Good ideas are difficult to come by, yet they do exist. If you don't spend some time on the correct idea generation and validation tools and processes, staring at a desktop screen won't help you.

Due to this, various idea generation and validation tools are gaining popularity.

Here is a carefully curated list of the top tools for ideation, brainstorming ideas, and idea validation to aid you in your endeavor.

1. MindMeister

MindMeister is the premier mind mapping program for capturing, developing, and sharing ideas visually, of over 7 million subscribers. The web app has a modern design and an intuitive interface that allows you to execute a variety of creative tasks such as ideation, note-taking, and planning, among others. It also allows you to view a complete history of updates, export to multiple file formats and services.

Key Features:

• Allows you to easily propose your ideas on television using your phone or tablet

• Collaboration with team members

• Manage tasks

• Share using Google Drive, Dropbox, other file sharing formats

• Custom styles for mind mapping

Cost:

Starts at $5

2. Kindling

Kindling is a platform for idea management and creativity that allows you to test out new concepts, resolve issues, and seek opportunities. Users can use the tool to find, discuss, assess, and agree on ideas that are relevant to their community. Users can submit ideas as well as highlight difficulties, prospects, and trends within a business. The software is simple to use and lets users pose questions and challenges about ideas that can be explored through interaction with the possibility of finding solutions.

Key Features:

• Dashboard

• Ideation

• Collaboration

• Coded process

• Tracking

Cost:

Contact Sales

3. Ideawake

Ideawake is a business software firm that specializes in idea generation and validation. Ideawake works with businesses to create an Innovation culture from the ground up, enjoying the benefits of their precious resource: their people and stakeholders. Ideawake believes that business innovation needs to be properly strategized in order to achieve specific corporate goals, which necessitates the creation of an end-to-end creativity pipeline from concept to implementation.

Key Features:

• User Interface That Is Simple to Understand

• Analytics Dashboard with Customizability

• Workflows that can be customized

• Facilitator Training on a One-on-One Basis

• An interface that can be customized

• Idea Evaluation on Multiple Levels

• Employee Engagement Through Gamification

Cost:

Free

4. Exago

Exago software draws together all of the necessary individuals and their combined experience to address your most pressing business problems, both inside and outside the company. Their platform editions and skilled end-to-end services enable you to quickly locate, manage, analyze, and put to life ideas that create value to both your employees and your organization as a whole, from business sustainability to a fresh and more competitive proposition.

Key Features:

• Community-focused challenges to entice the right people to join

• A concept management approach that is both conventional and customizable

• Simple pipeline management

• A variety of evaluation techniques

• Exportable reports and a complete reporting engine

Cost:

Starts at $3.50

5. Codigital

Codigital is a world-class end-to-end idea validation system that allows customers to involve a huge number of workers in the generation of ideas and interactive problem-solving. It assists users in tracking measurable business accomplishments from conception to completion.

Key Features:

• Idea generation

• Review sessions

• Simple user interface

• Collaboration

• Sustainable innovation

Cost:

Free

6. Spigit

Spigit software aids in the discovery of new products and services, as well as the enhancement of consumer experience, process streamlining, and employee engagement. Spigit includes a number of automation tools that enable ideas to be generated automatically without the need for manual approval. This feature is dedicated to making the administration of the innovation software as simple as possible.

It assists the crowd in selecting, predicting, and advancing the finest ideas. It keeps the herd from acting irrationally.

Key Features:

• Automation slashes effort

• Security of the enterprise

• Enterprise-scale

• Patented

Cost:

Contact Sales

7. Aha!

Aha! is the most popular product planning software, with millions of company owners and organizations using it. Anti-virus detection, IP address access restriction, customizable tables, profile backup, and transfer, and advanced licensing management are just a few of the features included in Aha!

Key Features:

• Develop a strategy

• Create roadmaps

• Scheduled releases

• Gather feedback

• Share slides

• Advanced license management

• Scanning viruses

Cost:

Starts at $39

8. Brightidea

Brightidea is a business tool that manages innovation programs. All staff engagements, crowdsourcing programs, and performance tracking are all managed in one spot. It has a people module that may be used to interact with the right professionals at the right moment to get the greatest outcomes. It does this by monitoring their credentials and certifications, as well as importing participants from other platforms. The inventions module could be used to manage and track several innovation processes, ensuring that each one is performing optimally.

Key Features:

• Engage your employees from the start.

• Identify and solve a specific issue

• Metrics of Engagement

• Collaboration on the Go

• Evaluations that are open and transparent

• Drag-and-Drop \sWorkflow

• Tracking the Return on Investment

Cost:

Contact Sales

9. Crowdicity

Crowdcity is a tool for social creativity. Crowdicity enables a large number of innovation challenges to be launched, whereby the public reacts with their thoughts. Challenges might be divided into categories or posed as one direct question. Users can share their thoughts, photographs, documents, and videos. The entire community or individual teams can talk about ideas. It is possible to invite various users at different phases of the challenge.

Key Features:

• Allows you to create and manage custom groups of users based on a variety of parameters

• Share ideas instantly and get feedback in real-time

• Connects you to people all over the world

• Improves engagement with the audience

Cost:

Contact Sales

10. Planbox

Planbox is a cloud-based, all-in-one solution for managing the entire innovation process. Use your whole workforce, clients, partners, and vendors to crowdsource, find, collect, develop, analyze, organize, and experiment with new ideas. Planbox's flexible innovation management platform makes use of powerful search technologies, AI, and machine learning.

Key Features:

• Configurable architecture for workflow

• Powerful analytics

• Available on-premise

• API connected innovation management

Cost:

Starts at $2

11. Qmarkets

Qmarkets is a crowdsourcing idea generation and validation tool that uses cooperation to crowdsource ideas, improve corporate results, and engage audiences. The platform is set up to help employees, clients, and partners find projects, crowdsource suggestions, and manage fresh streams of ideas. Various stakeholders can contribute new concepts and provide feedback, rate submitted ideas, assist in the development of ideas, and determine the most popular notions.

Q-flex includes adaptable aspects for companies that have already tried their hand at operating idea management projects, as well as a variety of templates for customizing a homepage to meet specific goals.

Key Features:

• Process Improvement

• Innovation Management

• Marketing & Strategic Planning

• Market Research

• Idea Management

• Workflow for Customized Evaluation

• Personalized communication

• Optional Mobile App

Cost:

Contact Sales

12. HYPE Innovation

HYPE Innovation is an enterprise innovation solution for managing ideas and transforming them into profitable outputs at an organizational scale. The platform includes capabilities such as ideation, cooperation, idea rating, trend detection, and more. It encourages users to visit a site more frequently and motivates them by emphasizing recent market advancements.

Key Features:

• Brainstorming

• Collaboration with team

• Dashboard for activities

• Creator tracking

Cost:

Contact Sales

13. Wazoku

Wazoku is an innovation management platform that allows businesses all over the world to run internal and external crowdsourcing activities. Wazoku's idea platform, Idea Spotlight, is utilized to create progressive improvements in processes, realize cost savings, and shorten timeframes. To promote transparency and maintain visibility into operations, the cross-functional system is utilized to cooperate and engage users across corporations, regional sites, and departmental teams. Idea Spotlight helps businesses enhance internal engagement by providing dedicated workspaces where they can engage partners and tap into their external communities, such as vendors.

14. Acuvate Wave

Wave is an innovation management tool for capturing, collaborating on, evaluating, and selecting innovative ideas that could be used to solve a variety of business problems. Wave promotes a process of innovation management that is participatory, transparent, and robust. It also creates a basis for identifying and rewarding individuals that contribute to the company's innovation and teamwork.

You may remain ahead of the competition by utilizing Wave to recognize and respond swiftly to prospective business ideas. The correct solution simplifies the creation and selection of business models, as well as assisting in the expansion of your company.

Key Features:

• Ideate and collaborate

• Solutions to Business Challenges

• Idea Management Process

• Dashboards & Reporting

• Gamification

• ISMAC Compliant

Cost:

Contact sales

15. Idea Drop

Idea Drop is a tool for generating and capturing fresh ideas, as well as gathering information among teams, departments, and offices around the world. The central innovation cycle is designed to involve a diverse group of team members. When proposing an idea, users can utilize the 'cloak' option to hide their identity if they like. Participants are kept interested through the software's social component, which includes link posting, feedback, #hashtags, attachments, and favorites.

Members can share business or operational difficulties with a larger group, establish deadlines, and give rewards using the Idea Drop program. Within an enterprise, the platform can create a limitless number of sub-communities.

Key Features:

• Collaboration with the team

• Dashboard

• Analytics

• Feedback in real-time

• Notifications and alerts

Cost:

Contact Sales

16. Viima

Viima is the most effective tool for gathering and developing ideas. Thousands of companies have already embraced it. Furthermore, Viima is completely free for approximately 50 users and could be set up in minutes! Viima was created with the goal of making innovation management clear, simple, and painless for everyone engaged.

Key Features:

• Hashtags are used to organize ideas into themes across different categories.

• Referencing users makes it simple to notify the appropriate person about what's going on.

• While on the go, mobile apps keep it simple to share ideas, upload photographs, and join the debate.

• Notifications for interesting acts are sent out automatically.

• Users are rewarded based on their activity on leaderboards.

Cost:

Free for up to 50 users

17. Rever

Rever is unique among idea management solutions in that it is tailored to the demands of production and commercial businesses. Rever, in a nutshell, assists businesses in including their staff in the ongoing development of their company operations. This makes sense because the frontline staff is continuously looking for new ways to improve their procedures.

Key Features:

• Tracking

• Mind mapping

• Collaboration

• Newsfeed

• Evaluation workflow

Cost:

Contact Sales

18. Idea Glow

IdeaGlow is a web-based idea management application that allows users to securely collect and organize ideas from staff, clients, and others. The software is intended to generate revenue, lower expenses, streamline procedures, boost staff engagement, and enhance consumer happiness. IdeaGlow uses best practices from social networking to create a branded site for working on ideas with a userbase in order to optimize user engagement.

The program is designed to invent specific business requirements on a timetable, as well as to generate and execute idea challenges based on an organization's most important goals.

Key Features:

• Idea management

• Employee engagement

• Capture suggestions

Cost:

$1799 per month

19. Idea Scale

IdeaScale is a review and idea generation platform that offers open innovation tools to help businesses alter their products, processes, and structures. Depending on the type of business that uses it, each platform is unique.

IdeaScale work engagement platform collects data from small to massive citizen populations in one site. The software can assist enterprises at all branches of administration in connecting workers and government entities by providing a simple, accessible platform for knowledge sharing.

Key Features:

• Live chat

• Acess is email-based

• Leaderboard

• Mobile apps

Cost:

$4999 per year for 200 users

20. HunchBuzz

HunchBuzz is a simple cloud-based idea generation and validation tool that allows users to crowd-source concepts and collective insights from their staff. HunchBuzz has a reward store, scoreboard, quick access, and concept management features. By promoting, capturing, and recognizing fresh ideas that identify obstacles and opportunities, HunchBuzz lets users accelerate their improvements – to adjust and modify existing processes, goods, services, and marketing strategies.

Key Features:

• User-friendly

• Interactive interface

• Idea management

• Leaderboard

• Reward store

Cost:

Contact Sales

Things to Consider While Choosing Idea Generation and Validation Tools

There are many various types of idea generation and validation tools on the market, each with its own set of functions. Some of the elements that a good idea generation and validation tool must have are listed below:

Campaign-oriented

This is a crucial feature! Every firm faces unique difficulties and possibilities that it seeks to exploit. As a result, gathering ideas that precisely address these concerns is critical to ensuring that are all on the same track.

Good workflow processes

This property ensures that each concept is considered and appraised as soon as possible.

Customization depends on the demands of the organization

Companies ought to be able to modify their ideas to match their specific requirements.

Ideation with collaboration

A strong idea management application allows firm personnel to swiftly communicate ideas no matter where they are in the world. It also allows employees to remark on the ideas of their coworkers in order to help mold them into more compelling answers.

Idea Archive

A powerful searchable idea archive: Frequently, a large majority of the acquired suggestions will not be implemented. This does not, however, imply that these items are useless. It's possible that now isn't the right time for them. As a result, the ability to save such thoughts and search for them afterward is critical.

Conclusion

Organizations can use idea generation and validation software to collect all of their employees' ideas and keep them in a single database. Businesses generate hundreds of thousands of ideas, each of which must be managed effectively, digested, and implemented. You can use the idea generation and validation tool that best works for your business.

FAQs

What are idea generation and validation tools?

Idea generation and validation is a collection of tools that enable business owners and managers to collaborate with a shared understanding of the issues and objectives. Idea management, also known as innovation management, enables a company to reply to external or internal possibilities by utilizing its creativity to offer new concepts, processes, or products.

An idea generation and validation software is a web-based program that enables firms to collect different ideas from their employees, evaluate those ideas, and then implement them in the business for increased productivity. Because such tools are digital, businesses may gather, exchange, and evaluate ideas from anywhere and at any time.

Why should one validate an idea?

New ideas contain unpredictably unpredictable parts, and if a few of them go astray, it can completely derail your goals. Validation lowers the risk, accelerates the delivery of a market-creating service, and lowers the expenses.

To prevent producing and marketing a product or an idea that no one likes or is prepared to pay for, a concept should be evaluated before spending a lot of time and cost in developing it.

How to validate ideas?

There are numerous methods for validating an idea. The ideal technique to do so is determined by the nature of the concept. Validation may not be essential if there is little uncertainty. Validation is all about putting assumptions to the test. It's crucial to test the most dangerous assumption first, rather than wasting time on something that has no chance of succeeding.

The 4 steps to validate an idea include:

• Define clear goals

• Build a hypothesis

• Test your assumptions

• Confirm if your assumptions are valid or not

Why idea generation and validation tools must be your priority?

One of the most important benefits of this tool is that it encourages innovation at all levels of the organization and allows every employee to be an inventor and contribute to the company by expressing their ideas.

Using an idea management platform allows all coworkers to participate in the process of planning and implementing new ideas, making them feel more valued and their efforts more visible.

How can you share innovative ideas?

The ideal method to share new ideas with your organization is to use idea generation and validation software, which allows you to communicate in real-time, debate your ideas, and choose the finest options.