The role of a corporate innovator is not an easy one. Navigating internal politics, dealing with old school metrics that discourage failure and attempting to build a culture of innovation across a traditional organisation. For this reason, you’ll need some tools to keep you fighting the good fight.

Mobile apps, websites and new technology is being developed on a daily basis that makes our professional and personal lives that little bit easier (if you don’t believe me check out Product Hunt). Find below a list of tools that make the life of innovators at both small and large organisations easier.

Prototyping

POP – Ever wanted to make a quick app prototype to test out an idea? POP makes it so easy that we have even had kids as young as nine years old develop app prototypes during Lemonade Stand, our Business School for Kids.

INSTAPAGE– A landing page is a powerful way to test out an idea internally and gauge initial interest. Instapage makes it so easy that you can put together a landing page in a couple of minutes.

Design

CANVA – Creating a new internal initiative? Need to promote it? Canva is perfect tool to easily design anything from logos to posters.

BITEABLE – The world’s simplest video maker. This online tool helps you create high quality videos quickly and will have the rest of your organisation asking you which professional you hired to create it.

EVERYPIXEL – Feel like jazzing up some of your slide decks? This search engine allows you to search the web for stock images. You can also filter by free stock images!

SMART MOCKUPS – Want to show people what your product could look like in action? Smart Mockups allows you to simply add your products to stock images.

Productivity

SLOTH – Timebox your tasks with this simple, yet powerful, task manager. Sloth helps you limit the amount of procrastination to ensure you get through all your key tasks each day.

SMALLPDF – Ever saved a powerpoint as a PDF with the aim of decreasing the file size, only to find out it is still over 20mbs? SmallPDF solves this problem – it even helps you turn PDFs into PowerPoints easily.

Inspiration

ATTACH – Next time you are looking for buy in from management check out this page for some inspiration from real startups including Airbnb, Youtube and Tinder.

REALLY GOOD EMAILS – Described as “a website where hundreds of thousands of emailers come to get inspired to be better”, this website will provide you with inspiration when crafting your next email to circulate internally.

Insights

TYPEFORM – The best survey tool going around. Not only can you capture internal feedback with a typeform, you can also use it to easily capture innovative ideas from employees.

CHARLIE – Want to make a cracking impression at your next meeting? Charlie syncs up with your calendar and send you a one page email all about the person you are about to meet including their interests, their professional background and even their last twitter post.

GOOGLE ALERTS – Stay on top of what is happening across innovation locally and globally. Monitor the web for new interesting content and receive alerts straight to your inbox.

BUZZSUMO – Buzzsumo is a powerful online tool that allows any user to find out what content is popular by topic or on any website. Find out what is popular on corporate innovation through a quick search.

If I’m missing any other great tools that can help Corporate Innovators drastically improve their likelihood of success, please do share with me!

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