Conference Report - The Power to Innovate

by Drew Boyd

Congratulations to the team at Invention Machine for hosting this week's conference, Power to Innovate, at the Seaport Hotel in Boston. The theme of the conference centered around the Innovation Intelligence EcosystemTM and how companies can boost performance by coordinating information, communities, and innovation activities. Invention Machine's premier product, Goldfire, is at the center of this ecosystem.


"Goldfire is a unique innovation software platform that transforms ideas into commercial products - generating and validating concepts and making innovation a sustainable process. Designed with engineers, scientists and researchers in mind, Goldfire automates every day innovation tasks - from identifying a new market to developing a new product to improving existing product offerings - and empowering users with a repeatable process. Fusing proven innovation methods for generating ideas along with advanced technologies for accessing precise concepts from corporate and worldwide knowledge sources, Goldfire stimulates creative thinking and speeds inventive problem solving—helping product development engineers, scientists and researchers to quickly conceive and validate ideas thus fueling product pipelines."


The latest release, 5.5, should greatly enhance usability of the product especially by groups outside of R&D such as marketing and M&A. Jim Belfiore, Certified Innovation Master & Senior Director at Invention Machine, demonstrated how he researched the disease, lymphoma. I was amazed at the depth and breadth of insights he created using Goldfire 5.5.

The entire conference was followed on Twitter compliments of Andrea Meyer. Check it out at #P2I09. Here are some other highlights from the conference:

• Jim Todhunter, Chief Technology Officer at Invention Machine, shared their technology roadmap and how Goldfire will enhance research, not just search capability around a topic. He shared a sneak peak at release 6.0 and some of the new features to enhance collaboration, both internally and externally. Jim also presented an "Innovation Practice Maturity Model." This four level model helps companies understand where they need to head to increase and sustain innovation.


• Randy Schiestl, VP Research and Development of Boston Scientific, shared their collective experience adopting Goldfire and using it across the enterprise.


• Jim Belfiore presented "Collaborative Innovation" and how to leverage Goldfire's capabilities in team settings. Later, Jim Todhunter addressed it head on with a presentation on Open Innovation.

I am impressed with Goldfire, and I am particularly interested in how it could intersect with other technologies such as:

• Virtual reality like Second Life and the simulations from Visual Purple. As Edward Tufte notes, we need to escape "Flatland" and get ourselves out of two dimensional computer screens and into richer learning and sensing environments. Embedding the output of Goldfire into a three dimensional world could add context and usability.


• Preferencing systems such as those used by Amazon, Pandora, and others that allow users to continuously refine and enhance choices by "thumbs up/thumbs down" voting.


• Pattern recognition approaches. Marketers particularly need to see patterns emerging about their brands within the social web and within formal literature. Combining the output of Goldfire with data visualization might help marketers do this quicker and more effectively.


• Mass scaling. Goldfire aggregates information from multiple sources, both internally and externally. Could it be used in a more domestic, non-corporate setting to enhance people's standard of living? A simple tool like Google Reader aggregates pre-selected website information using RSS feeds. Goldfire far outstrips this. Could individuals use a lighter version of Goldfire to collect their daily news given the shortcomings of traditional printed newspapers?

Invention Machine's CMO, Jeff Boehm, shared an interesting statistic about the companies participating at this conference. Those companies have outperformed the market 11.5% over the last 13 months.

Message: innovate to grow.

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Drew Boyd is Director of Marketing Mastery for Johnson & Johnson (Ethicon Endo-Surgery division). He is also Visiting Assistant Professor of Marketing and Innovation at the University of Cincinnati and Executive Director of the MS-Marketing program. Follow him at www.innovationinpractice.com and at http://twitter.com/drewboyd

Do you know your 3 F's of Innovation?

Interview - James Todhunter - Invention Machine

I had the opportunity to interview James Todhunter, Chief Technology Officer at Invention Machine about engaging employees in a successful open innovation effort. Invention Machine is a software company that drives sustainable innovation across global organizations. In his blog Innovating to Win, Todhunter regularly offers insights and observations on building high-performance teams that can drive sustainable innovation across organizations.


Here is the text from the interview:

1. When it comes to open innovation, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?

In general, I don't see organizations struggling to find an entry point into open innovation. Rather, the struggle comes in understanding the critical success factors that must be met, and how to face these challenges. While we are all aware of certain high profile companies that have achieved interesting results through open innovation, I hear many more organizations complain that they are not deriving value from their efforts. After an initial flurry of activity, the programs stall. The quality of input from the innovation communities is low and often characterized as shallow and immature. The reliability of value network partners is sometimes weak, and there is a great gulf between indentifying an interesting idea and delivering value in the form of a new product or market innovation. Overcoming the issues of authority, alignment, and actualization spells the difference between open innovation as just a big suggestion box versus being a source of value. This will be the focus of my session at the Open Innovation Summit.


2. From your experience, what are some of the keys to successfully engaging employees in an open innovation effort?

To engage employees in the open innovation initiative, it is critical to understand the roles of the many constituencies of innovation and communicate those roles clearly to internal communities. Every organization must take the time to look at the various communities, both internal and external, that contribute value to the corporate innovation programs. Internal communities such as engineering, marketing, production and all have distinct roles and functions to fulfill in the value creation and delivery process. The external communities include supply partners, production partners, logistical partners, and customers. When the roles and interaction points of these communities are understood, the open innovation system can be presented as a powerful tool to help employees be more successful and not be viewed as a source of noise or, in the extreme, a threat.


3. Do organizations need a centralized innovation group? What authority do they need?

Well, this is one of those questions must be answered with both a yes and a no. First, let's consider the no aspect of this. For a company to truly establish a sustainable and high performance innovation culture, it must first understand that innovation is everyone's job. That doesn't mean that everyone should go off and try to create the next great thing. Rather, it is a realization that the only constant in any business is change. Even as we establish best practices for operational efficiency, we need to consider how to tear them down and redefine best practices and the methods of execution in order to operationalize innovation as a force of change to help us achieve the continuous improvement we must always seek. This constant and continuous every day innovation is just one end of the innovation continuum. For others in the organization, innovation takes on progressively higher orders of meaning as our individual roles define the classes of innovation activities that we each must pursue. With this in mind, organizations should consider how they steward the development of innovation skills within the company and help individual worker grow their own innovation capabilities. Broad engagement in the innovation culture also has the benefit of preempting the NIH attitude that can prevent the diffusion of innovation when new concepts are foisted upon the workforce by what can be viewed as an ivory tower body.

However, even in such a ubiquitous innovation environment, it becomes clear that an organizing force is needed to create alignment and get everyone pulling the wagon in the same direction. This is the yes part of the answer. Companies that believe such systems will self organize as grass roots initiatives are fooling themselves. There are critical factors that are simply out of the scope of the rank file community and thus limit the traction achievable at the grass roots level. Providing a corporate wide innovation skills development program, building the infrastructure for knowledge enablement of innovation workers, ensuring the alignment of all innovation activity with corporate strategy, and making the trade-offs of resource allocations are just a few examples of activities that require some higher-level visibility and attention in the organization. It is for this reason that truly successful innovation cultures begin with a mandate from the top which is not merely expressed in words, but experienced by all through the consistent and constant reinforcement of action.

It is important to note that there is a lot of latitude on how such a central capability can be expressed in a company. It doesn't need to be an explicit organizational unit; it may be a managed matrix function. It is also not necessary that the central capability is the body doing the innovation per se, in many cases the central function is an enabler - a catalyst with the organization - of innovation.


4. What are some of the secrets to achieving organizational alignment when it comes to innovation?

The single greatest tool to achieve organizational alignment is communication. Communication must flow in all directions: top-down, bottom-up, and side-to-side. The communication must be rich and open. Management must communicate to employees the strategy, objectives, and relevance of each employee's job to the strategy. I remember walking around the production facility of a global semiconductor manufacturer. As I talked with different workers, the clarity and consistency of understanding of the strategic goal and each person's ability to impact that goal was remarkable. It is no wonder that this company is the leader in their space.

Employees must also feed information up the ladder. None of us are immune from the trap of our own personal experience. Management needs the input of the company's communities to have a complete picture on which to base its strategic assessments and properly understand the trade-off dynamics as they make both tactical and strategic decisions that will have far reaching affects on the company.

And of course, side-to-side communication and collaboration are fundamentally important for a complete alignment in the company's innovation programs.


5. What are some of the keys to validating ideas in order to pick the ideas to fund?

A great place to start is to examine the three Fs: fit, feasibility, and finance.

By looking at fit, you should asking questions about how well the subject concept meets the needs. Have you identified and qualified the customer pain you are going to address through your innovation? How differentiated is your concept relative to other potential solutions (including non-consumption)? What are the deficits of your approach? What are the change dynamics and hurdles to innovation diffusion that you may encounter and how does your concept address these? These and similar questions are all about assessing the scope and nature of your future value proposition.

When considering feasibility, the questions are now oriented towards understanding the implementability and market timing aspects of innovation. What technical challenges must be overcome to realize you vision? Do you have potential solution paths identified? What about freedom to operate? Do you have an open field, or are there intellectual property hurdles to be cleared? What is the time line to deliver on your concept and is that compatible with the market?

And of course, business is all about finance. What is the size of the opportunity? What is the path to monetization? Is this use of resources aligned with your objectives? Is this a strategic move or a distraction? What is the opportunity cost of pursuing this path as compared to others? How will you achieve a positive contribution to margin in the shortest time? How does this innovation contribute to the long range objectives for corporate valuation?


6. What are some ways that organizations can accelerate their innovation efforts?

Of course the specific needs of every organization are different. But in general, I would advise companies to walk the walk and not merely pay lip service to innovation. This means making the corporate commitment to innovation palpable at every level. Executive management must be visibly and meaningfully engaged in the innovation process. They must also show their commitment through investing in people, giving them the time, latitude, and support they need to successfully meet the corporate innovation goals. Workers must be provided with access to innovation skills training. Of course, the tools and infrastructure for innovation are essential. This is why Invention Machine's global clients invest in the Goldfire innovation platform. All of this must be in service of a comprehensive and connected high-performance innovation system that balances every day and strategic innovation, and ties all efforts back to the corporate objectives.


7. What skills do you believe that managers need to acquire to succeed in an innovation-led organization?

It is essential for managers to be able to properly value innovation and assess innovation strategies. Related to this, managers must be able to articulate the value of innovation to the various internal constituencies they touch. Finally, managing the dynamics of change within the organization is a key skill in maintaining a healthy innovation environment.


8. If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?

A shift towards teaching critical thinking and learning skills is sorely needed. These are the building blocks of success in a future that will be defined by rapidly changing dynamics on a global scale. We aren't doing an adequate job of equipping the next generation of knowledge and innovation workers with these essential skills.


Tell Me More

If you'd like to hear more of what James Todhunter has to say about the challenges of open innovation and hear strategies for overcoming them, he will be leading a panel at the Open Innovation Summit, taking place December 2-4, 2009 in Orlando, Florida along with several other open innovation leaders, authors, and consultants. James Todhunter's talk is currently titled:

"Hands-On Strategies For Overcoming the Key Challenges Of Open Innovation"

September 18, 2009 is the last day for the $400 early bird discount.

Blogging Innovation readers can save an extra $300 by registering using the discount code - NXB458. More than enough to add Workshop B to your innovation experience.

See you there!

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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.