The Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF) has been facilitating Tata companies in their endeavor to be more innovative. Amongst several initiatives that TGIF has initiated, a tool called Innometer^TM was offered to companies to help them get a quick check on their Innovation Processes and Culture. One of the findings from this Innometer^TM tool has been that companies in general lacked a good system to generate, select and implement new ideas. The study indicated the following issues around the Idea management system:

The system does not excite and engage employees

• It has a very limited potential for cross pollination and collaboration within the company
• It does not pull ideas from external partners and stakeholders

The TGIF felt that Tata companies offer great diversity to enhance the quality of innovative ideas by creating opportunities for collaboration amongst them. TCS presented their "Ideamax" system that helps to generate ideas within TCS. This system has been developed using the web 2.0 approaches that encourages participation and collaboration amongst employees. Under the direction of TGIF and close guidance and coordination of TQMS, this TCS system has been refined and enhanced to suit the diverse requirements of all Tata companies. The new system has been rechristened as 'Tata Innoverse^TM' that would draw Tata employees to generate, collaborate, network and implement ideas. 

Features at a glance : 'Tata Innoverse'- is the innovation hub for all Tata companies where employees can network, collaborate, share, remix, predict and implement innovative ideas swiftly. Tata Innoverse provides us a unique opportunity to give innovative ideas not only to one's own organisation but to other Tata companies as well. The highlights of Tata Innoverse are:  

• Tata Innoverse has been designed to enable ideas to flow swiftly and freely in the innovation value chain: ideas move from selection and finally to implementation.
• Provides a platform to broadcast complex challenges/problems to seek innovative ideas from Tata employees. The category owners could submit the challenges. Once the user enters into the system, he/she could see a few challenges and can provide productive ideas which may help solve the problem.
• Provides opportunity to all users to suggest innovative ideas related to products, services, processes, technologies, business-models for our own company or for other Tata companies. These ideas could be submitted against one of the challenges or without a challenge.
• Creates an exciting marketplace for all to give new ideas, support an idea (by voting or even by betting!), suggest improvements on the existing ideas, share opinions or volunteer to implement an idea. Users' performance in Tata Innoverse (Marketplace) would be measured through 'Karma', which can be seen on the system.

What is 'Karma' ?: Karma are the points accumulated by individuals by doing multiple tasks in the system. All users are given 1000 Karma when they enroll in the system. The individuals can enhance their Karma by participating in any/ all of the following activities:

• Post an idea : User can post an idea which may help the business. This can be in response to an existing challenge or without a challenge
• Vote (up or down) an idea: User may express agreement or disagreement on other's idea by voting it up or down respectively.
• Bet on an idea: User can use his Karma to place bets on idea that he feels would get selected and implemented.
• Comment - User may add further value to an idea by giving his comments on an idea
• Bookmark - When users like an idea and wants to keep it for his reference , the same may be bookmarked by clicking on Favorite button.
• Report Abuse - Report an idea as an abuse if the idea is found abusive in any manner
• Report Duplicate - Report an idea as a duplicate if same / very similar idea is already submitted
• Share - User can share the idea with others.
• Implement an idea - Ideas would be sifted by a few selected people in every organisation (called category owners). They would select the ideas and make implementation teams. In case a user wishes to be part of an implementation team for an idea, he may volunteer himself to be part of the implementation team by clicking 'Volunteer' button which appears while the idea is viewed. Additional Karma would be rewarded to the implementation team after the idea is successfully implemented.

The top Karma achievers would be visible to everyone in the organization and across Tata companies under the 'Champions' page in Tata Innoverse. 

Management of Tata Innoverse : Tata Innoverse' platform is uniquely designed to enable organisations to effectively harness the creativity of their employees. It also enables companies to seek ideas from outside the organisation and lets their employees contribute to other Tata companies. To manage this platform, there are four key roles:

• - Super administrator
• - Company administrator
• - Category/ Sub-category owners
• - Users

Super-administrator (Superadmin): The overall system is managed by TQMS, the execution arm of TGIF. The super administrator is responsible for enrolling the companies and aiding companies to create a common framework for defining categories/ sub-categories, governance structure for Tata Innoverse. The superadmin also aids organisation during inter organisation transactions. Super admin also creates a priority for enhancements through the development team. 

Company-administrator : The company administrator is the single nodal point for all employees within the organisation. The responsibility of Company administrator includes

• Facilitating employees to participate through the Tata Innoverse platform
• Ensuring ideas are taken to their logical conclusion
• Assisting Category and sub category owners in defining challenges
• Managing requests for providing enrollment of new users to Tata Innoverse
• Recommending the requests on addition of category/ sub-category owners 

Category/ sub-category owners: Every organization will have a set of categories/sub-categories which would be the key areas/ functions upon which the organization will like to invite ideas. Within an organisation each category/ sub-category has owner(s) who are senior members in the organisation and are responsible for taking the decision on ideas submitted in Tata Innoverse. The key responsibilities of category owner includes

• Identifying and publishing challenges regularly
• Announcing the rewards for the challenges
• Sifting through the ideas submitted in their category/ sub-category and taking timely decision on the same
• Selecting ideas
• Creating implementation team (within their organisation) to execute selected ideas
• Managing implementation of ideas 

Users: Users are the key participant in Tata Innoverse. Each enrolled member is a user who can post ideas and polish on others ideas by voting, betting, commenting.