Analytics Video


A walk through of Innovation Analytics from Imaginatik Director of Research, Dr. Rob Spencer.


About Analytics

As an Innovation Leader, you’re interested in applying the wisdom of crowds to your business problems — wisdom which may be found elsewhere in your company or perhaps in the outside world. You’re also interested in getting the most business value out of these collaborative efforts. This is a terrific idea and there are many compelling examples to show how well crowdsourcing and collaboration can work. In fact, to compete in a fast-changing world you really don’t have a choice.


What Imaginatik means by Analytics is distinct from tracking or reporting. Tracking and reporting is about the mechanics of the process: How many people have logged in? How many comments did we get yesterday? Such things are important for the process owner but they’re not about the business outcomes. Innovation Analytics is a set of tools for the business leader that help with very different types of questions:


  • Alice is on vacation. Who knows what she knows, especially Patent Law?
  • Have our new-idea sessions explored emerging markets for our products? If so, who are the key players? What countries have they considered or ignored?
  • Are the opinions about the new product line widespread, or do they come from a vocal minority?
  • I need help with some grass-roots communications. Who are the key “connectors” who seem to know everyone?
  • What marketing trends are we missing? Are the staff aware and talking about our competitors?


Innovation Analytics is “self feeding”: you use Innovation Central to run Challenges involving hundreds or thousands of people; each project stands alone and gives value to the business. Meanwhile all that rich material accumulates — people’s names and the ideas and comments they contribute to real business challenges. That’s what Analytics feeds upon and mines with old-fashioned searching plus best-in-class clustering, pattern matching, social network analysis, and interactive displays. It’s as much about people and their business relationships as it is about ideas and content.


Innovation Analytics consists of six tools, from simple to sophisticated, about people and about ideas, described in the next sections.