Design path of innovation service through data and human intelligence

This article describes a digital service for managers in charge of leveraging digital media to innovate firms in established businesses. Nowadays, companies can collect data from social media as well as sensors connected to Internet to monitor competitors, customer trends and performance of their own services. Therefore, we wish to extend this opportunity to a greater set of firms by developing a solution that can (1) be used by those with limited know-how in data science, (2) be applied to small datasets of structured and unstructured data and (3) include qualitative insights from relevant stakeholders, such as internal/external experts and customers. We combine the notions of (a) conceptual mapping to formalize root-causes of problems to solve and (b) TRIZ methodology to develop new ideas in a semi-automated way. We illustrate our approach with two fictive examples: (1) a manufacturing firm wishing to develop remote maintenance and (2) a company innovating its product by performing patent analysis.