Innovation Through Collaboration

Zero Training.

You shouldn’t have to bring in consultants to train your employees on your idea collaboration tool. Kindling’s intuitive design allows participants to submit ideas, collaborate with others and innovate without training.

Innovation Channel.

Once Kindling is launched within your organization, it quickly becomes the central location for discussions and collaboration around innovation.

Maximize Engagement Levels.

Kindling’s design drives employee engagement. Across all Kindling customers, the participation level is above 77%, the best in the industry. Every employee that isn’t participating in your innovation program is a lost opportunity.

Don’t let your choice of solution stand in the way of employee participation!

Motivate Employees.

Kindling is designed to motivate members of your organization to participate in the innovation process.

Campaigns.

Kindling Campaigns are idea drives, or time-based calls for ideas on a particular topic. Campaigns can have an optional reward ($, an extra week vacation, etc.), which further incents members of your organization to submit an idea to the Campaign.

Reputation.

Kindling recognizes that many employees are motivated by the social dynamics existing in your organization. A participant’s Reputation in Kindling reflects the value created through their activities in the innovation process. Reputation scores then in turn motivate the members of your organization to keep innovating!

Idea Evolution.

Kindling is designed with the philosophy that ideas mature through peer feedback and participation. Ideas are entered and then discussed and voted upon by the community, ensure that the collective intelligence of your organization is reflected in the idea as it evolves.

Collaboration.

Kindling is designed to bring the members of your organization together around their ideas. Kindling supports collaboration around ideas indirectly, via the public commentary on an idea, and directly, through wiki-style editing of any idea. All proposed edits to an idea, however, are routed to the idea author for approval. Accepted edits are then reflected in the new version of the idea. Kindling is Innovation Through Collaboration.

Evaluate Ideas.

It’s not enough to just gather ideas – the goal is to find the ideas best suited for implementation in your environment.

Evaluation Criteria.

Organizations have a number of axes for which they evaluate ideas. Kindling supports a number of these: the popularity of the idea from voting activity, expected ROI and the capital required to fund the idea, among them. Each Kindling user has a finite number of votes, which results in each individual valuing their votes. As a result of this collective action, the best ideas rise to the top.

Decision-making Support.

Ideas are always open for collaboration among the members of your organization. Additionally, decision-makers have access to a private discussion on the idea, where they can evaluate and discuss the idea before approving or declining the idea publicly. Along with the discussion, Kindling allows decision-makers to add information to the idea as it’s being evaluated, including ROI and capital required.

Approval Workflow.

Decision-makers can communicate with each other in a private collaboration space per Room, perfect for private conversations about the approval process. Additionally, decision-makers can set and track approval and implementation related information like ROI.

Moderation.

Kindling takes a flexible approach to administration – individual’s can be assigned as moderators per idea Room. By assigning relevant moderators per Room, those most capable of decision-making have the ability to approve and implement ideas. Once approved, all ideas are tracked through implementation right in Kindling.

Reporting and Data Access.

A successful innovation program is constantly being evaluated by the organization, and Kindling supports this fact. Reporting and Kindling’s API provides access to the data useful for evaluating the program: activity, ROI, Campaign effectiveness and user participation.

Empower the decision-makers in your organization to drive outcomes using ROI tracking, email digests, Campaigns or simply by adding a reward. With Kindling it’s easy to see how the organization is responding to the innovation process.

Ideas Can Happen Anywhere.

We all know that the best ideas can happen in the most inopportune places. At the park or in a cab, with Kindling Mobile you’ll be able to get your ideas out before you’ve forgotten them.

Works On Any Smartphone.

If your phone can browse the Web, your phone can use Kindling Mobile. It’s as easy as pointing your mobile Web browser to your Kindling Account – from there you can easily catch up on recent activity, vote and comment on the latest ideas in your organization.

Innovate in Microsoft Outlook.

The more integrated your selection of an idea management tool is into your business and infrastructure, the more effective the program.

For many members of your organization, a large percentage of their working day is spent in Outlook. Kindling’s Outlook plug-in brings the ideas directly where people are spending their time and leverages the email metaphor to further engage people. Experience Kindling integrated with Outlook with this design video, and look for the announcement shortly once the plug-in is officially launched.

Innovate in Microsoft SharePoint.

Every aspect of Kindling is designed to fit into your organization’s ecosystem seamlessly. If you’re using Microsoft Sharepoint to support your collaboration efforts, Kindling’s SharePoint integration will enable the members of your organization to innovate with ease.

With Kindling’s support for unified authentication using ActiveDirectory and Single Sign-On, your users can easily move from SharePoint to Kindling without reauthenticating. Kindling’s SharePoint integration features a customizable component (Web Part) to pull relevant views and lists of ideas directly into SharePoint.
With integrated federated search, members of your organization will be able to locate ideas while searching SharePoint – increasing the likelihood of engaging your users with your innovation program.

Encryption

Kindling is secured via multiple layers – the first is industry standard SSL encryption to prevent your ideas from being viewed while in transit. We use industry standard 128-bit encryption or higher (the same standard used for online banking).

Physical Security

Kindling provides a totally separate database, complete with credentials, per account. This means that ideas can never be leaked across accounts. All Kindling data is backed-up nightly, on and off-site. Security and reliability are very important facets of the Kindling service.