Although idea management (IM) and idea management systems (IMS) and related topics have been researched since 1982 and IM itself is as old as the first ideas, authors in previous research specified 18 research gaps in literature about IM and one of the most important that there is no united view on the terms IM and IMS and there are no specialized researches about these terms, as well, in the literature of IM they are not board discussed. Purpose of the research is to discuss and create definitions of terms IM and IMS using the reviewed literature. Research object: literature on IM and IMS. Research subject: terms of IM and IMS. Main research method – literature review. Data collected from 70 sources, including scientific publications, conference proceedings, books, white papers etc. published over the last 33 years, i.e., from January 1982 to February 2015, in all research fields. The research highlights that in the literature there are wide variety of the definitions of terms IM and IMS. The results of the research revealed that definitions of IM have not fundamentally changed over the time, but the definitions of IMS have transformed from “passive” to “active” IMS in millennium. The object of these definitions more often are described as systematic and manageable. Results probe that IM could be defined as – systematic, manageable process of idea generation, evaluation and development, but the IMS as a tool, tool kit or complex system which provides systematic, manageable process of idea generation, evaluation and development. The intensity of IM and IMS researches varies by region, but there are no major regional differences in defying the terms.