Tools of the Trade: Spigit's innovation management applications

Most organizations are incredibly inefficient at utilizing the collective creativity and knowledge of their employees and customers.

Juxtapose the dynamics of organizational relationships with social relationships outside the workforce. Facebook, LinkedIn, Skype, Second Life or any number of socially enabling technologies help us not only stay connected, but enhance our ability to share experience and thought.

Spigit applys these social concepts to the workforce. Their enterprise software IdeaSpigit & InnovationSpigit allow workers and customers to not only easily share ideas & concepts, but to also evaluate, contribute, and rank the contributions collaboratively. Those that make positive contributions gain in reputation, effectively increasing their workplace social capital. Effectively deployed, I can see how this would move brainstorming and innovative thinking away from meeting-centered to a daily routine (and who wouldn't want a workforce that constantly thinks innovatively).

Props to Erica Driver of ThinkBalm for pointing me towards this fascinating suite of applications.