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“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, … give them a tool, ...”
- Buckminster Fuller
“The synergy between theory, methods, and tools lies at the heart of any field of human endeavor that truly builds knowledge.”
- Peter Senge

Tools for innovation come in many different shapes and sizes. There are many useful tools such as mind-maps, collaboration software, modeling software, knowledge and idea management systems, etc.. These all have a role in the innovation process but they are not innovation tools per se as they implement generic activities. Their usefulness is directly dependent on the methodologies employed, not on the tool itself.

The tools of most interest to the innovator are those that directly enable, support and direct the right methods and practices for the innovation process. These are the tools that directly lead to the knowledge necessary for understanding the community, technology and solution domains from which value can be derived.

Inovo's Tool Suite is listed below. Links to descriptions of specific tools are also provided. Keep checking back as these wiki pages are updated on a regular basis.

  • Community Building Tools - Tools to find the right knowledge communities and individuals within those communities to understand needs and desires

    • Context Selection Tool - A tool to select where to begin. Defining the 'exploration' space and identifying the focus and boundaries for opportunity discovery efforts
    • Knowledge-Community Exploration Tool - A tool that uses social networks and 'small world' methods to identify rich veins of knowledge and experience. This includes spanning hidden social networks by contacting the connectors, the weak links, and other high-value individuals
    • Technology Mapping Tool - A tool to find 'what is possible' by deconstructing a technology into its essential effects and constraints. Useful for identifying and engaging with knowledge experts as well as direct customers

  • Elicitation and Synthesis Tools - Tools to uncover and capture the tacit and explicit knowledge held by individuals. These tools help to detect meaningful patterns in the raw data and to synthesize a holistic picture.

    • Individual Engagement Tool - Interview tools and methods using laddering, pyramiding, metaphor elicitation and LOCA (Latent Observation Constant Annoyance) to uncover tacit knowledge and experience from individuals
    • Community Member Profiling Tool - A means to capture, organize and synthesize engagement dialogs
    • Opportunity Mapping Tool - A system to map needs and desires into meaningful patterns from individual profiles. This includes identifying the relevant effect, experience and outcome dimensions essential to creating value.


  • Persona Adoption Modeling (PAM) Tool - A tool to identify the distinct needs and desire patterns including the Kano profiles of the different personas and build them into a software simulator to predict the response of personas to alternative concepts and situations
  • Persona Definition Tool - A concise means to capture and share prose definitions of personas. This includes graphical maps of the top needs and desires as well as the outcome and experience profiles
  • Concept Effect Mapping Tool - Deconstruction of a concept into its essential effects profile
  • Adoption Dynamics Forecast - A quick analysis of the persona's adoption behavior with respect to a specific concept over time using measures of Uniqueness, Relevance and Ubiquity

  • Ecosystem Modeling Tools - Tools to create an understanding of the complex business ecosystem using system dynamics modeling methods

    • Value Triangulation Tool - A tool to quickly assess the economic potential of an opportunity from three perspectives: supply side, demand side, and 'persona' side
    • Value Event Modeling Tool - A tool that enables estimating value development in highly ambiguous, uncertain and changing situations (e.g., in the front-end). This is an alternative to Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis, and is useful when the discount rate alone is inadequate to express all the risk.
    • Ecosystem Economy Modeling Tool - A tool that captures the complex and dynamic interactions and influences within a business ecosystem to enable scenario development and decision making

  • Ideation Tools - Tools that support and facilitate the creative brainstorming and idea creation process

    • Springboard - A structured and dynamic presentation of 'all that is known', using persona definitions and technology maps, to bring the entire internal community up to the same level of knowledge.
    • GOES Ideation Session - Creation of new ideas and concepts using the Generate - Organize - Expand - Select technique that results in relevant, focused and high potential concepts
    • Storyboarding - Visualizing a future with the new concept. Understanding the user experience before the product or service exists
    • Design Burst - Collaborative concept design using charrette-based methods


These tools support the human activities necessary for an effective innovation process.

" ...the strongest reason to look for tools based on important new theories [is that] only such tools have the power to change the way we think. Most tools ... are based on conventional ways of thinking … Such tools may be useful, but they will not be transformative” - Peter Senge; The Fifth Discipline