As with all product companies, we regularly hear feedback from our current and prospective customers about the product. Over time, patterns sometimes emerge and a universal need is revealed. We’ve been lucky enough over the last few months to see some common needs arise among our customers, and we’re very excited to announce a new version of Kindling that addresses these needs, and more.
Assessments
A common refrain regarding Kindling, and one our competitors have tried to use against us over the last year, is that Kindling excels at engaging participants of an innovation program but lacks the feature set to help decision makers evaluate this flood of ideas. Throughout this year, we’ve increasingly focused on this area of the product and are pleased to announce a powerful new addition: decision makers in Kindling can now build and reuse custom templates which can gather expert feedback on an idea. This feedback is then collated into a super-slick summary report which can be printed, shared and used as another input to the idea evaluation and decision making process. Here are a few views of this feature in action:
Easily construct a form for expert feedback
Expert responses on the summary view
Anonymous Idea Submission
You’ve been asking for it, we’ve been resisting. We have to admit that anonymity has been a thorn in our sides since launching Kindling. We’ve spent countless hours convincing sales prospects and customers that they really don’t want anonymous contributions to their innovation community, as anonymity quickly devolves into a low level of discourse (see: the Internet!). And then we got it—there is a case where a participant wants to get honest feedback on their idea, unencumbered by their identity and reputation within the organization (“the boss’ idea…I love it!”). So this is what we’ve built. When this feature is turned on (in your admin settings), individuals can post ideas anonymously and reveal their identity at any point in the future. (We maintain our resistance to anonymous commentary, though.)
Some ideas benefit from anonymity
Idea author can reveal their identity
Matchstick
You’re at your computer reading an article on the Web when it happens—you get a flash of insight about your industry, a competitor or trend. Now, rather than navigating over to Kindling, you can use Matchstick, our browser-based idea capture tool. With Matchstick, participants in your community can draft their idea and relate it to the page they’re reading without ever leaving the Web page. We’re obsessed with lowering the friction between the time inspiration hits and the posting of the idea, and with Matchstick, we’ve reduced that friction even further. (And of course, when inspiration strikes on the go, there’s an app for that.) Matchstick is easily installed by visiting the Tools section of your Kindling account, there you’ll find easy instructions for installing in any browser.
Easily install Matchstick to any browser
Adding an idea is only ever one click away
This version is full of other goodies, too, including enhancements to our already incredibly user-friendly user interface that we can’t wait for you to see. If you are one of our current customers, login to your Kindling account now to see these new features in action.
And if you’re contemplating an innovation management solution, get in touch with us. We’d love to walk you through these features and show you how companies like yours are cutting costs, inventing new products and services and improving their bottom lines with Kindling.
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