Kacang cerdik: A conceptual design of an idea management system

Abstract

An idea management system is where ideas are stored and then can be evaluated and analyzed. It provides the structure and the platform for users to contribute ideas for innovation and creativity. Designing and developing an idea management system is a complex task because it involves many users and lot of ideas. Some of the critical features for an idea management system are supports for the ideas generation process, stimulate users to actively participate, facilitates reuse of ideas and encourages open collaboration among the users. This paper discusses a conceptual architecture design of an idea management system called Kacang Cerdik based on three novel concepts; actor, object and workflow. In the system, an idea is an object or an entity that can be manipulated by the users. An idea as an object can be used to generate other ideas. It can also derive its features from other ideas. In this system, an idea is linked with other ideas in the system. The idea will flows from one state to another state in a single workflow. A single workflow is a process or a pipeline that consists of many states. At each of the states, an idea (an object) can manipulated by a user (an actor) based on his current role. The single workflow consists of five different states which are editing, collaborating, reviewing, publishing and evaluating. In the system, a user is an actor who has multiple roles such as a submitter, a reviewer or an evaluator. Based on this concept, a user can submit a new idea or can review an existing idea or can vote on an idea. The system also uses the concept of crowd wisdom to evaluate the ideas. Finally, the potentially viable ideas at the end of the workflow or the pipeline can be further evaluated in a new product development cycle. This conceptual design encourages open collaborations among the users, reuse of previous ideas and use of crowd wisdom in ideas evaluation. A working prototype called Kacang Cerdik has been developed using these concepts as a proof-of-concept.