Find answers to frequently asked questions.
Workspace Owners can delete an entire Workspace and individual Users. If you would like your user account data deleted please reach out to an Admin or Workspace Owner.
AD team structure (existing Team Groups in AD) can be replicated during SAML integration with Ideanote as long as they are flat and not nested. For more information please refer to the SSO documentation.
For large organizations (500+ people) going from the project being greenlit to launch of your first idea campaign typically takes 2 - 12 weeks depending on your organization's decision making speed. A medium case of 7 weeks might have the following timeline: Week 1-3 technical setup including SSO. Week 2 - 5 onboarding of stakeholders, setup of idea forms, access. launch focus and strategy. Week 5-6 communication plan, user test. Week 7: Launch and monitoring of launch. That being said implementation can be achieved in 2 days if an organization has a set strategy and fast moving resources. At minimum this would require 2 people time 4x2.5 hours of work on your side (20 hours).
Ideanote is updated approximately every two weeks on a rolling basis. Our blue-green deployment method means minimal to no downtime during updates. Major versions that release larger features or need data migration happen approximately every quarter. Customers are informed of new major updates right within the app as well as at https://ideanote.io/updates
We optimize the app to work best on the latest version of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge on Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS and Android devices. Browsers that have not been updated for more than a year may not be supported.
In the event of a security breach, Ideanote will notify you of any unauthorized access to your customer data within 72 hours after first having become aware of the breach. However unlikely such an occurrence is, we have thorough incident management policies and procedures in place to handle such an event with utmost care and efficiency. As part of GDPR compliance we will also have to report such an incident to the responsible local government authorities, the Danish Data Protection Agency.
Ideanote has internal policies governing how we respond to incidents and data breaches.
Ideanote has not had a data breach or security incident but we regularity assess and upgrade our security posture and conduct automated and manual testing.
When you claim an Ideanote workspace, it’s yours and yours alone. All access to the datastore is restricted to only a select few to keep security high and risk low.
Customer can request help that can require the need for access to your workspace, make use of screen-sharing software or simply run tests using a development environment. You’ll never have to grant access to anything if you don’t want to. Data is kept encrypted at rest in a highly secure environment that can only be accessed with 2FA and other measures. Ideanote will never, for any reason or under any circumstances, sell your data to third parties.
Ideanote does not own, control or direct the use of any data stored or processed by our customers as they use our service. This extends to access, retrieval and direct use of such data. We are generally unaware of what is being stored or otherwise internally made available within a workspace.
Ownership of Content remains with Customer and its Users. As described in Our Terms of Service, Ideanote and its employees are at no point permitted to view Customer Content unless We are given explicit consent by the Customer for valid support purposes or if We are compelled by a law or a valid legal or government request. At no point are we allowed to Use Customer Content for Our own purposes.
Ideanote employees, such as our support staff, do not as a standard have access to customer workspaces Access to workspaces is only given to employees on the basis of valid urgent support requests and employees are trained on appropriate access, and access is monitored for inappropriate use.
While Customer Content is not accessed, generalized Customer data in the form of events and usage statistics is collected and used for the purposes of general user experience improvements and product feedback. Any direct product feedback given to Customer Support staff is not considered Customer Content and can also be used to improve our Services.
Yes, ideanote scans uploaded files with an open source library for virus detection and quarantines infected files immediatly.
Our production servers run Linux, where we achieve security by making all of our services sandboxed in containers that are entirely recycled for each deployment. This prevents malware from gaining a persistent foothold, and ensures that there is a minimal window in which malware could stay memory-resident. In our view, this approach is more robust than relying on a detective approach to preventing malware compromise.
Employee devices are secured with up-to-date anti-malware as well.
Access to the audit trail is restricted to our development team but remains immutable to change. Audit trail records are kept for at least 1 year. Ideanote extensively logs activity by its development team and all Users of the Service automatically as they happen with Google’s inbuilt audit logging monitoring. All logs remain immutable, time synced, filterable and exportable. We work with Customers on the Enterprise plan to fulfill any audit trail inquiries and reasonable requests for audit trail exports in a timely manner.
Customers can also access the audit trail for their workspace to see access to the system and events in real time, as well as search and export results.
Ideanote performs regular, automated, vulnerability scans on our external and internal networks. Further, security review is an integral part of our development lifecycle, incorporated into our design, implementation, and test processes.
Ideanote also conducts an annual Vulnerability Assessment by an independent third party. All findings are remediated and security issues are prioritized on an ongoing basis.
Yes, we have in place written Data Processing Agreements (“DPA”) with all of Our Sub-Processors. Ideanote imposes data protection terms on each Sub-Processor regarding their security controls and applicable regulations for the protection of personal data. Before engaging a Sub-Processor, we perform extensive due diligence, including detailed security and legal analysis. We do not engage a Sub-Processor unless our quality standards are met.
Yes, Ideanote complies with globally applicable privacy regulation and makes it easy for customers to comply.
You can find more information about GDPR (EU and UK) compliance in the Ideanote DPA at https://ideanote.io/legal/dpa
You can find more information about Californian CCPA compliance in the CCPA Notice at https://ideanote.io/legal/ccpa-notice
You can find more information about Chinese PIPL compliance in the Ideanote PIPL Notice at https://ideanote.io/legal/pipl-notice
For questions regarding compliance with other local privacy laws, please contact us at legal@ideanote.io
When customers send data to the Ideanote platform, Ideanote is the data processor, as defined in the GDPR, for purposes of the services provided; the Customer is the data controller.
Most customers will be sending the name and email of end-users for authentication purposes but not more.
Ideanote’s customers can customize and decide what information to send into our database, with certain restrictions as governed in our agreement with a Customer. This may include personal information, but whether there is personal information sent is ultimately determined by the Customer and their decisions on what data to send to Ideanote to process.
Ideanote uses third-party vendors to provide our services, namely the Google Cloud Platform to persistently store customer data. Ideanote additionally uses vendors to monitor the performance of Our Services and for communication purposes after they have been vetted and signed the appropriate contractual protections to handle customer data. In connection with our GDPR compliance, we are disclosing Our full list of Sub-Processors at https://ideanote.io/legal/sub-processors
We run background checks on all incoming employees, or contractors who will be working in any Ideanote office, before starting at the company. Additionally, all employees sign confidentiality agreements to protect customer information.
Yes. Passwords are hashed using the industry-standard Blowfish block cipher cryptographic algorithm which is an adaptive hash function that is based on a technique called Key Stretching, that is recommended by NIST.
Yes, Ideanote has an internal password policy as part of the SOC2 ISMS. It included password length, MFA and SSO requirements.
We use Google G-Suite as our corporate single sign-on platform. This application controls our access to the various applications that Ideanote uses. Ideanote uses multi factor authentication to gain access to the system. With regards to the password policy specifically, they are set as follows: (a) passwords must be a minimum of 16 characters; (b) they must contain some lower case letters, and they cannot contain part of the username; and (c) users are locked out after 10 failed login attempts.
To learn more about the security of G-Suite as identity provider, please see https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/gsuite.google.com/en/security/g-suite-security-ebook.pdf
Keys for encryption of customer data at rest are managed by our cloud provider, Google. You can find additional information about Google's key management procedures here: https://cloud.google.com/kms/.
We use public/private keys to secure access to code repositories. Keys used by staff are generated by Ideanote employees on an individual basis and stored in encrypted form.
Ideanote uses NIST Suite B compliant cipher suites to secure data in transit and at rest.
PKI for Authentication: OpenSSL, AES-256, 256-bit key
Data Encryption Keys: OpenSSL, AES-256, 256-bit key
Website SSL Certificate, OpenSSL and Let's Encrypt, RSA-2048, 2048-bit key
Wondering what happens to your data after cancellation?
Customer data is retained for as long as the account is in "active" status. Ideanote allows customers to export partial data as XLSX or all their raw data at any time in the industry-standard JSON format with a written request from the customer. Customer data can be deleted upon request at termination or will be deleted in accordance with Ideanote's internal data retention policies.
Data enters an “expired” status when the account is voluntarily closed or when the account has been inactive for an extended period of time (more than a year). It might also be marked as "expired" when the customer has been suspended e.g. for outstanding payments.
"Expired" data is deleted after a warning period of 3 days for voluntarily closed accounts and 30 days for inactive or suspended accounts (except when required by law to retain).
Expired account data will be retained in the form of backups for the retention period of backups. After this period, the account and related data will no longer be accessible. Customers that wish to voluntarily close their account should download their data manually or via the API prior to closing their account.
If a customer wishes to manually backup their data via the interface in a suspended account, then they might need to ensure that their account is brought back to good standing so that the user interface will be available for their use.
Yes. Ideanote is using GCP as hosting provider. Google hard drives leverage technologies like FDE(full disk encryption) and drive locking, to protect data at rest. When a hard drive is retired, authorized individuals verify that the disk is erased by writing zeros to the drive and performing a multiple-step verification process to ensure the drive contains no data.
If the drive cannot be erased for any reason, it is stored securely until it can be physically destroyed. Physical destruction of disks is a multistage process beginning with a crusher that deforms the drive, followed by a shredder that breaks the drive into small pieces, which are then recycled at a secure facility. Each data center adheres to a strict disposal policy and any variances are immediately addressed.
Currently, customer data can be deleted with a written request to Ideanote by the customer. In connection with our GDPR compliance efforts, we will be updating our data deletion abilities to make them part of the user interface.
Our datacenter provider GCP is certified with SOC2 and a range of other standards, and you’re always welcome to contact us if you’d like us to provide you with their compliance report. To expedite the process we kindly ask that you include sufficient contact information along with a reason for requesting it.
Ideanote has chosen SOC2 as the primary information security management system, as it is considered a global standard requirement for SaaS businesses. Ideanote has not implemented ISO27001.
Ideanote is working towards SOC2 certification and is in the process of documenting the individual controls. Internally SOC2 has been rolled out as our ISMS. Ideanote expects to receive SOC2 certification in 2023, at which point we will share the report with you.
Ideanote is using GCP as a secure data center provider. The Google Cloud Platform data centers are monitored 24/7 by high-resolution interior and exterior cameras that can detect and track intruders. Access logs, activity records, and camera footage are available in case an incident occurs. Access to Google's data center floor is only possible via a security corridor which implements multi-factor access control using security badges and biometrics.
Only approved employees with specific roles may enter. Additionally, Google data center physical security features a layered security model, including safeguards like custom-designed electronic access cards, alarms, vehicle access barriers, perimeter fencing, metal detectors, and biometrics, and the data center floor features laser beam intrusion detection. Google meticulously tracks the location and status of all equipment within their data centers from acquisition to installation to retirement to destruction, via barcodes and asset tags. Metal detectors and video surveillance are implemented to help make sure no equipment leaves the data center floor without authorization.
If a component fails to pass a performance test at any point during its lifecycle, it is removed from inventory and retired. Google hard drives leverage technologies like FDE (full disk encryption) and drive locking, to protect data at rest. When a hard drive is retired, authorized individuals verify that the disk is erased by writing zeros to the drive and performing a multiple-step verification process to ensure the drive contains no data. If the drive cannot be erased for any reason, it is stored securely until it can be physically destroyed. Physical destruction of disks is a multistage process beginning with a crusher that deforms the drive, followed by a shredder that breaks the drive into small pieces, which are then recycled at a secure facility. Each data center adheres to a strict disposal policy and any variances are immediately addressed.
We use Google Cloud Platform as our infrastructure provider. The application layer is a microservice architecture based on Kubernetes, with flexible autoscaling based on load. We serve our static files via content delivery networks, and store user-provided attachments in Google Cloud Storage. Our DBMS is PostgreSQL, and we also use Redis for communication across pods, as well as for simple caching.
We use TypeScript as the programming language of choice for both our backend- and frontend services, and they each share common logic and helpers and live within a monorepository. On our backend services, including our API, we've built a custom server architecture supporting both an internal GraphQL-based API, as well as a REST-API for our public API. We rely heavily on the principles of Inversion of Control, and have our backend services logically split into subsystems around their API, Business Logic, Store layer, and utility services.
On the frontend, we use very modern web technologies and use Custom Elements and Shadow DOM as our encapsulation model. In terms of how our services integrate with external services, we can provide a diagram that illustrates these systems from a high level for Enterprise customers.
Yes, you can change the look and feel of the platform with customizable branding settings for the logo, colors, fonts and other design element options like outline and corner rounding. All Google Fonts are available for free as part of the platform. You can choose to customize the subdomain by adding a custom domain like ideas.mydomain.com. It is also possible to remove Ideanote logo and branding from the platform and emails. You can also add custom JS and CSS code on top of these inbuilt appearance options to change the look and feel even more.
Ideanote does not need you to integrate or install anything on your systems or devices for a successful implementation.
It is recommended that you connect Ideanote with your Single Sign-On / Active Directory (SSO/AD).
Ideanote needs a modern browser to run on your mobile or desktop device.
Yes, Ideanote allows admins and editors to export data in bulk.
Normal users are blocked from this capability and do not have the backend authorization to perform bulk exports.
Yes, Ideanote integrates natively with Zapier and Microsoft Power Automate.
Ideanote has a public API. The API is based on JSON REST standards with user based access tokens.
Workspace Owners have access tokens but other users have not.
API requests are logged and need authorization and authentication.
The API has rate limits and is secured by the Google Cloud Armor WAF (Web Application Firewall).
You can read more about our API on https://developer.ideanote.io
Ideanote is hosted on a multi-tenant system. All customers are isolated within their own Postgres database with unique and randomly generated credentials, secured and encrypted using Kubernetes Secrets. All customers are isolated inside of their own namespace within Kubernetes, with network policies, roles, and other security measures in place to ensure each tenant is truly isolated.
All sensitive Customer data is only accessible after the successful exchange of a session token from our API that carries with it varying degrees of access rights to a specific Customer’s data depending on multiple factors such as the settings of the workspace, the specific user trying to access the resource, as well as the operation that is attempted to be performed on that resource. This provides logical separation between data belonging to different customers. Customer Data resides on database systems which house data belonging to multiple Customers, but our logical authentication and authorization controls separate one Customer’s data from another Customer’s data.
Ideanote handles automated backups within the Google Cloud environment. Backups are encrypted in transit and at rest on servers in the EU. Backups are done daily and kept for 3 months. Data does not leave the Google Cloud environment. Data can selectively be restored for enterprise customers on request. The procedure to restore backups is tested on an annual basis and has been conducted successfully in the past. Backup restoration requires an authorization and happens through an automated system.
Ideanote customer data (user data and content) is located on encrypted Google Cloud servers in the EU.
Backups of that data are also located on encrypted Google Cloud servers in the EU.
For a full overview of third-party data subprocessors please see https://ideanote.io/legal/sub-processors
While some of our third-party subprocessors are in the EU and United States, PII of end-users are not shared with them.
Yes, Ideanote has documentation for its API.
For documentation of our API please see https://developer.ideanote.io
Ideanote is protected against vulnerabilities and threats with a range of
For up to date information on our SLAs please see https://ideanote.io/legal/sla
Yes, you Content and PII is encrypted at rest on Google Cloud databases using KEK. Industry standard, FIPS compliant encryption is used (AES 256).
The Google Cloud Platform encrypts customer data stored at rest by default. Data in Google Cloud Platform is broken into subfile chunks for storage, and each chunk is encrypted at the storage level with an individual encryption key. The key used to encrypt the data in a chunk is called a data encryption key (DEK). Because of the high volume of keys at Google, and the need for low latency and high availability, these keys are stored near the data that they encrypt. The DEKs are encrypted with (or “wrapped” by) a key encryption key (KEK).
For more information see https://cloud.google.com/docs/security/encryption/default-encryption
Yes, Ideanote uses and enforces TLS encryption. Ideanote uses TLS 1.3 by default but also supports clients with TLS as low as 1.2.
TLS 1.1 is not safe and not supported by Ideanote.
When a user visits a website or application with Ideanote instrumented, the details of their interactions are captured and sent to Ideanote over HTTPS. All data transferred over HTTPS s encrypted. Ideanote only allows connections over HTTPS exclusively to ensure data is encrypted in transit.
Yes, sensitive data including user personal identifiable information (name, email) and sensitive data (ideas, content) are encrypted in transit and at rest.
Yes, you can archive content on Ideanote.
Ideanote has been architected to be highly available.
It is built on Google Cloud Kubernetes clusters that automatically scale with demand. It's microservice API architecture means that application is optimized for fast response times and distributing the server load. It is secured by Google Cloud Armor against DDOS attacks and uses GCP CDN for faster load times. Ideanote guarantees 99.9% uptime for Enterprise customers.
You can see our historic uptime at status.ideanote.io.
Ideanote initiates vulnerability assessments on an annual basis. Any findings are addressed and remediated.
We can share the results of our most recent vulnerability assessment with customers on the Enterprise plan.
Authentication and authorization happens on a backend API layer in real-time, and changes are propagated in real-time.
Yes, Ideanote supports RBAC. Ideanote has three access systems, rank-based, team-based and sharing-based.
Rank based: Ideanote users can have the Workspace Owner, Admin, Team Owner, Member, Guest or Visitor rank. People logging in via SSO automatically become Members via Just-in-Time provisioning (JIT). You can choose to give some people a higher rank. Admins have editing rights for all content they see, including editing and deletion.
By default, idea collections (the default content in Ideanote) are not shared with anyone - access can be given in a fine-grained manner and include access levels like content visibility, contributing ideas and comments, evaluating ideas and more.
To make RBAC easier, users can be grouped into teams and teams can be given access collectively, e.g. to add ideas or comment in an idea collection.
You might be interested in safe ways of authenticating users. You might be wondering if it is form or token based and if the latter is it JWT, OAuth or other.
Ideanote supports most standard Single Sign-On (SSO) and AD (Active Directory) formats to sign in to Ideanote.
You can use 0Auth, SAML 2.0, Azure AD, OpenID Connect, Slack OAuth, Google OAuth and JWT Tokens to authenticate users.
Should your authentication protocol not be supported then you can always reach out to us and we can work on a solution.
Ideanote is the first complete innovation platform. It's an uncompromisingly uncomplicated and efficient innovation solution for businesses of all sizes.
End-to-end: With Ideanote you can collect ideas, engage people, manage ideas, measure impact, automate innovation and integrate all of it with our favorite tools.
Internal and external: It helps you bring order to ideas from your teammates, across departments and even open innovation with external partners and customers.
Built for growth: Use Ideanote to grow your business by asking for ideas for cost-savings, customer satisfaction or the next big thing that you didn't know your business needed.
Ideanote uses a trained AI model based on OpenAI's GPT-3.
You can think of it as a robot that has read all the information on the internet. It understands a wide range of concepts from broad to niche knowledge and can apply them creatively to the problems you give it. In the free tool you can fill out the title and description of an idea.
In the full version of Ideanote you can fully customize the fields you want an idea to have - from tags, to multiple choice to attachment fields.
Yes, our AI Idea Generator is free!
No need to wait, just start generating ideas. This tool was created to let you experience the power of AI for brainstorming creative ideas.
Looking for more features? You can create a free account, check our pricing or book a demo.
Because of the costs connected with running this idea generator we have limited the amount of ideas and idea prompts you can generate.
Yes, each idea is randomized and is inspired by your company or project description and the prompt. We do not store the ideas you generate to display them to others. In fact they are only saved locally in your browser until you decide to save them by signing up.
You might get similar ideas for the same exact prompt but the true value starts when you select ideas and decided to move forward with them. If you feel like ideas are becoming too similar try starting over by changing the project description slightly and click "start over".
Think of the AI as a way to give humans superpowers. The AI can't implement the idea or tell good from bad ideas but it can help you be more creative and inspire you approach a problem from new angles.
The Impact, Confidence and Ease scores can then be used to rank features and ideas. The ICE scale suggests you rate every ideas on a scale of one to ten in three areas: Impact, Confidence, and Ease. Those three numbers are multiplied, and the product is the ICE score.
The higher the Impact and Ease ratings, the more impactful the feature or idea is and the easier it will be to implement it. On the other hand, the lower the Confidence rating, the lower the chance this feature or idea will be successful.
By ranking these three factors, you have a tool to prioritize the features and ideas you want to invest the most time in or the ones you should pass by in favor of more significant features.
While writing how-might-we questions (HMW) seems straightforward, there’s slightly more than meets the eye.
Innovation, at it's core, is about solving problems. So make sure you get the problems right.
The better you define the problem and the better you write the questions, the better the ideas that they prompt.
Problem: Customers are struggling during first time user.
HMW: How might we improve the onboarding experience to be simple and failure proof?
Here are 100 examples of How might we questions for your inspiration:
This list is a snapshot of possible how might we questions to inspire you to come up with your own. Every single of our customers is working on unique problems. We do not claim to have a definitive list or have the knowledge to make a prediction on which ones might work.
You get the picture, the idea is to ask a broad questions and expect several good ideas from which you can choose a few winners. Remember, there is more than one right idea.
A properly framed How Might We doesn’t suggest a particular solution, but gives you the perfect frame for innovative thinking. It is neither too broad nor too narrow. The How Might We format works best when you have a specific goal in mind. For example, “How might we solve the problem of X?” Or, “How might our customers benefit from Y?”. It's important to find the core problem before asking an HMW.
A Kaizen board is a representation of this process of continuous improvement which begins with identifying problems within your production system. Using a Kaizen board as a visual tool to represent teamwork is an efficient way for teams and organizations to make continuous improvements.
Kaizen Boards are different than normal Kanban or Scrum boards. Kaizen boards help teams by providing visual improvements that teach them qualities of Kaizen like expanding on small successes and identifying any ongoing problems.
newly introduced Kaizen board might be exactly what you need. Inspired people want to make changes but can't seem to keep up the fast-pace. The more meetings are held, the more excited everyone feels - leading to no true change. The success of projects stagnates. Kaizen boards capture improvement suggestions into visuals that lead you through implementing them systematically making change simpler and less complicated.
Kaizen boards turn good ideas into actionable cards and can help you to turn your good ideas into a reality if the board is prioritized by the team collaboratively at the same time as any other work.
Open innovation is the paradigm that businesses should connect with outside sources of creativity to benefit from a mix of external and internal ideas, technologies or paths to market.
Open innovation brings the best of the internal and external resources together. It allows for mutually beneficial connections of diverse groups that stimulate new ways thinking, create more effective collaborations, and disrupt markets.
Open Innovation benefits companies by harnessing the innovation of others and having more clarity on where their company, consumers nd the market is going. Collaborating together with other stakeholders creates better, faster outcomes.
With Open Innovation an idea that is created to improve a company’s product and service can come from anywhere. The ideas that a company collects and evaluates can help reduce costs and risk and time to markets as the ideas come straight from the source - partners, consumers or customers.
If you want to change your audience’s behavior, incentivize them for innovation. Consider whether your rewards reflect the customer experience you are trying to instill in your team and the values of your customers.
Rewards can entice engagement, increase productivity and encourage participation in the program. For example, a company might reward their ideators with holidays and cash to help improve participation rates. However, this can create less cohesion as people only saw value in submitting ideas, instead of crafting them or collaborating with others.
As with rewards, sometimes incentives can be a double edged sword. When motivating people to sustain a project, avoid the use of extrinsic rewards and focus instead on favoring intrinsic motivations such as an idea collection driven by a higher purpose or the chance of self development. Sometimes it is enough to simply just recognize contributors with light praise and appreciation as well as celebrating successes.
Often, the person submitting the idea will already have some valuable opinions and knowledge about how to proceed. They are most likely eager to discuss their ideas, as they have made time to research it. This can be highly rewarding for you and the participant.
In summary extrinsic monetary rewards are best for menial tasks (e.g. rating ideas) not creative tasks (formulating ideas). Introducing extrinsic rewards can spike activity but undermine long-term motivation and engagement.
Often, employees may have negative attitudes around open innovation because they don’t understand the positive impact it can have on their company. While not all ideas will be high quality, utilizing the ideas of others can legitimately expose your company to new solutions that work better and represent market trends better than anything you could have created internally. It only needs one good idea among a hundred to make it worth the effort.
If your organization feels skeptical of open innovation, try sharing stories of other companies that have found successful solutions or developed new products with the help of Open Innovation. If other bigger companies are successfully implementing these processes, why would you have a hard time in your own company? Spread the good things that Open Innovation can bring, as well as the pitfalls.
Regardless of which aspect of new open innovation project you are working on, you need to be mindful of your participants' legal rights and obligations. Having a legal best practice like terms and conditions for participations set in place before beginning an open innovation effort is vital.
Intellectual property law intends to ensure an inventor is credited while also allowing them to profit from their ideas. With open innovation, however, it is possible that the innovator will need to rescind their rights to an idea.
Companies or individuals submitting solutions must be sure that the process is fair and transparent and that the legal bases and ownership terms are covered.
Ideanote offers granular access control for each part of the process. For each idea collection you have full control who should be able to submit ideas, view ideas as well as contribute to each individual phase in your process. You click "Share" in an idea collection, add a specific person, a team or the entire workspace and specify their level of access.
Ideanote offers the ability to build your own idea funnel - a set of phases that an idea travels through on its journey to completion. You might have your own process for handling ideas in mind and so Ideanote offers full customizability when it comes to these phases. No matter if you are starting out with a complex stage-gate system that requires multiple review steps and idea evaluations or just a simple 3 step process of "To Do", "In Progress" and "Done"; if you can think it you can build it in Ideanote.
From custom comment labels like "Why did you rate like this?" to weighted rating criteria, custom phase names and descriptions as well as hidden ideas and activates per phase - just add a phase, customize it and share it with the right team or set of people and start moving ideas forward.
Ideanote is happy to provide a video course material and a help center with help articles and documentation to all plans including the Free plan, chat and email support to all paid plans as well as a dedicated key account manager for enterprise customers. Support services are included in the plans and do not cost extra. Ideanote provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that details the exact type and degree of support that Ideanote provides to customers.
SSO allows companies to manage all users in single overview. With a single SSO, companies have one less place to worry about as it centralizes the users into an application that cuts down on the app management needs. Ideanote supports a range of Single Sign-On providers and technologies including SAML 2.0, Azure ADFS, JWT and more.
Yes, you can get inspiration from our customers as well as different use-cases. Ideanote is versatile and has helped teams and enterprises alike accelerate their innovation; from company wide innovation management to innovation challenges or improved brainstorming sessions.
Ideanote was founded in 2015 and has been building Idea Management Software since then.
With the right engagement tracker, it's easy to measure employee engagement. Here are 5 easy ways to evaluate company culture.
Short Surveys, with 5-10 questions per survey, the process will not be complex. Conducting this process on a regular basis will give you
1-on-1s, having regularly scheduled, hour-long meetings where you can have an informal chat with each member of your team is a great way to get a real sense of what’s going on with them.
Exit Interviews, where people leaving the organization are interviewed to learn more about their factors affecting their engagement.
eNPS, like customer net promoter score, just for employees. Measure how people answer "Would you be willing to recommend the company as a good place to work?"
Innovation, you can further and measure an employee's engagement be seeing if and how they engage in innovation activities like company wide idea challenges.
Ideanote believes anonymity should be clear and consistent for users. Ideanote offers three levels of anonymity on the platform.
Fully Anonymous Ownership hides your name for other people from anywhere in the user interface including lists, statistics, integrations, notifications and exports. While anonymous ideas are also not counted in statistics and not shown on your profile, it might still be possible to identify or approximate an idea submitter identity via metadata like the location of a user, custom JavaScript code added to the platform by the administrator or process loopholes like only letting one person submit an idea at a time while knowing who a link was sent to.
Ideanote is also forced to provide a "data dump" export of all data on a workspace on request by the Workspace Owner for compliance reasons. While these requests are rate, the data might contain ways to uncover anonymity. Ideanote does not reveal the identity of anonymous ideas on request. In cases of suspected gross negligence Ideanote reserves the right to send notifications to users suspected to be victims of a breach of their anonymity.
Employee Engagement is the level of an employee's identification with the purpose and practice of their company as well as their level of trust in its goals, leadership and goodwill.
In this, Employee Engagement goes further than job satisfaction, the mere point at which someone might be content with their job in terms of salary and hours. It's as a two way street, a symbiotic relationship between the employee and the company that positively impacts employee happiness and the bottom line. Having engaged employees means increased revenues, increased product innovation, and improved customer experience.
Employee engagement is important because it can help organizations survive and thrive in a competitive marketplace and is one of the most important factors to consider when improving an organization. Your business will benefit in the long run if you have engaged employees - they'll be more likely to stay in the company, less likely to leave and engage with the community, and will also be able to give their all while at work. If employees are not engaged, their work will likely be negatively impacted and the business will suffer. In fact, research has shown companies with better levels of employee engagement vastly outperform competitors in every area.
In a lot of cases, employees don’t leave companies because of salary or benefits. They leave because of a lack of recognition from their superiors and insufficient opportunities for growth. Internal connection, communication, and engagement fuel your business growth. Employee engagement can help employees feel proud about being a member of the company that supports them.
There are many indicators that can show disengagement in a business. Some of the more common indicators include poor productivity, customer complaints and employee complaints. All of these indicators can have negative effects on your business, so it is important to be aware of them and take action if necessary.
Low employee engagement has a negative impact on a range of key business performance indicators. These include productivity, profitability, absenteeism, incidents involving public safety, customer evaluations, and shrinkage.
Here is a list of the most common continuous improvement methodologies.
Continuous improvement is an idea that has been embraced by many businesses, and it's easy to see why. This approach to management is based on the idea that all work should be done in a way that constantly strives for improvement. Shifting from traditional methods of improvement to an effective continuous improvement strategy could save your company nearly double digit percentage improvements annually in cost reduction or efficiency.
"45% reduction in cycle time, 28 % reduction in labor costs, 60% reduction in time lost due to anomalies, 24% reduction in Non-Conformances and an increase in 89% of efficiency rate."
Boeing, Continuous Improvement Case Study
BridgeLoan, 40% of the loan applications have been executed faster since adapted Kaizen.
3M, Saved approximately $30 million per year by changing their waste reuse processes with SixSigma.
Kahiki Foods, reduced wasted resources by ~70% in six months with Value Stream Mapping.
Merchants Insurance Group, improved on time project delivery to 80% and 758% in revenue growth with BPM.
With a mindset of continuous improvement in your company, you will stay ahead of the curve, leading to a more successful business. Not only does it have financial benefits for an organization, employees who work on improving the company tend to stay longer because they feel personally accomplished, leading them to produce more impactful results.
Here are 16 benefits of Continuous Improvement:
Continuous Improvement is a business methodology of improving processes, products and services to improve efficiency and quality. It is not a one time action but rather the process of creating a better way of doing the same task again and again by making incremental, sustainable improvements based on a series of recurring cycles. Continuous Improvement makes companies more productive, efficient and profitable.
Continuous improvement ensures that work goes faster, provides cost betterment, allows for risk reduction, & opens up new opportunities for incremental revenue. In other words, the continuous improvement method includes everyone from workforce to business units to get quick changes to project success.
Continuous Improvement can be broken down into manageable segments which can be repeated for each cycle. The PDCA cycle, or the Plan-Do-Check-Act methodology, encourages problem solving in a planned way that enables you to factor in feedback when making changes to your system.
Here are the four steps of the PDCA Cycle:
Turning problems into innovation challenges is a good way for managers to come up with solutions. Let’s take a look at how it works.
The first step to solving any problem is to ask yourself, "does this need a solution?" The more educated you are about the problem, the easier it will be to solve. For example, identifying that we're not selling enough of our products might lead you to better marketing strategies or changing what's being sold or how it's being sold for better results. Write down why it needs a solution and then some of the reasons why the problem has occurred in the first place. Follow up by considering how urgent this problem is and how other actors in the market approach the problem.
Then take the learning to formulate an innovation challenge question based on where you understand the core of the problem lies and which main stakeholders, what technology or area of the company you might expect a solution from and who would benefit from it.
With a good challenge question, you shouldn't be too focused on a specific solution to the problem. You want your statement to be as broad as possible, not focusing on a specific method or approach. It helps to center the question around the goal or the people benefiting from the solution you are looking for. Make the question specific enough to keep people focused on the problem at hand while keeping it open enough to allow for creative solutions that you wouldn't even expect. For example How might we [help homeowners] by using [new technologies] to [reduce their energy use]?
It is also a good idea to follow up your innovation challenge question with some context to tell the necessary stakeholders why it is important and what can happen if nothing is done.
Here are 15 examples of successful innovation challenges.
Innovation Challenge Software allows any organization to launch a contest or challenge. It includes everything from options for the type of competition, to how many teams can compete, to sponsorship options and prizes. Innovation challenges let you share a core business challenge with your employees or customers and motivates them to submit solutions with all the context in place to understand the challenge.
Developing a successful innovation management strategy is a time intensive process that requires structure, management and interconnectivity. In order to reach the company's maximum innovation potential, companies need innovation management software to manage all aspects of their process from team communication to generating design templates.
Innovation management software supports your company's innovation process by providing a structure for innovators to follow. Implement this solution into your company in order to secure the success of your innovation system. It will work with all other dimensions, including ideation, productivity, portfolio management, and product launch!
Time-saving processes - Innovation management software makes the process of generating, collecting, developing and implementing new ideas easier. If you have ever been involved on a corporate innovation initiative or process, you know the amount of data being exchanged on different stakeholders' requirements is overwhelming. This information can be difficult to understand, but with an innovation management software system it can be more easily analyzed and interpreted for faster results.
Improved idea quality - Investing in innovation management software can contribute to successfully evolving your ideas beyond the brainstorming stage.
Easier collaboration across teams - Innovative companies aware of the need for innovation management software hire innovative people, stimulate creativity with idea challenges or open innovation calls, connect expertise from different areas, and participate regularly in public competitions - which improves the company's chances for new inventions.
Faster and better decision making that reduces risks - Innovation management software facilitates a process-driven decision-making process for all companies, and also keeps the innovation team informed about decisions. Decision making becomes objective, well educated, and documented under innovation process with precise analytics from the platform. You can measure innovation activities as a company with full visibility and transparency of your ROI on new initiatives.
Innovation and improvement seem to be the same, but they have different meanings and implications. How can you tell them apart? It's easy: innovation is usually associated with the creation of something new, whereas innovation is making something better than it originally was.
Improvement is the implementation of something new, but with a lower degree of novelty and it is usually the optimization or extension of existing. Improvements can weed out underlying issues without starting from scratch. When we’ve reached the limits of an achieving progress with incremental small changes, or when the situation or expectations changes significantly in a short span of time, that’s where innovation plays a role. Innovation is when something breaks the mold in order to come up with something great, whereas improvement is tweaking things in an existing way to make it better.
Unlike improvement, innovation is about creating a whole new idea which leads to more of a risk that it will not produce significant gains for the company or consumers. In order to minimize the risk of investing in something that does not produce valuable outcomes, it is vital to have a process for evaluating innovation.
Innovation management is the systematic promotion of innovations in organizations and includes tasks of planning, organization, management and control. Innovation management can range from processes to role expectations for engineers, to crafting the right tone for an innovation lab. Innovation management is focused on all measures of improving innovation within an organization. It helps generate benefits like improved decision-making, better customer experience, and operational efficiency.
It is important that companies have a system in place to monitor, evaluate and direct their innovation. This might be just for a single task or for every aspect of the company. These tools and their features help you manage, track, and control all the different aspects of your innovation initiatives like a product development process or a cost saving sprint.
Innovation management tools are all about the support to innovation. Innovation management tools offer a variety of ways in which organizations can manage innovation - from finding new opportunities to assessing the strengths and weaknesses of their current operations. When it comes time to a company's innovation capabilities these tools can help helping businesses and organizations plan for, monitor and execute their innovation initiatives and innovate more effectively.
One way a business can achieve innovation is by determining what type of innovation they would like to happen. This sets the course for where an organization needs fixing or wants improvements. Innovation can be varying degrees of incremental or radical but their aim determines what type of innovation it is.
While innovation managers come in all shapes and sizes, they share similar traits that allow them to achieve success. These benefits include curiosity, mastery of multiple skills, knowledge of how to seek out the skills needed for any project at hand. To make a good innovation manager, you need to have an open mind for multiple strategies.
A quality innovation manager should have a logical understanding of an organization's inner workings to successfully implement new ideas., should be able to listen to new ideas while also being focused on the task at hand, ensuring that these new ideas are brought to fruition. A good innovation manager is being good at focusing on results. Knowing the business needs as well as the technology available to do so is essential.
Innovation managers work with diverse platforms and come up with several strategies for each situation. You will need to be able to juggle multiple projects and allow for change across different areas in the company. Having a knack for moving work and facilitating change allows you to excel and innovate at any level in the organization. Effective coordination between stakeholders with excellent communications skills are essential in the position of innovation manager. They are required to simply execute projects, design project plans, and keep informed of transformations.
There are many things that can make a good idea. A good idea is one that solves a problem, creates something new or improves an existing solution. They are often unique and can in the best cases be expressed in simple understandable terms. A good idea is not just original but also simple and practical to implement. It should be well researched so the implementation process goes smoothly. A good idea often has a clear goal which makes it easier for others to understand what's being suggested. Ideas that are important can make a significant positive impact on society and can improve the lives of people. When trying to come up with good ideas, think about how it will impact people and our nature.
What separates a bad idea from a great idea is also it context and timing. Inventions such as the car, computer, and television were considered radical ideas when they first appeared because they were new but that did not make them bad ideas. Suggesting to invent the TV now would be be a little late - just as it would be hopeless to suggest drinking more water to solve thirst, if there is no water around.
In the end, the power of a good idea is dependent on the execution. A great idea in your head or on paper means much less if it is never carried out in the real world.
There are many strategies and tactics to manage ideas successfully, including Innovation-Led Growth. You can manage ideas on paper or digitally, in person or remotely. In very simple terms, to manage ideas you'll go have to address the following steps in one or the other way:
Idea management systems are industry-recognized procedures for capturing, ordering, and managing the ideas that can foster growth and sustainability and help achieve goals for an team or organization.
Managing your ideas can be hard to do in a fast-paced work environment. You need to not only find time for them, but also the discipline to follow the right process for finding and capturing them. This process can be done in many ways, but it’s important to choose one that fits best with your company culture. Some companies use software, while others use physical notebooks or good old-fashioned sticky notes.
Idea management is the process of capturing, organizing, prioritizing, and executing ideas. It's not enough to have one great idea or two - you need an infrastructure in place to make sure all your great ideas are given the attention they deserve.
Ideas need to be managed carefully, otherwise you could lose out. With idea management team-members and customers feel their ideas are valued and continue to contribute innovative ideas which spur creativity and help grow your company. Managing ideas can help ensure that cost savings are implemented and new products are launched faster and in a more reliable manner all while reducing your rate of failure when it comes to innovations. You can solve challenges faster and better together and identify opportunities you otherwise might have missed.
One of the most notable differences between idea management and innovation management is the scope. While they both present opportunities to grow a company, innovation management is more focused on creating innovative products or services to differentiate from the competition. Idea Management starts with an idea found by somebody who internally brings the idea to the business managers for review and implementation.
Innovation Management involves the implementation of innovation into a business model, usually through structured strategy and creative processes such as brainstorming sessions. In a way Idea Managemet is a part of Innovation Management. The Idea Management process exists in tandem with the other wheels that make up Innovation Management to help power business growth and innovation.
To avoid wasting time and resources, there needs to be clear criteria for selecting the best ideas. The most widely used criteria is the so-called ICE-score, evaluating an idea on Impact, Certainty and Ease.
Other criteria that you should consider when evaluating ideas are how Useable, Stable, Creative, Radical, Scalable, Sticky, Profitable, Focused, Actionable, Implementable or how Aligned an idea is on a scale from e.g. 1-5.
In most cases evaluating ideas on more than 3 criteria is not practicable for the idea evaluators.