With the introduction of generative AI (GenAI), organizations are trying to find the best way to use the technology to support InnovationOps initiatives. In bringing together a company’s culture, ways of working, people and products, companies can operationalize innovation and bring every team member together under an overarching goal. With the help of GenAI, companies will support an InnovationOps ideology more seamlessly and innovate at scale more easily.
As we recently discussed, we’re seeing great promise in the use of AI for product portfolio management. Perhaps an even more exciting use of the technology is in the realm of discovery and idea management. By leveraging the comprehensive learning capabilities of GenAI, future innovation software offerings will streamline the ideation process in three areas: automated ideation, idea buildout and trend analysis and prediction.
Automated ideation process
Good old-fashioned brainstorming sessions with a whiteboard and erasable markers — and lots of coffee — were fun (most of the time). However, the ideation process has advanced, and with GenAI, innovation management software will soon help teams tackle it with more precision by taking the next step: making immediate connections between ideas and actual needs.
You still need humans to come up with original ideas, but GenAI-powered tools will take those ideas and quickly respond with a broad and diverse range of additional possibilities based on a repository of information that includes customer needs, current portfolios and previous campaigns. This kind of insight would take weeks to get to (if ever) in a traditional ideation environment.
And what’s truly exciting is that AI will be used for clustering and pattern recognition of new and existing ideas. This functionality will enable the identification of relationships and patterns among ideas, facilitating categorization, combination and prioritization. Clustering and pattern recognition enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of the idea selection process. The end result? An ideation process that presents only the most promising opportunities.
Idea buildout assistance
Once ideas have been generated, GenAI will help take them a step further by offering in-depth assistance in the buildout phase by creating personas and jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) artifacts. Moreover, GenAI will produce a set of possibilities and insights that may not have been discovered through manual processes alone.
As we’ve explored, innovation JTBD is a critical aspect of the InnovationOps methodology, as it assigns tasks not by role but by who is most qualified to do it. GenAI will help identify the right person for the right task, as opposed to trying to find the right fit manually — or just defaulting to a person’s title.
These "copilot-like" AI assistants will save time and energy by automating time-consuming tasks and giving product teams more time to focus on other critical tasks. It’s certainly a win-win, as organizations will not only find the best fit for JTBD, but they’ll also be able to identify the right person quickly.
Innovation trend analysis and prediction
While GenAI isn’t a crystal ball, it can certainly give innovation teams the insight necessary to make the most educated decisions. Integrating GenAI in discovery has the potential to enable teams to identify latent customer needs and align product development initiatives with future market demands. The ideation process would not be limited to current customer requirements but would have the look-ahead ability to address trends before they’re actually trends.
By capitalizing on emerging trends and market dynamics, organizations will make proactive decisions about which ideas to pursue and create portfolios that remain in sync with market demands.
With GenAI, innovation and product teams will be able to revolutionize their ideation and product development processes via automated ideation, idea buildout assistance and trend analysis capabilities. It’s going to be exciting to see where the technology will take us. And Sopheon will be on the frontline of these advancements. To take your discovery process to the next level, learn more about Sopheon’s Acclaim Ideas.
