Idea Box ◉ Internal & External Ideation ◉ Ezassi
Every Idea Captured. None of Them Lost.
Most organizations use idea management software that ties submissions to a single challenge. Few, however, have a place where ideas actually live beyond it. When a challenge closes, submissions land in a spreadsheet — or more often, teams file them away and forget. The next program then starts with a blank slate. All the knowledge from every past ideation cycle becomes hard to find, unsorted, and effectively gone.
The Ezassi Idea Box is not just a simple form tied to a challenge. Instead, it is a permanent, searchable repository that grows with every entry — from employees, partners, customers, and outside participants. You capture each idea once, and it stays open to your team forever. AI scores each idea against your rubric on arrival, and it remains ready to find when a new question makes an old idea suddenly relevant.
The Problem Is Not Getting Ideas. It Is Keeping Them.
Organizations invest significant effort in running ideation programs. Yet the ideas those programs generate almost never receive the same investment in capture and retention. Research from open innovation practitioners confirms this — most idea management software is built around challenges, not around the ideas themselves.
Challenge-Centric Tools Lose Ideas When Challenges Close
When a challenge ends, submissions stay locked inside it — cut off from future programs, unsearchable across campaigns, and hidden from colleagues working on related problems.
Great Ideas Arrive at the Wrong Time
An idea submitted in Q1 may not fit the Q1 challenge. It may, however, be perfect for the Q3 strategic plan. If that idea sits buried in a closed archive, no one finds it when it matters.
Internal and External Ideation Run in Separate Systems
Employee challenges and open innovation calls often live in different tools. As a result, teams cannot search the two repositories together — and program managers do double the work for every campaign type. The PDMA and other innovation bodies consistently identify siloed ideation as one of the top barriers to program effectiveness.
Ideas Don't Expire. Your Idea Management Software Shouldn't Either.
The Ezassi Idea Box is the submission and storage layer for your entire ideation program — across every challenge, every type of participant, and every time horizon. Every idea that enters any challenge on the Ezassi platform goes into the shared repository. Every idea stays searchable. No idea loses future access when its originating challenge closes.
For example, an idea an employee submitted in 2023 is findable in 2026 when a new plan makes it relevant. Moreover, a submission that scored too early for one challenge can surface when the context catches up to it. Program managers can also search the full history of their programs — not just the active campaign — when they need to know what people have already proposed in a given space.
Over time, the repository becomes a key organizational asset. It builds a clear record of what your employees, partners, and customers have proposed, when they proposed it, how it scored, and what happened next.
Permanently Searchable
Every idea across every challenge enters the index and stays searchable — by keyword, by category, by submitter, by score, by date, and by status.
Never Archived Away
Closing a challenge does not remove its submissions from the repository. Ideas stay open and searchable regardless of challenge status.
Cross-Campaign Visibility
Search across the full history of your programs — not just the current challenge — to surface prior submissions relevant to a new strategic question.
Employee Ideas and Open Innovation. The Same Repository. Different Access Rules.
Internal and external ideation are not separate products on the Ezassi platform. Instead, they are controlled access modes within the same idea management software. Program managers define who can submit, who can view, and who can review. Everything then flows into the same searchable repository.
| Internal Ideation | External Ideation |
Who submits ideas | Employees, business units, cross-functional teams | Partners, customers, suppliers, public participants, academia |
Access control | Private spaces — visible only to authenticated employees or defined groups | Public spaces — open submission link shared externally; no login required for submitters |
Typical use cases | Employee innovation challenges, process improvement programs, R&D ideation sprints, internal hackathons | Open innovation challenges, supplier idea programs, customer co-creation, university partnership calls |
Submission form | Fully configurable per challenge — fields, categories, attachments, team attribution | Fully configurable per challenge — simplified for external participants who may not be platform users |
AI Autoscoring | Yes — applies to all submissions against configured rubric | Yes — applies to all submissions against configured rubric |
Enters the repository | Yes — all submissions searchable and retained permanently | Yes — all submissions searchable and retained permanently |
You set access controls at the space level — not the platform level. A single Ezassi instance can run a private employee challenge alongside a public open innovation call, with no overlap between the two participant groups. Likewise, no separate platform is needed for either. Both sets of submissions enter the same searchable repository, open to authorized program admins.
Every Idea Gets Reviewed the Moment It Arrives.
Every submission that enters the Idea Box receives an AI score against your evaluation rubric — the moment it arrives, for every challenge, regardless of volume. The AI assigns a score for each criterion and writes a brief explanation for why. By the time a human reviewer opens the queue, every idea already has a baseline score and a clear note on record.
This is not a separate scoring step that happens after submission. Instead, it sits inside the submission workflow itself. AI scoring applies to internal employee entries and outside open innovation entries equally — so every idea gets a fair, rubric-based review across your entire program. As a result, your team is not limited to the campaigns where reviewer time happens to be available.
Every Challenge Configured to Your Program.
The Idea Box is not a fixed submission form. In fact, every part of the submission experience is flexible per challenge — for both internal and outside participants.
Submission Form Fields
First, define the fields that appear on the submission form for each challenge: title, description, category, problem statement, target market, estimated impact, attachments, team members, and any custom fields your program needs. Internal and external forms can also differ in depth and complexity.
Space Visibility
After that, set each challenge space as private (logged-in employees or defined groups only) or public (open submission link shareable outside). You set visibility per challenge, not per platform — so the same instance can run both at the same time.
Categories and Tags
Next, define the categories and tags available to submitters so ideas stay sorted from the moment of entry. Good tagging is, in fact, what makes the repository useful at scale — ideas tagged well in 2023 will surface correctly in 2026.
Review and Scoring Workflow
Finally, assign human reviewers per challenge, set the AI scoring rubric, define weighted criteria, and choose the scoring scale. The review workflow — including AI scores, human scores, and the combined view — runs on its own setup for each challenge.
The Repository Is Where Ideas Live. The Pipeline Is Where They Go Next.
Capturing and scoring ideas is the foundation. Moving the right ones forward is, ultimately, what makes the program valuable. From the Idea Box, program managers can advance high-scoring ideas to the next stage with a single action — sending them into the pipeline with their submission, AI score, human reviewer scores, and any comments intact.
Ideas that are not ready — or not right for the current cycle — stay in the repository. We do not delete them or lock them away. Instead, they remain searchable, scored, and ready to find when the time comes.
Everything in the Idea Box, at a Glance.
Permanent Searchable Repository
Every idea from every challenge stays in the system permanently and remains fully searchable by keyword, category, score, submitter, date, and status. The repository grows with every submission and never loses an idea when a challenge closes.
Internal and External in One Platform
Run private employee challenges and public open innovation calls from the same platform, with separate access controls, configurable submission forms, and a unified repository that administrators can search across both.
AI Autoscoring on Every Submission
AI scores every idea against your rubric the moment it arrives — with a written explanation alongside the score, and the results appearing next to human reviewer scores in a single view.
See What Happens When No Idea Gets Left Behind.
In a 30-minute demo we will show you the Idea Box live — a private employee challenge running alongside a public external submission form, AI scoring applied to both, and a search across the full idea repository. Tell us about your current ideation program and we will show you the features most relevant to what you are trying to fix.