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Posts by Paul Wagorn


Britney Spears, Oil Exploration and how to help your Company Innovate

Britney Spears, Oil Exploration and how to help your Company Innovate

Sep-12-18 By Paul Wagorn
Harold Hildebrand was a young musician and technical whiz who got a job with Exxon Mobil right out of university. Not long after that, he discovered a disruptive technology that could find oil by using sound.
8 Big Crowdsourcing Mistakes

8 Big Crowdsourcing Mistakes

Mar-09-16 By Paul Wagorn
Crowdsourcing and open innovation can be powerful tools.  Throw out a problem, and a solution bounces back – usually quickly, and for a relatively low cost. Then why is it that so many companies fail to get everything out of crowdsourcing that they had hoped for?  The majority of the time it’s because they make critical mistakes.
Want to Solve a Problem?  Involve some non-experts

Want to Solve a Problem? Involve some non-experts

Aug-06-15 By Paul Wagorn
Having years of experience can help people tackle problems on an intuitive level.  If you’ve worked in an area for 20 years, you automatically know what potential solutions have a good chance of working, and which ones have a poor chance of working.
Why Open Innovation Portals fail, and best practices for Success

Why Open Innovation Portals fail, and best practices for Success

Apr-22-14 By Paul Wagorn
The failure rate is high but the fixes are simple and intuitive. In this two-part article series Paul Wagorn, President of IdeaConnection draws on his extensive experience of open innovation to discuss the problems with OI portals and how they can be remedied.
Connecting to a world of knowledge has never been easier. The ability of the Internet to harness expertise from all parts of the planet in a wide range of fields is allowing companies to augment their talent base with the knowledge, skills, experiences and points of views of others.
Burn the Ships

Burn the Ships

Apr-11-14 By Paul Wagorn
Open Innovation, loosely defined as seeking solutions outside your company, can help a company dramatically increase its technology and product pipeline, but it is not without its challenges.  In this article, we explore a major obstacle that can impede the success of an open innovation based project, and how to remedy it.
I have seen and been involved with hundreds of open innovation projects.  Many of these projects succeed, and help the company push through major obstacles to be able to release a disruptive new product or technology.  But some fail – and one of the biggest reasons for failure is a lack of full commitment from the stakeholders in the project.
Unconventional Success

Unconventional Success

Apr-09-14 By Paul Wagorn
How is it possible that IdeaConnection is able to put together a team of 5 people who don’t know each other to solve a problem that seems out of reach to a company’s 5000 dedicated researchers?
A look at what goes into IdeaConnection’s amazing success at solving some of the most difficult problems.  By Paul Wagorn, President of IdeaConnection. 

Innovate or die
Most medium to large sized companies bear an unrelenting pressure to continually release new products to fill market gaps, build up their technology pipelines and maintain a constant flow of new, proprietary intellectual property.
The Problems with Crowdsourcing and how to Fix them

The Problems with Crowdsourcing and how to Fix them

Apr-08-14 By Paul Wagorn
What are the challenges of using the crowd to find solutions to technical problems, and how can we overcome them?
By Paul Wagorn, President of IdeaConnection

Loosely defined, crowdsourcing is a term used to describe using an open contest or crowd of people, all contributing to solve a problem or get something done.  The term was coined by Jeff Howe in Wired Magazine in 2006, and was officially added to the Oxford Dictionary just last year in its June 2013 update.

The premise (and promise) or crowdsourcing is that it allows organizations to solicit the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ by connecting to a large number of people who share a common goal, all at once.
Open Innovation, Teams and Tea Parties

Open Innovation, Teams and Tea Parties

Jan-15-14 By Paul Wagorn
I have two wonderful daughters. The oldest is 7 years old, and in many ways, she is the most prolific, efficient and successful user of open innovation that I know, and I think that there is a lot that can be learned from how she does this.
Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas

Sometimes it’s the simplest ideas

Aug-16-12 By Paul Wagorn
Sometime the best ideas are the one that seem so obvious once they are described. Like this one: If you fill your air mattress with helium you can keep it on the ceiling.

The same idea could be applied to any type of furniture that is inflatable, like a chair or a sofa.
A patent for a stick

A patent for a stick

Aug-12-12 By Paul Wagorn
In 2002, Ross Long was granted a patent for what was, essentially, a stick:
"An apparatus for use as a toy by an animal, for example a dog, to either fetch carry or chew includes a main section with at least one protrusion extending therefrom that resembles a branch in appearance. The toy is formed of any of a number of materials including rubber, plastic, or wood including wood composites and is solid. It is either rigid or flexible.


...  and wherein said animal toy is adapted to float on the water."

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