Creating a Networking Culture

by Stefan Lindegaard

In my previous post, Why a Networking Culture Is Important, I argued that a strong innovation culture requires a strong networking culture. But what does a good networking culture looks like?

It is such a new concept that there are not lot of examples available to illustrate it, but here are some key components of a good networking culture:

• Top executives and innovation leaders have outlined clear strategic reasons why employees need to develop and nurture internal and external relationships. This includes making clear how your company's networking culture links with and supports your innovation strategy (which, of course, is an outgrowth of your overall corporate strategy.)


• Among the things to consider when developing your networking culture strategy is what types of networks you hope to build to support your innovation efforts. If your organization is moving toward open innovation, possibilities would include peer-to-peer networks for people working with open innovation in different companies, value - and supply - chain networks, feeder networks, and events and forums connecting problem solvers and innovators with your company.


• Leaders show a genuine and highly visible commitment to networking. Leaders must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. By making themselves available at networking events and by being visible users of virtual networking tools, they model the desired behavior and motivate others to participate. After all, who doesn't want a chance to exchange ideas with the top brass?


• Leaders should also share examples of their networking experiences whenever possible. Spread the word about your own and others' networking successes. Hearing leaders talk repeatedly about how networking is helping the organization in its innovation efforts will reinforce the message that this is important.


• Networking initiatives mesh closely with your corporate culture. This is not one-size-fits-all; each company's networking efforts will differ. You can take bits and pieces, concepts and theories, knowledge and experience from others, but you still need to make it work for your own company.


• People are given time and means to network. Frequent opportunities are provided to help individuals polish their personal networking skills. Not everyone is a natural networker. But almost everyone can become good at it with proper training and encouragement.


• Both virtual and face-to-face networking are encouraged and supported. Web 2.0 tools and facilitated networking events maximize the opportunities people have to initiative and build strong relationships.

Let me know what you think and please feel free to add more components.


Related Articles:

• Why a Networking Culture Is Important - by Stefan Lindegaard
  
• Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation - by Venessa Miemis

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

The Call for Open Government

by Janelle Noble

Open Government is everywhere. Governments at all levels, municipal, city, and federal agencies are taking dramatic steps to open the traditionally closed processes and reform their IT structures to go open source and embrace cloud computing. What is the end goal? Well, there are several. At the highest level one could say it is to use the latest technology and social web tools to provide better services to constituents while opening up channels for communication between government, its employees, and citizens to gather feedback and new ideas on pressing issues such as the budget, safety, and transportation.

In September of 2009, Tim O'Reilly (who coined the term Web 2.0 in 2004) wrote an opinion piece outlining his vision for Government, or Gov. 2.0 and stated it was more about transforming government into a technological platform. In it he references sites like Whitehouse.gov and data.gov, highlighting the difference between governments providing a purely static informational web site or a site that is a kind of 'collaboration platform' and offers web-based services that provide more value to the user.

Open Government has been championed not only by President Obama in his Directive, but also on a city level, with Mayor Newsom's Open Gov Initiative for the City and County of San Francisco which focuses on open data, open participation and open source. With the recently launched ImproveSF.org, the city is furthering its commitment to recognize and tap the valuable ideas from city employees on the city's most pressing issues, starting with the budget. The campaign, open to all city employees, has only been running for a few weeks and since launching in late February, has gathered 300 ideas, 380 comments, and over 2,000 votes.

There are many other forms of open government popping up in lesser known town and city governments across the US. And the trend is not just limited to the United States. Your Country, Your Call is an online competition looking for ideas that will create jobs and prosperity for Ireland. The brainchild of President McAleese's husband, Dr. Martin McAleese, two winners will receive 100,000 Euros each and benefit from a development fund of up to 500,000 Euros per project. The site is definitely garnering local and international attention and is being promoted through traditional mediums such as television ads as well as through social media channels like Facebook and Twitter. Over 35,000 visitors from dozens of countries have checked out the Your Country Your Call site since its launch a few weeks ago, with thousands voting and commenting on the over 2,000 proposals already submitted.




Ireland's Your Country Your Call TV AD

As more and more towns, cities, and federal governments opt to embrace part or all of what Open Government stands for, the platforms that power these initiatives will become more central to their overall success. Brightidea has been offering open-innovation solutions through its WebStorm, Switchboard, and Pipeline offerings for years. These truly enterprise-level platforms incorporate the best of the social web and allow governments to link individual public or private initiatives, create rollup activity reporting across multiple campaigns on a centralized admin dashboard in order to track and monitor activity at all levels. These functions could truly help expand the rollout of Gov. 2.0 as a standard technological platform (as Tim O'Reilly pointed out, one that reaches well beyond IT) which truly transforms the way people interact with government, bettering the lives of citizens all over the world.


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Janelle Noble is the Digital Marketing Manager at Brightidea and frequently contributes for Brightidea's corporate blog, Innovation at Work. Follow her on twitter @janelletnoble.

Why a Networking Culture Is Important

by Stefan Lindegaard

The reason for creating a networking culture is obvious once you look at the current and future direction of innovation. Let's start by disposing of the myth of the lone genius (the Thomas Edisons and the Alexander Graham Bells of yesteryear) arriving at a breakthrough innovation on his/her own.

This model wasn't true then, and even if it were, it simply does not hold true in today's complex business organizations. Technology and the challenges that must be solved have become so complex that many, perhaps even most, companies can no longer rely solely on their own internal innovation geniuses, no matter how brilliant those people may be.

Innovation is increasingly about having groups of people come together to leverage their diverse talents and expertise to solve multi-faceted challenges that cross multiple disciplines. To make this happen within your organization, and beyond as you move toward open innovation, requires a networking culture that is designed, supported, and modeled by your company's leaders.

Even organizations that are not ready to fully embrace open innovation are finding that employees' mindsets about networking must be stretched as more companies deploy internal R & D functions outside the corporate headquarters and around the world.

Employees start to wonder who should do innovation and where it should take place. Although this is positive, success in such situations depends heavily on the ability of the employees to initiate, solidify, and leverage external relationships.

Another key motivation for setting up networking initiatives is based on the simple fact that the knowledge of any company is inside the heads of the employees. Discovering and distributing this knowledge has always been a challenge, and now, more than ever, the ability to leverage a company's collective knowledge and experience through virtual and face-to-face networks and communities is critical to innovation.

Furthermore, establishing the ability to bring knowledge and potential new innovation insights in from external sources demands a strong networking culture supported and modeled from the top.

In one of my next posts, I will give some advice on how to create a networking culture.

Related Article:

• Tapping the Network to Facilitate Innovation

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

You Might Get Your Problem Solved for Free

hypios.com has launched its first annual "A Problem to Love" promotion. hypios will pay a total of $50,000 to solvers of two of the world's most compelling problems, as determined by visitors to the site.

Teleportation? A cure for cancer? Maybe, maybe not. Candidate problems must be submitted by an employee of some form of research organization - any discipline, public or private. hypios envisions that the two "Problems to Love" will be perennially frustrating research and development (R&D) puzzles. Current unsolved problems on hypios range from the mundane (how to make biodegradable, nonpolluting batteries) to the abstract (a model for frame-dragging that is consistent with Einstein's general theory of relativity - the details of which will not be explained here).

The two top problems will be judged on structure and promise of impact, then posted on hypios for a prize totaling $50,000, giving each problem a fair chance to find a solution. One, chosen by a jury, will be worth $30,000 to the Solver; the other, selected by the public, wins the Solver $20,000 - both paid for by hypios.

The persons that posted the problems receive all intellectual property rights to Solvers' solutions, once accepted.

Is there a problem you want solved?

Enter here


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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.

Borderless Innovation and the Middle East

by Kamal Hassan

Borderless innovation, collaborative innovation, open innovation - all are terms that could resolve the lack of effective innovation and entrepreneurship models in the Middle East.

Think about it. What do we do here?

• We import talent that works for a few years, but the high turnover rate makes it difficult to implement lasting change.


• We hire consultants who do a few quick projects, and then leave with little knowledge transfer.


• We invest millions in massive projects that take years and years to see a return.


• We build educational institutions with the latest infrastructure and technologies, but only a few hundred students.

All of this contributes to a culture that relies on the innovation of others. What we need instead is a more simple and collaborative environment that learns from the rest of the world (without relying on them) to solve our own problems, improve our economies and advance our societies.


What we need is borderless innovation.

I'm not talking about looking beyond our geographical borders for solutions (although that can be a successful method for generating ideas if it's managed correctly). What I mean is looking beyond physical borders - the four walls that enclose your office, your department or your company. I'm also talking about social borders - the gap between public and private organizations, between big businesses and entrepreneurs.

Borderless innovation doesn't mean just outsourcing all your problems for someone else to solve. It means that the person (or organization) with the problem takes ownership of it; they take an active role in understanding the problem and developing innovative solutions. In addition to their internal problem-solving efforts, they also leverage the experience and expertise of people outside their borders to bring to light existing solutions or ideate new ones.

This is the logic behind borderless innovation - working collaboratively to find innovative solutions to complex business, economic, social and environmental problems, and create new value.

By way of example, one of my partners, NineSigma, has recently been contracted by the Piedmont region in Italy to develop an economic stimulus plan using borderless innovation. NineSigma is helping the region develop a list of strategic projects, and set up an open innovation network to solicit ideas and solutions from both local and global innovators to help stimulate innovation and growth in the region.

So, while the region is sponsoring the effort, the network brings together entrepreneurs, small, medium and large enterprises, universities and research labs as participants in finding the best solution for each project. All this is being done at a fraction of the cost of what it would take to build a fancy R&D lab. It's mainly done on the internet.

Would something like this work in the Middle East? I believe it could if given the chance. Our youth are very motivated and creative; they can do magic if they have the means and opportunity. They don't necessarily need an expensive R&D infrastructure to collaborate and innovate. Many are already taking the entrepreneurial path, using their own talents and innovative ideas.

Our governments and universities have innovation and economic stimulus as high priorities, although they are struggling to successfully execute in some cases. Using borderless innovation and collaboratively developing solutions might be the answer to move us beyond innovation apathy. One thing is for sure - we'll never know if we don't try.


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Kamal Hassan is President and CEO of Innovation 360 Institute, and is responsible for leading the company's global operations and customer acquisition.

Simple Justification for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I stumbled over an interesting paper, "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation", by the Alliance Management Group which has developed lots of great content including the Want--Find--Get--Manage framework below:

• Want - What external resource(s) does the firm want to access from the outside world to meet its strategic intent?


• Find - What mechanisms will the firm use to find these external resources?


• Get - What processes will the firm use to plan, structure and negotiate an agreement to access the resources?


• Manage - What tools, metrics and management techniques will the firm use to implement the relationship?

The article focuses on the Want element of this framework and what I in particular liked is the equation: A + B = C. I have inserted the below edited snippets from the article in order to introduce you to the equation.

We will define our terms:

• Variable A - "Represents the firm's existing 'assets' including its production equipment, core capabilities, intellectual assets, resources and perhaps even its market presence."


• Variable B - "Represents assets that are complementary to the firm's resource base and are only available externally."


• Variable C - "Represents the new product or market offering that goes beyond what the firm is able to deliver utilizing its existing 'assets' alone."

Variable C is a more valuable commercial result that comes from combining the firm's existing 'assets' (Variable A) with those sourced externally (Variable B). This simple equation makes a simple point. If the firm does not access external technology (i.e. there is no Variable B) then Variable C will be limited to what can be achieved using existing capabilities and assets. In other words, Variable C is determined by Variable A.

The goal of the A + B = C equation is to find new value that the firm cannot identify using traditional planning processes. Internal resources (A) retain their prominent role and integrate with external resources (B) to enable a visionary market offering (C) that was unthinkable just yesterday.

When the organization purposefully moves in this direction, senior executives require project managers to redefine C as a variable, enabled by A and B. This is an uncomfortable change for some managers because Variable C is ill-defined, Variable B is fuzzy and Variable A is the only known quantity.


I believe open innovation is about bridging internal and external resources and to identify and execute on the opportunities that arise on this interaction. I like how The Alliance Management Group turns this into an equation and I wanted to share this with you.

Don't forget to read the full article: "Sourcing External Technology for Innovation"


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Open Innovation Side Effects

by Stefan Lindegaard

Open innovation will not only lead to new ways of making innovation happen. Innovation leaders and their executives will also experience side effects. I think most of these effects will be positive, but some will be mixed or perhaps even negative.

As innovation leaders and their executives implement open innovation practices, they can just as well start figuring out how to deal with side effects of open innovation such as described below:

• Open innovation is very much about managing change. If a company can handle the change process related to implementing open innovation, then they have learned valuable lessons that can be used in change management situations. In the current and future business climate, I think everyone should appreciate working in an organization that is agile and prepared for changes.


• Often, the biggest enemy of innovation is the company itself as the company begin to focus more on its needs than the needs of the market. When you begin to innovate with partners, you will see that these partners either focus on their own needs - and then innovation will definitely fail - or you will see that they come together and funnel their resources towards a market need. If the latter happens, then you have a great chance to succeed with innovation. Pressure from external partners can shift awareness from internal needs to market needs and this move can be helpful beyond the innovation process.


• Open innovation can bring along new organizational structures. As open innovation becomes the way to innovate, the functional/divisional or matrix organizational structures as we know today will change - or perhaps even break down. I am not sure what will be next...


• Open innovation will be one of the key drivers in bringing in new types of communication tools into the organization. Think LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Once the initial resistance has been defeated, this can benefit many business functions.


• Customers are one of the first places to look for external input. Although, there are dangers involved in listening to customers when it comes to innovation, the increased focus on customers can lead to better relationships with them. This can change the role of sales and marketing units as they need to get even more involved in innovation.


• At a recent open innovation conference, Cisco said that they are trying to move from a culture of competition to a culture of shared goals. This was by large driven by a desire to make innovation happen with external partners. There is much talk on changing the not-invented-here culture, but perhaps open innovation will drive even more corporate culture change.


• As you work with external partners, you are exposed to other ways of getting things done. You bring diversed thinking into the organization. This can make you consider whether your current practices are good enough, whether you have to adjust these or perhaps even develop new next practices for your organization. An example: You get new perspectives on collaboration. Perhaps this can inspire to better interaction and collaboration between business units.


• Overall creativity as well as overall complexity increase with open innovation. The increased number of actors provides new ways for people to be creative. This can also increase the level of complexity, which is also driven by fact that the organization is no longer itself in control.

Let me know what you think of this and please share your own views.


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Is Open Innovation a Tournament?

by Stephen Shapiro

A magazine asked me to write a book review of "Innovation Tournaments" by Christian Terwiesch and Karl Ulrich. The book arrived in the mail yesterday and I immediately turned to the index to see if InnoCentive was listed. Sure enough, we are mentioned in several places in the book.

This got me thinking: Is InnoCentive a tournament?

The word tournament is derived from the French word for "medieval sport" and is now used to describe a wide variety of competitions.

Most competitions/tournaments are quite entertaining. And by their very nature, there is always a winner. One could argue that tournaments are "spectacles designed to find a champion."

Given this widely held point-of-view, using the word tournament as a descriptor of InnoCentive seems to be inaccurate.

The NCAA basketball championships are a tournament. The "World Series of Poker" is a tournament. American Idol is a tournament. With each of these, there is always a winner. The purpose of the tournament is to find that winner while (usually) providing entertainment value.

InnoCentive is not interested in finding a winner for the sake of naming the champion. The objective is to find workable solutions to real business problems. Their approach is one I call a "contingency-based, value-driven pricing model." Admittedly, that does not sound as sexy as calling it an innovation tournament.

Here's how it works. A company has a problem they want solved. They decide the "value" of finding a workable solution and they offer a "bounty" to anyone who can provide one. The bounty is only paid when they get what they need. This "pay for solution" model outsources the risk associated with complex problem solving.

Here are other examples that illustrate the key difference between the bounty-based approach with the tournament-based approach.

The NetFlix Prize was not a tournament. They only paid the team that improved the recommendation engine by 10%. This makes is a bounty-based approach. You only pay the bounty when you get a successful solution.

In contrast, The Cisco iPrize, can be thought of as a tournament. According to their website, they will "select up to 32 semifinalist teams that will work with Cisco experts to build a business plan and presentation... Up to eight finalist teams will present their business ideas to a judging panel to compete for the grand prize: a $250,000 award shared equally by members of the winning team." The LG Electronics competition (read my article on it here) was also a tournament-based approach.

The key difference is the way the challenge is articulated. With the bounty-based approach, the success criteria is clearly defined and you know if someone provided a successful solution: Did you improve the recommendation engine by 10%? Did you find a chemical compound that has specific properties? Did you develop a mathematical model that optimizes solves a specific problem? The "winner" of the bounty is determined by this success criteria. If the criteria is not met, the bounty is not paid.

With the tournament-based approach, the success criteria is not defined. The winner is the "best" of the submissions. Although these types of competitions can yield excellent solutions, I know from inside-information that the results are often less than stellar. One company that uses this type of tournament described the results as a "PR success yet a commercial failure."

Both approaches can provide value to any organization. It's just important to recognize that they are useful in different ways. Tournaments can be great to get a broad set of ideas for an undefined space. Bounties are great for when you are hunting down usable solutions.


Related articles:

• Innovation Tournaments Interview - Christian Terwiesch
  
• Book Review - "Innovation Tournaments"

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Stephen Shapiro is the author of three books, a popular innovation speaker, and is the Chief Innovation Evangelist for Innocentive, the leader in Open Innovation.

Four Models for Competitive Crowdsourcing

by Hutch Carpenter

Crowdsourcing is heating up in terms of corporate interest. Pepsi's decision to skip the Super Bowl in favor of a crowdsourced ideas initiative - Pepsi Refresh - is an example of the interest in the market. Digital strategy, marketing and design firm Last Exit called crowdsourcing a top digital marketing trend for 2010.

Contests are a particular form of crowdsourcing that are proving to be beneficial in a number of areas. Contests allow people from around the world to compete with one another on a specific challenge put forth by an organization. Participation is motivated by incentives commensurate with the level of the challenge.

The contest version of crowdsourcing has its own activities for gathering, filtering and selecting among the submissions of people. These activities are:

Crowdsourcing starts with the contributions of people from around the globe. These submissions are aggregated into a common site. Submissions are provided in the format matching the contest objectives.

People provide their feedback on the submissions of others. This feedback can be up-down votes, star ratings, comments and buying into ideas with virtual currency. This process can be collaborative, helping refine submissions.

Organizations establish panels of experts who review the crowdsourced submissions, and select those best meeting their requirements. Experts possess distinct domain knowledge to make the final decision in the contest.

The winners of the contest are determined by people's votes and other measures. This selection process is a mix of overall crowd sentiment, weighted for higher reputed members, and the power of individuals to leverage word-of-mouth marketing.

These components can be integrated in different ways to provide four different models for running crowdsourced contests. These four models are described below.


Model #1: Crowd Sentiment, Expert Decision


The Crowd Sentiment, Expert Decision model allows organizations to include the sentiment of the crowd as part of their decision-making process. This is valuable input for contests where the selected submissions will ultimately be put in front of the market. The crowdsourced feedback provides an early read on the potential market reaction.

This model is also ideal for cases where a collaborative spirit can refine and improve submissions. Especially for more complex contests, feedback from interested collaborators is valuable for fully understanding the opportunity in the submission and its weaknesses.

Two organizations are using our tools for this model of crowdsourcing contest. Cisco is seeking $1 billion ideas through its I-Prize contest. And the Enterprise 2.0 Conference is managing its competitive speaker proposal process with this model. Both are utilizing crowdsourced feedback as part of the decision-making process.


Model #2: Crowd Decision


The Crowd Decision model leverages the crowd for all parts of the contest. This model provides a great platform for organizations to better understand the meaning that is associated to their products and services. The submissions reflect the creativity of customers and interested parties. The feedback on a submission signals the intensity of feeling for someone's particular interpretation of meaning. Winners are determined by how the community rates their submissions.

This model is ideal for marketing purposes. It becomes a strategic engagement model, particularly where customers are talking about your organization in social media. It's a fun way to increase company awareness.


Model #3: Expert Decision


The Expert Decision model engages the global community to find solutions to complex problems. Experts review the submissions, identifying those best addressing the objective of the contest. The sentiment of the crowd is not an element in these contests, as they typically address more technical challenges.

This model also prevents theft by competitors of people's ideas. The submissions are only visible to designated experts associated with the sponsoring organization. The closed nature of submissions is important for generating interest from people with the technical competence to address a challenge.


Model #4: American Idol


The American Idol model is so-named because it reflects the selection process of that show. The community ultimately selects the winners of the contest. But the candidates in the contest are first selected by experts.

This model is good when the quality of submissions will fluctuate significantly. The experts act as a filter before the community votes. It's also appropriate when the sponsoring organization has a specific direction it wants for the winning submission. The experts identify candidate submissions consistent with the direction desired.

Four different models for running a competitive crowdsourcing initiative, each with its own characteristics and business objectives. The biggest takeaway for anyone considering such an initiative is the flexibility of approaches to accomplish different objectives.


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Hutch Carpenter is the Vice President of Product at Spigit. Spigit integrates social collaboration tools into a SaaS enterprise idea management platform used by global Fortune 2000 firms to drive innovation.

Making Your Organization Understand Open Innovation

A Lesson from General Mills

by Stefan Lindegaard

Changing organizational culture is one of the most difficult tasks when it comes to open innovation. What can you do? Well, General Mills gave a great example at the recent CoDev conference. By sending more than 20 people to the conference, they sent a strong signal - internally as well as externally - that they are committed to open innovation.

I really liked this move and thus I did an interview with Mike Antinone, who is Sr. R&D Manager, Connected Innovation in General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network, in order to get a better understanding on this.


What made you decide to send this delegation to CoDev?

We had two main reasons for sending our GWIN team to CoDev this year. The first was really around team building. We have added several new team members as we expand our global innovation entrepreneur program and we wanted to have some time away from the daily demands of the office to foster an added sense of community.

The second area for us was to collectively learn and leverage the insights and best practices of other open innovation leaders represented at the conference and then create a plan of action to determine how we can best incorporate those insights and practices into our group.


What were the objectives?

We feel great about the progress that we have made with our Connected Innovation program, but we also wanted to put some serious thinking into "Next Practices" - those practices that we will need in the future to drive our program ahead and distance ourselves from competitors. We did not want to just go and listen, take notes, have a quick discussion then go back to our daily routine. Our goal was to create tangible action steps that we would incorporate into our development plans for our program.

We began our preparations about six to eight weeks before the conference. We divided the group into four teams with each team being responsible for a given topic. We chose to focus on three key objectives for our company. These were:

1. Driving profitable growth through Connected Innovation


2. Creating and leveraging more successful partnerships


3. Driving Connected Innovation throughout our company

Each team then created a list of questions they wanted answered about how we as innovation entrepreneurs could dramatically impact the three objectives outlined above. Our goal was to collect as many facts as possible.

The fourth team set up a series of networking opportunities, both before and after the conference to provide stimulus for answers to our questions. Some of those networking opportunities included:

• Smaller match-making events at the conference. We prearranged a series of discussions with conference participants. We met during breaks, at lunch, etc. to engage in a dialog about areas we wanted to advance and grow as an organization.


• Utilization of CoDev LinkedIn site. We posted several questions on the LinkedIn site to gain additional insights and make connections


• We also made sure we had prepared germane questions for each of the speakers to ensure we were tapping into their area of expertise.

Our team stayed in Scottsdale an extra day after the conference ended to have a working breakout session to summarize our key findings and to create an action plan going forward. During this session, we created list of "we-should" statements in our breakout sessions that were then reduced to three major areas of focus for each category as we continue to develop our program.


Which lessons have you learned so far?

It was very powerful to have our entire group at such a stimulating event. We had many opportunities to interact with each other, build on what we heard, and engage thought leaders with differing points of view. The conference provided us with a great opportunity to assess our program, consider new elements and chart a course as we continue our Connected Innovation journey.


Conclusion

I am impressed. Such an initiative can anchor open innovation in your company as it provides a great opportunity to build a common language based on what the team learned at the conference. This can really help develop the next practices of open innovation at General Mills.

Can you talk your executives into this kind of commitment?


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Crowdsourcing Innovation vs. The Economics of Elitism

by Mark Prus

Which Is Better?

A recent article in The New York Times discussed the innovation process at Apple. Clearly the process begins and ends with Steve Jobs. And clearly Mr. Jobs is a creative genius. He also has a lot of help with top notch design engineers. As a result, Apple is perceived as one of the most innovative companies on the planet.

If you have visionary leadership at your company, this might be a good way to go. But companies like Procter & Gamble (P&G) also have strong leadership and they have taken a different route to innovation. P&G has been a leader in Open Innovation, and many of the new products they have launched in the past few years have come from outside the company.

Which approach is better? Some say that Crowdsourcing produces a lot of good ideas, while "home grown" innovation is capable of producing bigger breakthrough ideas.

I love Apple (full disclosure: I own Apple stock and am a big fan of their products). However, I am not sure that the "elitism model of innovation" is one that can be expanded to a lot of companies. I believe that Steve Jobs is a true visionary, and that people like him come along far too rarely for this to be a workable model of innovation. It does work for Apple... but how many other companies can implement it?

Your thoughts?


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Mark Prus is a marketing consultant who offers a name development service called NameFlash^SM.

Increasing Innovation Productivity

by Stefan Lindegaard

In a 2006 article, P&G's New Innovation Model, P&G stated that their open innovation program - along with improvements in other aspects of innovation related to product cost, design, and marketing - made their R&D productivity increase by nearly 60 percent since 2001.

When I listen to P&G talks on innovation today, the innovation productivity has nearly doubled and open innovation is a key reason for this.

Every company would like to increase their innovation productivity significantly so I am looking into how companies can do this. I am still researching and it would be great to have a discussion here on my blog. A few conversation starters:


What does innovation productivity mean?

In this video, P&G gives us some insight on innovation productivity including this quote from A.G Lafley: "...the other obvious way we measure innovation productivity is how much innovation do we generate per person and how much innovation do we generate per dollar invested in innovation." You can read a transcript at the link.

Which other metrics can we use to track innovation productivity?


Maximizing Innovation Productivity

In this article, PRTM focuses on four areas of opportunity that offer high potential for productivity and innovation leverage but are often overlooked or underutilized by development organizations: platforms and architectures, resource management, information automation, and cross-functional teams.

To which extent does your company apply this? Does it deliver results? What else do you do?

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and input on this.


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? It would be great to have a checklist, but unfortunately innovation is too complicated and company-specific to employ a standard checklist for this.

However, we can share our insights on this and help each other become better at spotting the signs of failure.

Thus I have listed (in a non-prioritized order) the red flags I look for when I talk with executives and innovation leaders trying to get an understanding of their corporate innovation capabilities. What do you think and what can you add?

1. The lack of an innovation strategy. Executives and innovation leaders have failed to link innovation with the overall corporate strategy. As a result, the innovation efforts have no clear directions and there is not a proper mix of incremental, breakthrough and radical innovation. No strategy, no focused effort, no results.


2. No definition of innovation. Innovation means different things to different people. Every company should develop their own definition that fits their situation and use this definition to build a common language for their innovation initiatives.


3. Too much focus on internal capabilities. The future of innovation is open and global. Who will get this first? You - or your competitors?


4. Too much focus on open innovation. This is not the Holy Grail. You need to go open, but keep a strong focus on your internal resources. A key to innovation success is the ability to combine internal and external resources and act on the opportunities that arise from this.


5. Internal silos are not broken down. If you cannot make innovation happen across your own business units and functions you cannot expect to succeed with external partners.


6. Too much focus on ideas and too little focus on people. People and processes matter more than ideas. Yet, too few companies establish programs in which they can identify and develop the right people and match these people with the right ideas at the right time.


7. Executives do not understand that a strong innovation culture equals a strong networking culture. Although executives might acknowledge the value of relationships, they often leave this in the woods saying that people can figure this out by themselves. Not true. Executives need to establish networking strategies and employees need training that fits these strategies just as well as the time to build and nurture relationships.


8. Innovation efforts focus on technology or products. Most companies do not work with innovation models such as the Ten Types of Innovation which helps the employees and external partners view innovation in a more holistic way. Remember that innovation is also about services and processes.


9. The usual suspects play the game. Innovation champions and other elite units can work, but the setup of such units often also sends the signal that these guys will take care of it. Other employees might think they do not need to get involved. Everyone should not work with innovation at the same time, but programs or platforms that give everyone opportunities to work with innovation should be in place.


10. Executives and innovation leaders underestimate the speed of change. One example is open innovation. A key objective here is to become the preferred partner of choice. This will happen fast and yet many companies are not even getting ready to claim their position.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas on this.


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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Pay Attention When Sony and Japan Embrace Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

The "not invented here" culture is a problem at Sony. James Surowiecki addressed this in a 2005 article in which he stated that the Betamax video tape recorder failed in part because the company refused to cooperate with other companies.

Sony was also late in making flat-screen TVs and DVD recorders, because its engineers believed that, even though customers loved these devices, the available technologies were not up to Sony's standards.

And Sony's digital music players didn't play MP3s, which is a big reason that the iPod became the Walkman's true successor. Again and again, Sony's desire to control everything kept it from controlling anything according to Surowiecki.

Over the years, Sony CEO Howard Stringer has been working hard to crack this staunch "not invented here" culture. As the company bets big on a 3-D revival, it seems as if they starting to get it.

In a Wall Street Journal article, Stringer says that getting to market quickly takes priority over making everything in house. This led to Sony reaching a licensing deal with an outside supplier for an essential component of 3-D televisions. Things are definitely changing at Sony.

Things are also changing for Daiichi Sankyo, one of Japan's largest pharmaceutical groups. In a Financial Times interview, CEO Takashi Shoda talks about how a growing influence of western practices and the broader need for greater openness in order to innovate impacts his company.

"The era of trying to do everything in-house is gone," he says. "Innovation means open innovation: partnership, networking, relationship with academics. There used to be an NIH - not invented here - syndrome. If a drug project did not begin in-house, we were not interested. That is changing now. Management is constantly encouraging outsiders," Shoda says.

What is the message here? The future of innovation is open and global. Companies need to get this or they will lose out. And when even very tradition-driven, Japanese companies get it, everyone needs to pay attention.

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.

Protecting Open Innovation from Corporate Antibodies

by Andrea Meyer

Point: By picking where open innovation occurs and what it communicates to the rest of the organization, innovators can protect open innovation efforts from corporate antibodies

Story: All organizations, especially large ones, have an "immune system" in the form of an army of fine-tuned antibodies that root out risk and threats to the smooth-operating status quo. These antibodies help drive efficiencies, attack waste, promote uniform performance, and prevent infection for foreign ideas.

That's good for efficiency, but innovation requires taking risks and changing the status quo to create more value. That makes innovation a prime target for the cleansing action of antibodies. Open innovation (OI) is especially prone to antibody response because it involves foreign ideas. At the December 2009 Open Innovation Summit, presenters from HP, CSC, Clorox, and Shell described how they avoided corporate antibodies at their companies. The techniques addressed who participates in open innovation, where they operate, and what they communicate so that innovation succeeds and doesn't get killed by antibodies.

For example, Russ Conser, Manager of EP GameChanger at Shell, offered a good metaphor for where to do open innovation. He showed an image of a young girl building a castle in a sandbox under a large umbrella. The sandbox metaphor works on two levels. It provides a protected place for innovation to do its value-creating experimental work. The sandbox also is the container for the innovator's gritty sand, protecting the larger organization from the risky rough ideas.

Phil McKinney, SVP and CTO at Hewlett Packard, concurred - HP put its OI in a quiet corner of the Personal System Group. The sandbox creates an antibody-free zone for innovation work and protects the larger organization from the early-stage risks of innovation.

When communicating about open innovation efforts, innovators' communications can either attract attacking antibodies or help pacify them. What innovators and their representatives say determines how antibodies react. For example, Lemuel Lasher, Chief Innovation Officer at CSC, cautioned that innovators shouldn't be too quiet or too secretive, especially when the facts are on the side of the innovator. Innovators should be provocative as long as they don't provoke too strong an immune reaction.

Ed Rinker, Manager of the Technology Brokerage Group at Clorox, used hard-hitting facts to convince his organization to deviate from its brand strategy. Consumer trends toward gentle green and natural products seemed antithetical to the Clorox brand of strong cleansers. Rinker used facts like marketing tests that proved consumers preferred GreenWorks with the Clorox name on the product to convince the antibody nay-sayers.

The most-cited communications recommendation, used at HP and Shell's programs, is communicating what the innovators did and not what they are doing or planning to do. This focuses the discussion on the new products, new customers, new revenues, and new profits generated by innovation, rather than on the potentially risky or disruptive projects underway by the innovators. Shell's Gamechanger Group continues to thrive after 12 years inside the billion-dollar giant because they show results.

Action:

• Find an 'air-cover' executive who provides the umbrella of protection for innovation
  
• Use a quiet corner or sandbox where innovators can generate results without interference or creating risk
  
• Describe the good projects you did, not the risky projects you're doing or plan to do
  
• Live on the boundary between sufficiently provocative and excessively provoking

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Author of more than 450 company case studies and contributor to 28 books, Andrea Meyer writes & ghostwrites about innovation, IT and strategy for clients like MIT, Harvard Business School, McKinsey & Co., and Forrester Research. Follow her at www.workingknowledge.com/blog and twitter.com/AndreaMeyer.

Open Innovation Bullies

by Stefan Lindegaard

Large companies have always used their size and power to get things their way. This is no different with open innovation. So I am not surprised when I listen to people from smaller companies complain about the behaviours of large companies when they start working together.

Such behaviours were confirmed by several large companies at the recent Open Innovation Summit. They shared stories on how they had used their size and corporate power to get deals that favoured themselves and they even admitted that some deals could be so lop-sided that they could discourage other smaller companies from working with them.

This made me wonder whether it is just human nature to be a bully and use the power at hand. I reached the conclusion this is often the case and in terms of open innovation this is just what smaller companies should expect when they engage with large companies.

This is not to say that I approve of such behaviour. I prefer an ideal world in which all companies get along and share the pie in a fair and nice manner. But the problem is that we do not live in an ideal world. So what should smaller companies do about this?

I do not think they can do much to change the behaviours of the large companies. But they can prepare better. They should expect a bully-like behaviour and prepare for this rather than cross their fingers and hope for the opposite. They need to analyze the level of resources needed to work with the larger company and they need to weigh the pros and cons on potential deals. Some deals might not be worth the trouble.

At least some larger companies are aware of this situation. They understand how important it is to be perceived as the preferred partner within their industry. This was illustrated by the fact that some of the companies that admitted to loop-sided deals at the recent summit work to rectify those.

At the summit, a representative from a large company also shared that increasing the leadership position that comes with the perception of being the "preferred partner of choice" is an area of improvement to them.

On this, he mentioned that the company recently commissioned a third party to conduct a blind survey in which they asked a range of potential partner companies that had not yet worked with the given company whether they would like to do so. A large majority replied positively. Later in the same survey they asked companies that had already worked with the given company by revealing their name. Would they like to work with them again in the future? Although still in the high end, the reply here was lower than the first one.

This gives reasons to worry. Hopefully, it seems as if this company is up for the challenge as they show a willingness to confront and rectify this. This is most likely not the case at many other large companies, but let's hope for the best - and tell smaller companies to prepare well...

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Stefan Lindegaard is a speaker, network facilitator and strategic advisor who focus on the topics of open innovation, intrapreneurship and how to identify and develop the people who drive innovation.