Better Ideation Task Results in Web-Based Idea Management Systems

Abstract

Web-based idea management systems (IMS) have helped many organisations to adapt their creativity processes to the new way of working in response to the global pandemic. IMS provide a systematic and manageable idea generation and evaluation process in the virtual environment. Many well-known organisations in various industries, for example, Etsy, Panasonic, Sony, Electrolux, and Volvo, use IMS. In this paper, the authors identified a clear research gap—what kind of ideation tasks creates the best idea quality and quantity. The aim of this research is to find out how the different ideation task elements influence the quality and quantity of generated ideas. The following methods were used to fill the gap: (1) literature review (data collection: systematic data collection from scientific databases; data analysis: through content analysis) and (2) global survey of n > 500 organisations with web-based IMS experience (data collection: survey; data analysis: statistical inference). The results provide insight into: (1) correlations between the number of created ideation tasks and idea quality and quantity, (2) how results are affected by the duration of ideation tasks, and (3) analysis of different ideation task types and their impact on results.