Planbox recognized as the top-ranking innovation management platform by an independent research firm and named one of the fastest growing technology companies by Deloitte
Wilmington, Delaware — Planbox, a pioneer in agile innovation management solutions, reaches new major milestones for a fifth consecutive year, as the company makes significant improvements to its offerings with the latest acquisition of IdeaConnection, and breaks new ground with the launch of innovation integrations and the first-ever Innovation Center of Excellence compliant with the ISO 56000 Standard for Innovation Management Systems, accelerating customers’ strategic approaches to innovation for 2021.
“Innovation is at the core of Bobcat’s legacy. We believe in involving everyone in innovation. Planbox gives us the opportunity to do this easily. Not only do they provide a top-ranked platform, but they have provided the support needed to scale our program effortlessly. As we move into 2021, we’re excited about our partnership with Planbox and the opportunities that will be created through crowdsourcing,” said Jennifer Saari, Acceleration Specialist at Doosan Bobcat.
Major Financial and Operational Highlights:
- Recognized by Forrester as the top-ranking innovation management platform software provider, receiving the highest score in strategy and current offering in The Forrester Wave: Innovation Management Platforms, Q1, 2020.
- Completed the acquisition of IdeaConnection, the best-in-class open innovation expert solver network with an industry best 80% solve rate.
- Achieved ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 Information Security Certification, the most stringent information management and cloud security requirements conforming with globally recognized standards.
- Completed SOC II Type 2 Examination for a second consecutive year, ensuring the continued security, availability and confidentiality of customer data.
- Awarded Deloitte Technology Fast 50, ranking among the fastest-growing technology companies nationwide.
- Awarded Deloitte North America Technology 500, ranking among the fastest-growing technology companies in North America.
- Named a Top Growing Company by the Globe and Mail, ranking among the fastest-growing businesses nationwide.
- Selected by Doosan Bobcat to further drive technical development, advance customer satisfaction programs, optimize business operations and explore new markets.
- Selected by Med-IQ to help drive the development of groundbreaking products and services in healthcare, transform medical education and improve patient outcomes.
- Selected by Kindred Credit Union to facilitate co-creation activities and concept development, discover business efficiencies and drive the best ideas toward implementation more quickly and effectively.
- Selected by Laval Innov to create innovation communities where SMEs collaborate on complex regional challenges and identify innovative projects.
- Launched a partnership with Digit AI in the Middle East and Africa to provide private and public sector organizations with the skills and competencies they need to innovate and digitize their offerings.
“Planbox also provides some of the more advanced AI/ML capabilities we observed for idea creation and brings data-validation to idea selection, incubation, and commercialization. The company has dramatically expanded its platform’s value and delivery.”
Forrester Wave: Innovation Management Platforms, Q1 2020
Major Product Highlights:
- Focus Areas: Focus areas are like permanent challenges that are always open for collaboration, ideation and concept development. Focus areas serve as the building blocks of your strategy. They expand on your Vision Statement and create some structure around how to actually get your organization to achieve its goals. Your innovation team can plan and launch challenges and other activities related to a specific area.
- Private Ideas: select a specific audience to view, collaborate on, and contribute to a private idea without alerting the rest of the organization of its existence.
- Head to Head Evaluation: as one of the evaluation methods available in Planbox, Head to Head evaluation, developed by an MIT Scientist, is a mathematically and scientifically sound method to evaluate a large number of ideas, opportunities and insights. This technology was acquired from Imaginatik and incorporated into Planbox Agile Innovation Suite.
- Innovation integrations: connect users’ favorite apps to their innovation workspaces in Planbox, allowing them to automate routine tasks, streamline workflows and discover actionable insights.
- Innovation Center of Excellence Platform: a centralized self-service innovation management system to plan, manage, track and report on the entire innovation process and pipeline. To be released in January 2021.
- Real-time Collaborative Canvas: create, deliver and capture the value of innovation concepts by bringing the key elements of an idea or concept onto a single page. To be released in January 2021.
Major Customer Success Highlights:
In one of the most tumultuous years in recent history. Planbox launched an ongoing series of Business Threat Challenge Starters to support the company’s clients in their ideation initiatives in areas of advanced research, rapid prototyping and commercialization by virtually engaging their innovation ecosystems amid the global health pandemic. This initiative resulted in highly innovative ideas such as a global pharmaceutical company that launched virtual Volunteering Challenge to remotely engage employees, a medical device company fourn creative solutions to repurpose existing material and work with partner to bring new solutions to market starting with a focus on masks, a leading chemical company move to a self-service model to be more agile in this crisis, a multinational energy company COVID-19 continuity planning challenges.
- Selected by Barton Malow to gamify co-creation and problem-solving activities.
- Selected by New Zealand Hemp Industries Association to tap into the collective creativity of its ecosystem and rapidly identify 31-game changing innovations.
- Launched a Covid-19 Business Threat Challenge Starters Kit to support collaborative problem-solving and informed decision-making at the height of the pandemic. Hollister Incorporated, a multinational healthcare company, leveraged the Challenge Starters Kit to identify breakthrough opportunities and discover new business models that contributed to the global fight against Covid-19.
- Helped Syngenta identify practical long-term data-driven solutions in agriculture through the annual Syngenta Crop Challenge in Analytics — a global open innovation competition that leverages IdeaConnection’s vast ecosystem of mathematicians, modelling experts and data scientists.
“We recognize the need to look at other disciplines and industries to raise awareness of the challenges and exciting opportunities within agriculture,” said Gregory Doonan, Head of Advanced Analytics at Syngenta. “IdeaConnection by Planbox has a well-established and vast network of solvers we can reach out to. Each year we do this, I feel it’s widening the network and our contacts.”
Other Key Highlights and Developments:
- Conducted a global study and published a research report on the State of Corporate Innovation.
- Awarded G-Cloud 12 Framework for a second consecutive year, certifying Planbox as a trusted supplier of cloud-based software and services via the UK Government’s Digital Marketplace.
- Received CSA STAR Certification, the industry’s most powerful program for security assurance in the cloud.
- Achieved Cyber Essentials Certification, a UK Government assurance scheme certifying that Planbox’s policies, procedures and security measures adhere to government-endorsed standards.
“The Planbox Platform and overall Partnership have been key enablers to Innovation Processes and meaningful Business Outcomes,” said Rich Rennie, Honeywell Safety and Productivity Solutions.
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About Planbox
Planbox is the pioneering agile innovation management platform software provider for full lifecycle Innovation Portfolio Management, Emerging Tech Empowerment and Ecosystem Enablement. Planbox is recognized by Forrester as the top-ranking innovation management platform in the marketplace, having received the highest score in strategy and current offering in the The Forrester Wave: Innovation Management Platforms, Q1, 2020.
As the most robust and scalable platform on the market, we empower our clients to discover, collaborate and capitalize on the best strategically aligned concepts with their ecosystem of employees, customers, suppliers, partners, startups, academia, government and the general public to pursue breakthrough innovations, create a sustainable continuous improvement program, build a framework for corporate venturing and action on consumer insights.
With over 20 years of domain expertise, 400 enterprise deployments, 5M participants and $10B of realized ROI for customers, Planbox’s AI-powered cloud-based agile innovation solutions accelerate business outcomes for some of the world’s most recognized brands, including Whirlpool, Dow, Novartis, ExxonMobil, Cargill, Bobcat, Honeywell and Sun Life.
In 2020, Planbox acquired IdeaConnection, the best-in-class open innovation platform and expert solver network. IdeaConnection by Planbox provides access to millions of diverse and brilliant minds and a global network of 20,000+ multidisciplinary experts and world-class facilitators in more than 180 countries, with an 80% solve rate for open innovation services such as public and confidential challenges, crowdsourced tech scouting and prior art search.