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Six months ago we did an overview of trends in the idea management market. At the time, most of the action was going on in the internal idea/innovation management area. This time around, the new trends are emerging around externally focused idea management solutions.

Each of the three trends we identified six months ago now has a corollary trend.

Today, enterprise social software vendors are in a position of having to both differentiate products in a crowded market and make the business case for social in the enterprise. "Process" has become a mantra for companies trying to make the case for a particular solution, and innovation management software is not immune from this tendency.

This week Spigit, a leading innovation management vendor, announced its new product SpigitFusion. SpigitFusion emphasizes decision making and - you guessed it - process.

Last November, another leading innovation management vendor, BrightIdea, made a similar case when it launched its Innovation Suite.

We've heard a lot about how idea management works in theory - but how does it work in practice? Ann Marie Dumais, Senior Vice President of New Product Introductions at The Nielsen Company, was kind enough to walk us through Nielsen's use of BrightIdea for enterprise idea management. Here are the lessons we came away with.

In his book The Innovator's Dilemma, Professor Clayton Christensen of Harvard Business School describes the theory of how large outstanding firms can fail "by doing everything right." The innovator's dilemma, according to Christensen, affects companies whose success and capabilities can actually become obstacles in the face of changing markets and technologies. There is no more important an issue on the agenda of top management than driving innovation. In this post, we'll review the evolution of "innovation management" and how social media has a significant role to play. This is one area where social media can "move the needle" for large enterprises and help them change the very nature of the firm.