What’s New in Kindling?

We’re working towards some great new features that will ship later this year, but I wanted to review some of the new capabilities that we’ve added to Kindling in the last few months. These features were a collaborative effort between our Product & Development Teams and our customers. We hope you like them!

Support for Media on Posts
We continue to make additions to Kindling for decision-makers to make it easier for users of Kindling to share media of any type in the application. With this week’s release you can now attach any media to Posts and multiple files to a Post, just as you’ve been able to do for Ideas.

This allows you to share that PDF, add images or take a video of your CIO describing the cost savings from the latest implemented idea.

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Categorized as Marketing

How a Startup Uses Innovation Technology (Wrapping Up)

In this Series, we’ve shown you how our Product, Marketing, Sales and Customer Services Teams use Kindling among themselves, within the company and with our key customers and partners.

Using our product has allowed us to better communicate with each other and with our customers, to solve problems as they arise and to find areas of the product that need improvement. Zooming up a bit, we’ve also learned several key lessons along the way. Some of these were hard-earned, and many apply to any start-up. We figured that sharing these would be a good way to wrap up the Series.

Lesson 1 — We Don’t Know Everything.
We’re smart, but we don’t know everything. By asking both our employees and our customers how we need to get better, we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers. With every idea submitted, regardless of its source, we are reminded of that very true fact. A start-up needs to be a listening and learning entity, because you’re trying to create something anew in an uncertain, often risky environment. Only by listening and quickly adapting can you navigate towards success.

Are you asking the right questions of your employees? Your customers are trying to talk to you, are you listening?

How A Startup Uses Innovation Technology (Part 3)

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business . We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us.

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the centre of our business — ideas.

Part 3: Customer Services
Part 1 of this series was an interview with our CEO and Product Lead on how he and the Kindling Product Team use Kindling to shape the product roadmap, and Part 2 was an interview with our Strategic Account Executive on how our Sales Team uses Kindling to add a market perspective to product discussions. Part 3 is an interview with our Director of Customer Services, on how the Customer Services Team uses Kindling to better address our customers’ needs.

How A Startup Uses Innovation Technology (Part 2)

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business. We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us (click here to learn more about a free program designed exclusively for Startups).

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the center of our business — ideas.

How a Startup Uses Innovation Technology (Part 1)

Kindling was born to address a need — a growing group of designers and technologists were finding it difficult to keep track of ideas and the discussions around these ideas. We were trying to address the problems that were emerging as we scaled the business. We didn’t have a way to centralize ideas, to manage the feedback from our customers, to communicate with our remote employees, or a non “gut” way of determining what development items should take priority over others. Email was failing us (click here to learn more about a free program designed exclusively for Start-ups).

Kindling owes its success not just to selling our software, but also to using it. This post is an introspective on how we at Kindling use our own product (or dogfooding, in context of software). From Product Management to Development to Sales & Marketing, we all find benefits from being connected to the centre of our business — ideas.

Part 1 – Product
The first part of this series is an interview with CEO and Product Lead focused on how he and the Kindling Product Team use Kindling to engage with employees, partners and customers to help shape the product roadmap.

Announcing Kindling Loves Startups

We’re announcing a new program today, Kindling Loves Startups, where we’re giving away 50 seats of Kindling to any startup for free. This post gives some of the background for the program, why we’re doing this and how Kindling solves a real need for every startup.

I love startups. Everything’s ahead of them, they’re like an NFL team in preseason — all hope. We’re gonna win the Super Bowl this year.

Through the course of my work, I often get to meet startup founders. I always enjoy these conversations. If you ever are feeling tired or demotivated, have a coffee with someone involved in starting a company — their energy and optimism is contagious.

Navigating a startup from creation to success can be viewed as an exercise in expert decision-making. Choosing the right things to focus on — and the things to not focus on — might be the most important skill for startup founders and early employees. And I know from my own experiences starting companies that there is no shortage of things to do, and no lack of opportunity.

A New Idea for Marketers: Learn from Your Development Team

I spent most of last week at HubSpot’s Inbound conference in Boston. It was an inspiring series of speakers, presentations, and sessions with action items that I plan to implement at Kindling over the next few months. I left fired up about our marketing program and the ways to use HubSpot (and yes, I’ve already put the dates for next year’s Inbound conference in my calendar).

Do you remember the enthusiastic telemarketers who called around dinner time in the ‘90s announcing “This is a courtesy call from Company X?” When we were growing up, my brother and I used to call these interruptions “discourtesy calls” and as soon our family got callerID, we stopped answering them. The Do Not Call list limited this form of telemarketing in 2003, and Inbound highlighted that it’s not just telemarketing that’s over – we’re moving away from all unsolicited “interruption” marketing. Today’s consumers are accustomed to finding the information they want, when they want it, and Marketers need to use the data we can now collect about our customers to provide them with the right solution for their needs, formatted for the device of their choice.

An Act of Persuasion — Supporting Video Upload and Playback in Kindling

You’ve probably noticed the rapid growth and proliferation of video content on the Web over the last few years. Here are some interesting supporting stats:

  • Video content comprised 59% of all global internet traffic in 2012.
  • The share of video is projected to rise to 86% by 2016.
  • Netflix, accounts for 33% of all night-time Internet traffic in the US (wow!).
  • As with most things online, mobile/tablet consumption of video is growing fast, and now accounts for 10% of all plays.
  • The younger the person, the more likely they are to consume content in video form.

This last point is extremely significant. Granted, this is a very small sample size, but I’ve observed that my kids (around age 10) and their friends are interacting with significantly more video content than my (40ish) friends are. When they want to learn a new dance move, see what roller coasters are at Hersey Park or check out a Minecraft mod, they naturally turn to a video instead of looking for a blog post to scan. When they have friends over, they make funny Vine and Instagram videos. Email and writing online are as archaic to them as writing letters was to my generation. Texting? They turn to FaceTime.

Video consumption is growing, fast, internationally, on all devices, and among all age groups. This trend is real and lasting.

Getting the Most from Your Kindling Campaign

How will you overcome the biggest challenges facing your business today? How will you identify your next product or pursue the the most lucrative opportunities? With Kindling, you can establish challenges and opportunities as Campaigns that guide your organization towards a desired outcome.

Campaigns are a great way to engage participants in innovating around a particular initiative. Like Kindling Categories, Campaigns are used for organizing ideas, however, they differ in that they are time-limited, with a specific start and end date. Campaigns provide structure for quick bursts of activity and fast follow-through on ideas. Because of the speed with which Campaigns happen, getting things right every step of the way is crucial. The following are some best practices for running a successful Campaign, one which generates enthusiasm among your users and gets you the rapid return on investment you’re looking for:

Get the timing right. Keep campaigns short to keep excitement high. Limiting Campaigns to a two-week time period gives users enough of a chance to innovate without the risk of creative energy petering out. Running Campaigns one-at-a-time enables participants to devote their time and creativity to that initiative alone.

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Categorized as Kindling

The Squeaky Wheel in Your Innovation Program

Think about that innovation meeting you have on your calendar that occurs every week or month. It’s a status meeting where you talk about projects, ongoing initiatives, or areas of focus. Then you think about him. He is the one that always speaks, takes over the whole meeting, and never lets anyone else get their two cents in. Usually the direction of the group goes with what he is saying, not because he always has the best ideas, but because he is the most vocal and outward to express his thoughts. Most people would agree this scenario is not the exception, but more so the norm.

To run an effective Innovation Program, you need input from everyone. There are many types of people in this world; there are probably hundreds of personality tests that dissect the makeup of humans and our behaviors. The reality is, not everyone will be as vocal as the person sitting next to them. It doesn’t mean they don’t have good ideas, the likelihood is that they probably have some very good ideas, maybe even great ideas. Some people work best by sharing their ideas around a conference table and jockeying back and forth, while others are most comfortable by themselves in front of the computer considering their contributions. Neither is better than the other and both approaches provide valued contributions to the Innovation Program.

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Categorized as Innovation