Idea Management Systems are inherently limited as:-

1. It becomes an administration nightmare. The more enthusiastic the organization the bigger the problem. Hundreds of ideas and only a few people to check, review, approve and re-direct ideas.
2. Volumes of ideas that have nothing to do with the business or its current challenges.
3. Dependence on specifically skilled people and a review process that is overly controlling.
4. Little- or no- follow-through on ideas to the individuals that participated in capturing ideas; resulting in damaging any further idea generation campaigns.

An Idea Management System is a structured and disciplined approach to managing innovation by putting in place systems and metrics to manage

• Idea Generation
• Idea Capture
• Idea Collaboration
• Idea Assessment
• Idea Implementation
• Idea Outcomes Monitoring

An Idea Management System involves 5 components:

• A Front-End system to capture and develop ideas
• A Back-End system to define and implement processes for filtering and assessing ideas and deciding which ones to invest in
• An organisational architecture to define the roles and organisational structures facilitating this activity
• IT systems to support and enable this workflow
• Metrics and measures to monitor the flow of ideas through the 'idea pipeline' and to determine the business value of the idea generation and implementation process

That is, an Idea Management System puts in place systems and processes to implement a stage-gate or idea funnel process where ideas are systematically filtered and assessed against criteria and only the most valuable ones are implemented and put into practice.

An Idea Management System manages, monitors and implements innovation in a structured way. Although it is not the only way to approach innovation, it is very appealing to management as it provides structure, discipline, clear milestones and metrics to what may otherwise be a very qualitative and unstructured process.