What are the essential digital tools for innovation?

Innovation is not just about having a clear process, it is just as much about sharing ideas, sparking new ways of thinking, and interacting with each other. Most of us are familiar with in-person workshops where most of these things - if facilitated well - are present. This is different when collaborating online to get the best results from a team and to keep them engaged. Therefore, it is important to use a well-thought-through selection of online tools.
For online innovation, there are a lot of great tools for different activities like online collaboration, video conferencing, prototyping, planning and creating workshops, brainstorming, communication, and much more. In in-person innovation workshops, facilitators use all kinds of tangible materials and tools for collaboration.
Think of post-it notes, markers for writing and drawing, brown paper to put on the wall on which participants can put their post-its and other relevant content, poster-sized templates to be used in the different steps of an innovation process, whiteboards, digital screens, and so on. With the progression of a workshop or project, the room the team works in will fill up with all kinds of input. You want to capture all that content to be able to go back to it in a next workshop or when working on a longer project [ ... ]