INNOWEB: Gathering the context information of innovation processes with a collaborative social network platform

This paper describes the development of a collaborative social platform to support innovation process management. The Drupal based platform accommodates different types of innovation processes (also called waves or idea contests), enhances collaboration and eases management. The main contribution lies on the gathering of context parameters which helps enterprises on the detection of critical success factors, enabling later reproductions. The development leverages open source social computing, real-time web and semantic web technologies adding new functionality in a modular way. Blogs, wikis, graphical tools and voting systems support collaboration and idea management in the early stages of the innovation process. A workflow module launches customized innovation campaigns where topics, participants, stages, selection criteria and communication methods are optimized to enterprise needs.