Intelligent Enterprise Magazine: Practical Tools for New Ideas - The second part of a series by Stewart McKie on Innovation Management, this article gives a great overview of the different types of technologies that are being used to automate parts of the innovation process

Topics covered include:

Environmental scanning - "the acquisition of information about events, trends, and relationships in an organization's environment, the knowledge of which will be of assistance to top executives in identifying and understanding strategic threats and opportunities,"

Road Mapping - a technique that helps create a combined strategic, product, and marketing perspective for the stakeholders involved in delivering innovation. Road-mapping software is important to innovation because it helps to define, update, and visualize the route toward realizing an innovative product, service, or organizational change.

Creative Thinking - technologies that either help you with the process of brainstorming or help to increase the quality of your brainstorming sessions

and finally Idea Management - which unlike the other "upstream" technologies instead looks at the "downstream" end of the innovation cycle by helping companies develop ideas so they can eventually be monetized.