Improving the Innovation Process at the Ideation Step Using Enterprise Content Management Systems and the Graph Theory

Abstract

The ideation step in Innovation management is an important step that requires human effort. Several researchers worked on this step by proposing support tools (for example, keywords, post-its, physical models, prototyping, etc.). However, few researchers suggested looking into the organization’s knowledge as it is closer to the organization’s reality in terms of capabilities and know-how. To this aim, Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions in the innovation management context could be an interesting option to explore as a source of internal knowledge that can be consulted during the ideation stage. In this thesis, we propose using ECM solutions at the ideation step to improve the innovation management process afterwards. Also, to minimize the reading and interpretation time, we propose using visualization tools with the ECM in our approach. Graph Theory was used in the analysis due to its strong analysis properties and its utility to our context to highlight the relationships between contents stored in the ECM. Following theoretical research on the use of ECM in the innovation management process and the gaps in the literature, a problem statement is formulated, and an initial approach is presented: How to support the ideation step in the innovation process by using Enterprise Content Management systems coupled with visualization tools? Then, two case studies were performed where the researcher attempted to test the proposed approach by using patents as contents to support the ideation step. • Case 1: While using the ECM as a support tool in the ideation step, the concept of “Content Graph” was introduced to avoid participants omitting valuable contents. The “Content Graph” results from applying the Graph Theory techniques on the ECM search result. This approach was experienced in the 24h innovation event by providing participants with the contents extracted by the “Content Graph”. We noticed that the supported team not only gained much time during their ideageneration process and also proposed more appealing and detailed ideas. They were better guided to a creative solution. Case 2: The approach used in Case 1 revealed that the idea generation process using only content graphs lacked “bisociation” because the participants restricted themselves only to the exploration space of the proposed contents. In this context, to enlarge the bisociation possibilities and so the exploration space, the results from the “Content Graph” were then converted into cards and combined with other creative prompt cards (TRIZ, Industry 4.0). During a second innovation event, “59 Minutes of Innovation”, this approach was experimented. Participants were guided to more creative solutions by combining several cards from the different sets in the card deck, and they proposed more appealing and detailed ideas. To increase productivity and quality of ideas, dedicated contents were provided to participants in ideation sessions. Besides, the number of contents were reduced by grouping them by Patent classification to ease the ideation process. Moreover, creative cues were added to create bisociations and enlarge the solution space.

Date	11 Jul 2023
Original language	American English
Awarding Institution	École de technologie supérieure
Supervisor	Mickaël Gardoni (Supervisor) & Ma Lorena Escandon-Quintanilla (Co-supervisor)