourcing, custom scorecards, and ROI-based evaluation. Designed for scalability, Ideawake supports continuous improvement by turning employee, customer, and supplier insights into actionable projects.
Source: Ideawake
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Captures targeted ideas aligned with business goals: Time-based challenges, customizable forms, and duplicate detection ensure high-quality, relevant submissions.
- Improves idea quality through real-time collaboration: Comments, voting, mentions, and live chat help participants refine solutions together.
- Provides structured evaluation for better decision-making: Custom scorecards, review groups, and ROI comparison make it easy to assess ideas objectively.
- Helps teams turn ideas into actionable projects: Custom workflows, project-management integrations, and owner assignments move ideas smoothly toward implementation.
- Drives engagement and participation: Gamification, incentives, and automated notifications motivate users to contribute and stay active.
- Measures impact with clear analytics: ROI dashboards, engagement metrics, and custom reports track performance and program outcomes.
Best Suited For
Ideawake is suited for medium to large organizations looking to collect, evaluate, and act on ideas from employees, customers, or partners.
Pricing
Ideawake offers flexible plans to fit any organization’s size and goals:
- Flex: $500/month for small teams.
- Business: $300–$2,250/month for mid-sized companies.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing for large-scale programs.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.6 / 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Paul Bunyan Communications, a 200-employee broadband cooperative, used Ideawake to replace scattered email feedback with a centralized continuous improvement system. The platform enabled equal participation, structured triage, and faster implementation. Over two years, they ran 5 challenges, collected 149 ideas, and implemented 14—boosting operations, engagement, and overall company culture.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Ideawake offers a 30-minute demo, and new users can access a free trial upon sign-up.
InspireIP
InspireIP is a modern idea and innovation management platform built to help teams move from scattered suggestions to structured, actionable outcomes. It provides a simple, intuitive environment where employees can share ideas, leaders can guide innovation challenges, and organizations can maintain momentum across their innovation programs. Known for its ease of adoption, strong security posture, and emphasis on collaboration, InspireIP supports companies looking to build an engaged, innovation-driven culture. It’s designed to help organizations capture more ideas, involve more people, and turn innovation into a consistent, measurable business function.
Source: InspireIP
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Encourages consistent idea sharing: Quick idea capture, simple submissions, and an easy-to-use interface that anyone can adopt instantly.
- Improves collaboration across teams: Centralized discussions, shared workspaces, and structured innovation challenges that bring people together.
- Streamlines innovation-to-IP workflows: Clear invention disclosure processes and organized review paths for innovators, managers, and attorneys.
- Strengthens decision-making: Dashboard insights and performance metrics that highlight participation levels, progress, and bottlenecks.
- Fits naturally into daily work: Integrations with Slack, MS Teams, Trello, Asana, and other tools teams already use.
- Protects sensitive ideas and creativity: SOC 2® compliance, ISO-27001 standards, and secure communication built to prevent idea theft or leakage.
Best Suited For
- Businesses managing early-stage invention disclosures and IP workflows
- Organizations seeking a simple, easy-to-adopt platform for employee-driven innovation
Pricing
InspireIP offers two product lines—Idea Assist and IP Assist—each with tiered plans to support teams of different sizes and innovation maturity levels.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.8 /5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
A global consumer products company used InspireIP to transform a stagnant innovation program into a scalable, high-engagement system. By launching targeted innovation challenges and streamlining disclosures, the company achieved 445% more invention disclosures, 400% higher participation, and stronger collaboration across business units. InspireIP enabled a repeatable, efficient innovation process that employees embraced.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
InspireIP offers a 30-day free trial with no credit card needed, along with an option to request a personalized demo to explore the platform and its workflows.
OpenideaL
OpenideaL is an open-source idea management software designed to help organizations collect, evaluate, and refine ideas from employees and customers. Built on Drupal, it offers a flexible, customizable environment suited for strategic decision-making and collaborative problem-solving. With its modular design, responsive interface, and strong community features, OpenideaL supports organizations looking to crowdsource insights, engage users, and make better-informed product and service decisions.
Source: OpenideaL
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Enhances strategic decision-making: Community input, idea discussions, polls, and surveys help organizations gather broader perspectives before choosing a direction.
- Encourages open collaboration: Social features like comments, voting, user points, and sharing create active engagement among employees and customers.
- Adapts to any organization’s needs: Modular Drupal-based architecture, customizable designs, and flexible workflows allow full alignment with internal processes.
- Supports multi-channel participation: Responsive design, mobile chat notifications, and Chrome extensions make idea sharing accessible across devices.
- Integrates with existing systems: Interfaces with internal tools and external platforms such as Facebook to expand participation and data flow.
- Offers professional customization: Commercial support provides help with new features, on-premise setups, advanced workflows, and third-party integrations.
Best Suited For
- Teams seeking customer and employee input for strategic decisions
- Companies wanting customizable workflows and branding
- Businesses that value open, community-driven collaboration
Pricing
OpenideaL is free and open-source. Organizations can use it as-is or purchase commercial support for custom features, integrations, and on-premise setup. Support pricing is available on request.
User Review
It has a 2.5 /5 rating on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Not published any case study on the website.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
OpenideaL is available as a free, open-source download, so organizations can install and explore it at no cost.
Nosco
Nosco is a modern idea and innovation management platform designed to help organizations run idea campaigns, innovation challenges, and continuous improvement programs from one unified system. Built for quick setup and easy adoption, it supports end-to-end innovation—from ideation and collaboration to evaluation and incubation. Nosco is used by large global companies to engage employees, accelerate high-impact ideas, and scale innovation initiatives without complex onboarding or technical setup.
Source: Nosco
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Accelerates innovation initiatives: Quick setup, intuitive workflows, and ready-to-use templates help teams launch campaigns and challenges fast.
- Boosts engagement across the organization: Idea campaigns, open innovation options, and continuous improvement programs encourage broad participation.
- Improves idea quality and impact: Structured submission forms, guided prompts, and collaborative discussions help refine ideas before evaluation.
- Supports end-to-end innovation management: Built-in tools for evaluation, incubation, and progress tracking keep initiatives moving from concept to execution.
- Adapts to different innovation needs: Customizable campaigns, branding, and configurations allow teams to tailor the platform without coding.
Best Suited For
- Organizations running idea campaigns or innovation challenges
- Companies wanting a simple, fast-to-launch innovation platform
- Teams focused on continuous improvement and workflow optimization
- Enterprises looking to engage employees or external communities in innovation
Pricing
Paid plans include:
- Pro (€5/user/month): For teams up to 100 users, with unlimited ideas, channels, admins, dashboards, and branding.
- Business (from €5,000/year): For 100–500 users, adding custom domains and integrations.
- Enterprise (from €10,000/year): For 500+ users, with custom contracts and activity-based pricing.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.3 /5 on G2
Source:G2
Customer Success Story
Covestro, a global leader in premium polymers, aimed to strengthen its innovation culture by empowering employees with entrepreneurial skills. Through Nosco’s Start-up Challenge and a series of idea camps across multiple regions, employees learned idea development and corporate entrepreneurship. This training helped drive cultural change, boost innovation mindset, and enable teams to apply new skills to both projects and everyday work.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Nosco offers a free 90-day trial for up to 10 users and the option to book a demo for a guided platform walkthrough.
LaunchPath
LaunchPath is an idea management software designed to help organizations capture, evaluate, and prioritize ideas in a structured, strategic way. It centralizes submissions, supports collaborative refinement, and uses proven evaluation frameworks to ensure the best ideas rise to the top. Built for nonprofits, corporations, and startups, LaunchPath helps teams stay aligned, make informed decisions, and move high-value ideas forward with confidence.
Source: LaunchPath
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Captures every idea in one place: Centralized submission, categorization, and tagging ensure no idea gets overlooked.
- Improves decision-making quality: Structured evaluation frameworks and clear scoring help teams identify high-impact ideas.
- Keeps innovation efforts aligned: Idea tracking and pipeline visibility maintain focus on priorities and organizational goals.
- Strengthens team collaboration: Built-in review workflows and shared refinement spaces help teams develop stronger ideas together.
- Supports diverse innovation needs: Flexible setup works for nonprofits, corporate teams, and startups running fast, iterative programs.
Best Suited For
- Nonprofits seeking to identify high-impact opportunities
- Corporations running innovation programs or improvement initiatives
- Startups looking for agile idea tracking and rapid iteration
Pricing
LaunchPath offers three tiers: Team ($49/user/month), Business (from $7,500/year), and Enterprise (custom pricing).
User Review
No user review available publicly.
Customer Success Story
Not published any case study on the website.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
LaunchPath offers a free trial. You can request a demo via their website.
Medallia Ideas
Medallia is an enterprise experience management platform that also supports idea crowdsourcing, strengthened by its acquisition of Crowdicity, a dedicated idea management software. Through this integration, Medallia enables organizations to gather employee suggestions, collaborate on improvements, and connect ideas with broader customer and employee experience insights. While not a pure idea management solution, Medallia is well-suited for large enterprises that want idea sharing embedded within an existing CX/EX ecosystem.
Source: Medallia
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Surfaces valuable ideas from employees: Crowdsourcing tools let teams submit suggestions to solve operational, customer, or process challenges.
- Improves decisions with real-time insights: AI-driven analysis highlights themes, sentiment, and patterns across submitted ideas and feedback.
- Aligns ideas with business priorities: Role-based reporting and configurable workflows help leaders evaluate and act on high-value contributions.
- Supports cross-functional collaboration: Shared dashboards, alerts, and case management keep teams aligned as ideas move toward implementation.
- Integrates ideas with broader experience data: Combines idea submissions with customer and employee feedback for a more complete view of improvement opportunities.
Best Suited For
- Large enterprises already using Medallia for customer or employee experience
- Organizations wanting to collect employee ideas within an existing feedback ecosystem
- Teams needing AI-driven insights tied to operational or customer improvement initiatives
Pricing
Medallia does not offer publicly listed pricing.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.9 / 5 on Software Advice.
Source: Software Advice
Customer Success Story
3M partnered with Medallia to collect real-time distributor feedback across its global B2B platform, enabling agile improvements and customer-led development. By capturing daily insights and ideas, 3M redesigned key workflows, reduced page load times by 60%, and increased satisfaction scores by nearly 3 points. Medallia helped the company transform digital experiences and accelerate continuous improvement.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
You can request a demo via their website to see how the platform works. They do not publicly advertise a free trial for the full platform.
Traction Technology
Traction AI is an idea management software that helps organizations quickly gather ideas, challenges, and problems from across the enterprise. It streamlines idea collection, accelerates analysis with AI, and supports smarter decision-making through KPI tracking, custom reporting, and seamless integrations. Designed for enterprise needs, it enables faster problem-solving, better collaboration, and more efficient innovation at scale.
Source: Traction Technology
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Captures ideas and challenges across the organization: A simple, enterprise-ready platform that surfaces opportunities and issues from every team.
- Speeds evaluation with AI insights: AI summarizes submissions, highlights themes, and accelerates prioritization.
- Supports tech-driven problem solving: Match challenges with emerging technologies using Traction’s research capabilities.
- Tracks impact with KPIs and reports: Dashboards and custom reporting make it easy to monitor progress and measure results.
- Integrates with existing systems: Flexible integrations and workflows create a unified workspace for collecting, reviewing, and acting on ideas.
Best Suited For
- Built for enterprise organizations driving large-scale innovation programs.
- Serves R&D, corporate venture, and digital transformation teams.
Pricing
Not publicly available on the website.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.6 /5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
A global manufacturer used Traction Technology to replace retiring workers’ “sixth-sense” machine knowledge with modern sensor and AI solutions. Traction identified the right startups, enabled rapid vendor evaluation, and helped deploy digital-twin and predictive-maintenance tools. The company cut its transformation timeline from 12 months to 6, saved significant costs, and even invested in one of the selected partners.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available, and a 14-day free trial is offered.
Miro
Miro is a collaborative online workspace designed to help teams move from ideas to execution on a single, flexible canvas. Widely used for brainstorming, design, planning, and product development, Miro enables teams to capture ideas, organize them visually, and turn them into structured workflows using diagrams, boards, docs, templates, and AI-powered tools. With strong integrations and enterprise-grade security, it supports seamless collaboration across functions and scales easily from startups to global enterprises.
Source: Miro
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Strengthens team brainstorming and creativity: Real-time collaboration on an infinite canvas helps teams capture ideas visually and iterate quickly.
- Makes early-stage ideation more organized: Sticky notes, templates, diagrams, and mind maps bring structure to creative thinking sessions.
- Accelerates planning and alignment: Docs, tables, flows, and AI-assisted formatting help teams turn raw ideas into actionable plans.
- Supports cross-functional collaboration: 250+ integrations with tools like Jira, Slack, and Figma keep teams connected throughout workflows.
- Scales from small teams to enterprises: Enterprise-grade security, permissions, and guardrails make Miro suitable for large, distributed organizations.
Best Suited For
- Teams needing a collaborative space for brainstorming and ideation
- Product, design, and engineering teams mapping workflows and concepts
- Organizations wanting visual tools to align on plans and decisions
Pricing
Miro offers four plans: Free (3 editable boards), Starter ($8/member/month), Business ($16/member/month), and Enterprise (custom pricing).
User Review
It has a rating of 4.7 /5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
GitHub used Miro to accelerate its company-wide AI adoption program, “AI for Everyone.” By integrating Miro with GitHub Copilot and GitHub Spark, teams quickly synthesized workshop feedback, aligned on solutions, and moved ideas into execution within a day. The program led to 90% employee engagement with AI tools, 20% monthly user growth, and a 140% increase in AI usage events.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Miro offers a free plan to try the platform and the option to book a demo for a guided tour of its features.
MangoApps
MangoApps offers a user-friendly idea management software designed to help organizations crowdsource, evaluate, and develop employee-driven innovations. Built into its broader workplace platform, it enables teams to submit ideas easily, collaborate through feedback, rank contributions, and track progress transparently. With strong usability, customizable evaluation workflows, and enterprise-grade security, MangoApps helps companies turn everyday insights into actionable improvements at scale.
Source: Mango Apps
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Encourages organization-wide participation: Easy idea submission, mobile access, and crowdsourcing tools help every employee contribute.
- Improves idea quality through collaboration: Real-time comments, discussion threads, and built-in brainstorming tools refine ideas collectively.
- Ensures fair and objective evaluation: Customizable scoring criteria, voting, and leaderboards help identify high-value ideas quickly.
- Provides clear visibility into progress: Idea status tracking and transparent workflows keep contributors informed from submission to implementation.
- Supports data-driven decision-making: Analytics dashboards reveal trends, participation levels, and innovation impact.
Best Suited For
- Large distributed workforces, including frontline teams
- Companies looking to crowdsource ideas across departments or locations
- Teams needing clear workflows and transparent tracking for idea evaluation
Pricing
MangoApps offers custom pricing based on selected modules and user count.
User Review
It has a 4.2 / 5 rating on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
KM2 Solutions uses MangoApps to unify communications, resources, and operations for its international, bilingual workforce. Employees now access timekeeping, training, documents, and company news from one centralized hub. Engagement consistently stays above 90%. MangoApps enabled a fast 4-week rollout and automated compliance governance. It also fulfilled all enhancement requests, greatly improving efficiency and employee experience across the organization.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
MangoApps offers an option to schedule a demo for a guided walkthrough of the platform.
KICKBOX
KICKBOX by rready is an intrapreneurship program that empowers employees to develop and validate their ideas using a structured, step-by-step innovation system. Trusted by companies like Adobe and TetraPak, it combines a proven methodology, AI-driven guidance, coaching, and a physical innovation toolbox. KICKBOX helps organizations scale bottom-up innovation, validate ideas quickly, and build an entrepreneurial culture across the workforce.
Source: rreadyAI
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Scales bottom-up innovation: A structured, step-by-step methodology helps teams source, validate, and advance employee ideas at scale.
- Validates ideas faster: AI-guided experiments, digital workflows, and rapid testing tools deliver insights in weeks, not months.
- Builds an entrepreneurial workforce: Employees gain hands-on experience through coaching, templates, and the physical KICKBOX toolbox.
- Drives data-backed decision-making: Leaders get visibility into idea progress, validation results, and ROI through the digital innovation platform.
- Strengthens engagement and culture: Clear processes, rewards, and support keep employees motivated and involved in innovation activities.
Best Suited For
- Organizations aiming to build a strong intrapreneurship culture
- Companies seeking a structured, scalable way to source and validate employee ideas
- Teams wanting fast, experiment-driven innovation rather than long discovery cycles
Pricing
Pricing is not available on their website.
User Review
Rated 5 on Software Advice
Source: Software Advice
Customer Success Story
Swisscom implemented the KICKBOX intrapreneurship program to strengthen its innovation culture and stay future-ready in a fast-moving telecom market. The program generated 500+ validated ideas, over CHF 4.8M in financial impact, 10+ spin-offs, and multiple patents. With a community of 4,000 innovators and automated, AI-enhanced workflows, Swisscom scaled bottom-up innovation while upskilling 650+ employees.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Free Trial details are not available on the website. You can book a demo.
HeroX
HeroX is a global crowdsourcing and open innovation platform that helps organizations solve complex problems by launching public challenges. Companies can tap into a worldwide community of innovators, engineers, researchers, and creators who submit ideas, prototypes, and solutions. HeroX enables fast, diverse ideation at scale—paying only for successful outcomes—making it a powerful alternative to traditional R&D or internal idea programs.
Source: HeroX
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Access to a global pool of innovators: Tap into a community spanning 175+ countries to source diverse, high-quality ideas and solutions.
- Accelerates problem-solving at scale: Public challenges bring rapid input from thousands of solvers, enabling faster breakthroughs than internal teams alone.
- Reduces innovation risk and cost: You pay only when a challenge is successfully solved, making experimentation more cost-effective.
- Streamlines challenge management: Built-in tools for registration, submissions, team building, judging, and IP guidelines simplify running open innovation competitions.
- Builds long-term innovation capability: CrowdBuild methodology helps organizations grow their own community of solvers for future challenges.
Best Suited For
- Teams exploring open innovation as a faster alternative to traditional R&D
- Enterprises aiming to engage external talent and diverse problem solvers
- Innovation leaders running prize competitions or public challenges for high-impact results.
Pricing
Pricing is not disclosed on their website.
User Review
No user review available publicly.
Customer Success Story
Woodside partnered with HeroX to crowdsource innovative ways to repurpose decommissioned offshore flexible pipes. HeroX designed and promoted the challenge, attracting 123 submissions from 21 countries. After shortlisting 29 ideas, 9 winners shared a $19,500 prize purse. Winning concepts included desalination, renewable energy, and erosion-control applications, giving Woodside practical, sustainable upcycling options for future exploration.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Organizations can book a demo with HeroX to explore launching a challenge.
No free trial for challenge-launching plans.
Qmarkets
Qmarkets is an enterprise idea management software that helps organizations collect, evaluate, and implement high-value ideas at scale. Its core solution, Q-ideate, supports the full innovation lifecycle. It covers idea submission, collaboration, evaluation, and implementation through configurable workflows and AI-powered tools. Qmarkets enables companies to build a culture of innovation, solve strategic challenges, and maintain a steady pipeline of ideas that deliver measurable ROI.
Source: Qmarkets
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Stronger innovation culture: Collaboration tools like commenting, voting, and idea refinement encourage widespread participation and make employees feel involved in shaping outcomes.
- Higher ROI from innovation: Stage-gate workflows, automated routing, and expert scorecards help surface the most valuable ideas and focus investment on high-impact opportunities.
- Faster problem-solving: Crowdsourced insights, AI-assisted clustering, and large-scale participation help teams uncover solutions to complex business challenges quickly.
- Clear visibility into the innovation pipeline: Portfolio dashboards, task assignment, and progress tracking ensure every idea moves through submission, evaluation, and implementation with transparency.
- Better decision-making: Data-driven scoring, configurable review committees, and integrated analytics provide objective insight into which ideas deserve to advance.
Best Suited For
Qmarkets is best suited for mid-to-large enterprises that need a scalable, structured platform to crowdsource, evaluate, and implement ideas across global teams.
Pricing
Qmarkets offers custom, quote-based annual plans.
User Review
Holds a 4.5/5 rating on G2.
Source: Qmarkets
Customer Success Story
Swiss Post used the Qmarkets platform in a new way to run a nationwide Kaizen improvement campaign, empowering 130 trained employees to audit 73 logistics sites and log improvements digitally. The initiative delivered 600+ improvements, 202 projects, and CHF 2.28M in savings within weeks. It also strengthened cross-site learning, boosted engagement, and showcased the power of bottom-up continuous improvement.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A demo is available upon request, but free trial details are not mentioned on the website.
IdeaConnection
IdeaConnection by Planbox is an open innovation and problem-solving platform that connects organizations with a global network of 20,000+ expert solvers across 180+ countries. With an industry-leading 80%+ solve rate, it helps companies tackle technical challenges, scout new technologies, run confidential or public crowdsourcing challenges, and collaborate on breakthrough ideas through structured expert teams and an agile innovation platform.
Source: IdeaConnection
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Crowdsource breakthrough ideas at scale: Run public or confidential global challenges using IdeaConnection’s structured challenge formats, collaboration tools, and managed facilitator support.
- Discover technologies and trends faster: Use technology scouting services that tap into millions of global sources to uncover emerging technologies, risks, and opportunities.
- Accelerate innovation with collaborative ideation: Leverage Idea Rally where dozens or hundreds of experts co-create novel concepts that energize internal teams.
- Protect confidentiality while innovating: Use secure, private challenge environments for sensitive business or technical problems without public exposure.
- Reduce cost and risk with pay-for-success models: Only pay when solutions meet predefined criteria, ensuring efficiency and value for every innovation initiative.
Best Suited For
IdeaConnection is ideal for large enterprises, R&D teams, innovation leaders, and IP-heavy organizations that need expert-driven solutions to complex technical or business problems.
Pricing
Pricing not disclosed on the website.
User Review
No user review available publicly.
Customer Success Story
Anglo American partnered with Planbox to improve idea collaboration across its global mining operations. Previously, innovation workflows lacked structure and visibility. With customized Planbox workflows, teams can now easily share, develop, and track ideas across business units. The platform has already surfaced hundreds of concepts, helping Anglo American generate breakthroughs in moisture measurement, community safety, and logistics.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
A personalized demo is available for organizations via consultation.
No clearly advertised free trial for full services.
Canny
Canny helps product teams capture, organize, and act on feedback from customers and internal teams. It centralizes ideas from every channel, prioritizes them with data and voting, and supports transparent communication through roadmaps and updates. This enables companies to build products that align closely with user needs.
Source: Canny
Benefits and Supporting Features
- Centralizes all ideas in one place: Canny captures customer and employee ideas through unified feedback boards, tags, and segments so teams can easily manage input at scale.
- Helps teams prioritize what truly matters: Voting, idea ranking, and integrated analytics highlight high-impact ideas, giving product managers data to guide decisions.
- Improves collaboration across teams and customers: Comment threads, contributor roles, and stakeholder discussions create a shared space to shape and refine ideas together.
- Keeps everyone aligned and informed: Public roadmaps, status updates, and automated alerts communicate decisions clearly and manage expectations across users and teams.
- Supports seamless workflow execution: Integrations with project management tools and ownership assignment ensure ideas transition smoothly from capture to delivery.
Best Suited For
Canny is ideal for B2B SaaS companies, product teams, and customer-centric organizations that need a structured way to collect feedback, prioritize ideas, and build features aligned with user demand.
Pricing
Canny offers four plans billed yearly:
- Free: $0/mo: 25 tracked users, unlimited posts, automatic feedback capture.
- Core: $19/mo: 100+ tracked users, custom domains, translations.
- Pro: $79/mo: Advanced workflows, PM integrations, privacy controls.
- Business: Custom pricing: 5,000+ tracked users, SSO, CRM integrations, enterprise controls.
User Review
It has a rating of 4.6 out of 5 on G2.
Source: G2
Customer Success Story
Mercury, a modern banking platform for startups, used Canny to replace scattered feedback channels across Slack, email, Notion, and Linear. With voting, boards, comments, and Slack integrations, Canny became their single source of truth for prioritizing requests and managing workflows. The result was a major boost in efficiency, clearer decision-making, higher feedback volume, and stronger customer engagement.
Read the full case study here.
Demo and Free Trial Availability
Canny offers a free plan to get started and free trials on paid tiers. You can also book a product demo directly from their site.
You just saw how leading platforms approach smooth idea capture, real-time collaboration, precise idea evaluation, and alignment with business goals. But there is only one solution that ties these strengths together in a clean, structured, and patent-aligned workflow. It’s the TIP Tool™, a top idea management software choice of innovation-driven companies and I’m telling you, it’s worth exploring further. Read on.
Why Innovation-Driven Companies Choose the TIP Tool™ for Idea Management Software
Innovation teams often find that their biggest challenge is not generating ideas but preventing them from getting lost in scattered tools. A global tech company faced this same kind of challenge before adopting the TIP Tool™. Ideas were buried in emails, spreadsheets, and disconnected conversations. That slowed collaboration and caused strong concepts to stall long before the patent stage.
With the TIP Tool™in place, the change was clear. Ideas surfaced reliably across departments, collaboration became consistent, and their patent pipeline finally kept pace with the level of innovation happening inside the organization.
This experience mirrors what many innovation-driven teams discover when they move to the TIP Tool™. It fixes the chaos around idea flow, but its deeper value comes from what it enables next.
Once idea capture becomes smooth, the TIP Tool™ strengthens the entire IP decision-making process with capabilities such as:
- Patent Pipeline Visibility that makes progress and bottlenecks immediately clear.
- Case Analytics that help teams evaluate filings with real evidence.
- Cost Estimation that brings predictability to IP budgeting.
- Art Unit Prediction that helps anticipate USPTO examination paths.
- Examiner Analysis that informs stronger prosecution strategies.
- Automatic USPTO Updates that keep every case current without manual effort.
- Patent Family Trees that provide context for better portfolio planning.
- Portfolio Dashboards that give leaders a complete view of the patent portfolio’s performance.
Together, these features create a connected innovation ecosystem. The TIP Tool™ does not stop at capturing ideas. It develops them with clarity, balances them with data, and supports the IP that grows from them.
If you’re looking for a simpler, more connected way to capture ideas and guide them toward strong IP, the TIP Tool™ is built for you.
Get started with a free trial and explore the full workflow end-to-end.
Disclaimer: The information in this article/review is sourced from the internet and may not be entirely accurate or up-to-date. We recommend visiting the respective software websites for the most current and reliable information. The opinions expressed here are those of the author and may not reflect the views of Triangle IP. We are not liable for any consequences that may arise from relying on the information provided in this article/review.
FAQs
1. How Do I Know Whether My Team Truly Needs Idea Management Software or Just Better Internal Processes?
If your innovation pipeline already feels like a patchwork of emails, spreadsheets, and ad-hoc meetings, the problem isn’t effort but infrastructure.
Internal processes can take you only so far. They help when the team is small, ideas are few, and the pace is manageable. But the moment ideas start slipping through inbox cracks, attachments scatter across shared drives, or no one remembers who owes the next review… the system breaks.
That’s when idea management software like TIP ToolTM becomes less of a luxury and more of a stabilizing force.
It gives you what manual processes can’t:
- A single home for every disclosure, diagram, draft, and file.
- A structured workflow from capture → search→ vetting → drafting →review→ filing.
- Built-in scoring, tagging, and pipeline visibility.
- Analytics that help you prioritize what’s worth filing, and what isn’t.
In other words: if scaling innovation feels painful, you don’t need more meetings. You need better infrastructure.
2. What Common Mistakes Do Companies Make When Switching From Email or Spreadsheets to Dedicated Idea Management Software?
The transition from email chaos to structured software is transformative but only if done right. Companies often stumble in the same places:
Mistake #1: Dragging messy data into a clean system
Old spreadsheets are full of duplicates, unclear ownership, missing attachments, and half-written ideas. This is also why managing your IP assets in Excel is a fundamentally bad idea. Importing them “as-is” simply digitizes the clutter.
Mistake #2: Treating the new tool like a nicer spreadsheet
A dedicated idea tool is not just storage. It is a workflow. If you still rely on email threads to review ideas, you have missed the point.
Mistake #3: Making the form too complex
Requiring 20 fields on day one overwhelms inventors. A short, smart form like TIP Tool is, dramatically increases participation and quality.
Mistake #4: No tagging or taxonomy discipline
Without structured tags, portfolios get messy fast. Admin-managed tag dictionaries keep things clean and searchable.
Mistake #5: Forgetting change management
Tools do not fail. Adoption does. A simple onboarding plan and defined responsibilities turn a tool into a habit.
With the right rollout, organizations do not just switch tools. They transform the way innovation flows.
3. What Happens When Idea Volume Becomes Too High, and Do These Tools Help Prevent Low-Quality Submissions?
When idea submissions spike, three things typically happen:
- Reviewers drown.
- Duplicate ideas proliferate.
- Low-effort ideas clog the pipeline and slow everything down.
Idea management software solves this by raising the quality bar without adding friction.
Here’s how:
- Structured idea forms ensure every submission has a coherent summary and the right attachments.
- Tagging systems let teams slice by product, business unit, technology, or ownership.
- Value and patentability scoring help surface the ideas worth attention first.
- Clear workflow stages prevent half-baked concepts from reaching legal teams prematurely.
When volume becomes unmanageable, the right software becomes your filter, your organizer, and your early warning system. Hence, protecting the team’s time while elevating the ideas that actually matter.
For teams specifically evaluating which concepts are patent-worthy, our guide on How to Shortlist and Select Promising Ideas for Patent breaks down a clear decision-making approach.
4. How Does Idea Management Software Differ From Innovation Management Platforms or General Project Management Tools?
| Feature / Purpose | Idea Management Software | Innovation Management Platforms | Project Management Tools |
| Primary Goal | Capture, organize, evaluate, and route ideas into a structured pipeline | Drive broader innovation strategy, portfolio planning, and cross-functional alignment | Plan and execute tasks, milestones, and team deliverables |
| Core Users | Inventors, R&D, product teams, IP teams, patent counsel | Product leaders, strategy teams, innovation managers, executives | Engineering, operations, marketing, project leads |
| What It Manages | Idea disclosures, attachments, summaries, scores, tags, patent readiness | Innovation portfolios, market alignment, resource planning, strategic initiatives | Tasks, timelines, workloads, sprints, dependencies |
| Workflow Focus | Capture →Search→ Vetting → Drafting →Review→ Filing | Concept → Experimentation → Market validation → Scaling | Planning → Execution → Delivery |
| Data Structure | Idea forms, value & patentability scoring, tags, workflow stages | Roadmaps, innovation funnels, KPI dashboards | Task lists, boards, Gantt charts, sprint cycles |
| File Handling | Stores disclosures, diagrams, drafts, and all idea-related documents together (as the TIP Tool™ Idea Manager does) | Stores program-level documents and research material | Stores task files, designs, and assets tied to execution |
| Decision Support | Built-in triage: scoring, tagging, workflow movement, patentability indicators (as seen in the TIP Tool™analytics) | Strategic decision-making: portfolio value, alignment with business goals | Project health: timeline risk, capacity, blockers |
| IP-Specific Capabilities | Supports patent workflows, prior-art research, drafting prep, and examiner/art-unit insights ( the TIP Tool™ feature) | May include high-level idea tracking but rarely IP analytics | Typically none; not built for IP processes |
| Best For | Teams overwhelmed by scattered ideas, email submissions, or spreadsheet tracking | Organizations needing top-down innovation governance | Teams executing concrete work after ideas are approved |
