Innovation Management Support Tools – a Comparative Analysis Focusing on Open Innovation.

Increasing competition and shorter product lifecycles combined with increased demand for product quality, and customization pose huge challenges to enterprises in global markets. The ability to inno-vate and to integrate external knowledge and collaborate with partners in an open innovation environment has become a core competency vital to sustaining successful enterprises. This being one of the most significant challenges an enterprise faces, the need for appropriate process support is growing. In order to examine the open innovation process, the current paper aims to analyze existing innovation support tools focusing in par-ticular on the open front end of the innovation process. Based on a specifically developed selection and eval-uation methodology, ICT-based innovation support tools were selected through a stepwise process and those that were deemed both replicable and relevant were analyzed in depth. The main results of the current paper show that although there are some similarities between the different tools (e.g. regarding the underlying inno-vation process) they mainly differ in terms of functionalities and structure. All examined tools were limited in the incorporation of functionalities to support the very early phases of the front end of innovation (e.g. the link between the strategic decision-making process of a company and its innovation process). Additionally, none of the tools offered functionality to support creativity in the front end of innovation. These results show that further research is required to understand and support the open innovation process.