The government has adopted a new “Open Data” mindset to get even more from the power of data.

One of its projects is a new data service named PopulationQuery.  This has been launched on OneMap and allows users to get various forms of data about Singapore’s population and display the results on a map.  This can be overlaid with other sorts of information such as stats about schools, restaurants and properties in an area.  This can help someone who is thinking about relocating.

Enabling Criowdsourcing Contests

The government is also keen on holding crowdsourcing contests.  In April this year six teams of developers won awards for innovative apps that use open government data.  They took part in the inaugural PlugFest International Programming Competition (IPC).

An app called ‘The Great Singapore Rat Race’ won the Most Innovative Award.  It visualizes labor and income data, using data sets released by the Ministry of Manpower, Ministry of Education, and the Department of Statistics.  Another app, called ‘Last Order’ aims to reduce wastage of food in restaurants.

Co-Creation to Improve Citizens’ Lives

“By opening up more data, and through innovative use of technology, we can crowdsource ideas and co-create applications with the wider community,” said Tharman Shanmugaratnam, deputy prime minister and minister for finance, in an interview.

The report is a study of the market of open innovation accelerators (OIA), organizations that help their clients to include external sources of knowledge in every aspect of the innovation process.

Approximately 160 open innovation intermediaries participated in a ninety minute online survey to investigate the OIA business model. Among the key findings were:

• The market for OIAs shows continuous growth and is maturing.  Based on a self-assessment by the OIAs in the study, recent market volume was estimated at €2.7 billion (approx. USD $3.6 billion). They expect this volume to double within the next two years (until 2015) to €5.5 billion.

• The dominant open innovation service offered by OIAs is ideation contests. They cover about 80 percent of the open innovation market.

• There is a broad distribution of OI projects across several sectors meaning that it is not limited to just a handful of areas.

• OIAs offering technical search services such as tech scouting have high level expert communities, while OIAs focusing on ideation contests have a heterogeneous pool of “average” consumers.

• Not all OIAs are suited for every open innovation challenge, and picking the right one depends on the nature of the challenge.

• Increasingly, open innovation brokers are helping solution seekers with tasks that go beyond new product development.  Some of these areas include marketing, recruitment, customer service, and knowledge management.

For more details about the report click here.

Five cities have been chosen to kick off the project – Washington DC, New York, Portland, Seattle, and San Francisco – and each one has its own microsite for votes.

In part, the flavors will be decided by a simple tallying of votes, but they’ll also be decided on what citizens do.

For example, Ben & Jerry’s filmed joggers in Washington DC, and those that went in one direction counted as a vote for marshmallow, while joggers going in the other direction were a vote for peppermint.

To keep things local Ben & Jerry’s will partner with local businesses to source ingredients.

Do the World a Flavor

Ben & Jerry’s has previously enjoyed success with crowdsourcing and co-creation initiatives. The ‘Do the World a Flavor’ competition asked the consumers to come up with their own unique ice cream variety.  Not only did it generate new, creative ice cream flavors, but the contest was a useful global platform for the company to talk about its intention to move to a fair trade business model.

Such contests are good illustrations of the power and benefit of open innovation tactics.

Crowdsourcing contests can:

• Provide excellent marketing opportunities and positive word of mouth
• Maximize consumer engagement by giving customers a say in the products they love/support
• Generate ideas (though if a contest is not managed well it can lead to a plethora of poorly conceived ideas)
• Create new products
• Attract new consumers

In the late 1990s, children were turning away from the famous building bricks in favor of video games and computing. There were also supply chain problems and the company was facing a battle for survival.

In 1998, LEGO released Mindstorms and within three weeks of it being launched more than one thousand users had hacked the product’s software to make their own customized versions.

Profits Go Up

Instead of shutting down the product and pursuing ‘the hackers’ through the courts, the company embraced these advanced users. They were coming up with designs unforeseen by LEGO which helped to shift more units.

The net result of its more open approach is that LEGO’s profits grew to 40% for five years – and this was during the global recession.

Co-Creation

LEGO’s latest open innovation approach is its Cuusoo platform which is in beta.  Anyone can submit an idea and those that garner 10,000 votes will be reviewed by LEGO and could be turned into a marketable product.

If that happens the person who submitted the idea will receive 1% of the net sales of the product.

“We work with a broad spectrum of people, from talented individuals to “the crowd” and are constantly evolving our programs and platforms to enable co-creation and various forms of collaboration”, said Erik Hansen, LEGO’s Senior Director for Technology & Open Innovation.

Forbes has compiled a list of the top ten ways that organizations kill innovation. It’s a useful roadmap for those who want to avoid shooting themselves in the foot or going the way of the dinosaurs.

The list was compiled by Ron Ashkenas, a senior partner of Schaffer Consulting, a Stamford, Connecticut consulting firm.  He’s also the author of the book Simply Effective: How to Cut Through Complexity in Your Organization and Get Things Done.

Among the common inhibitors that he lists are:

• The focus on short-term results drives out ideas that take longer to mature
• Innovation is someone else’s job and not part of everyone’s responsibilities
• Managers immediately look for flaws in new ideas rather than tease out their potential
• Companies look at opportunities through internal lenses rather than starting with customers’ needs and problems

Action Plan

The Forbes article suggests that individuals within a company take a good look at each item on the list to see if, how, and/or the extent that each point may apply to their organization.  And then to come together to discuss the findings and use them as a springboard for a wider dialogue about how to address company culture and make appropriate changes.

To read the full list and accompanying article click here.

The company is looking for concepts for a gas-powered motorized bicycle.  It should have retro design elements but use modern technology.

Local Motors prides itself on connecting designers, engineers, and enthusiasts to ideate, design and manufacture innovative vehicle solutions.

Part of the challenge description reads: “By using a nostalgic platform (a traditional pedal bike) to meet a new need (a transportation alternative that is efficient, affordable, and environmentally responsible), power-assisted bikes connect the customer with the past in a decidedly modern way.”

Requirements

Among the vehicle requirements are:

• Honda 48cc 4-stroke engine (GXH 5.0)
• Schwalbe Kojak 26 inch or similar fat tire (tires may be black, white, or other colors)
• Dual chain drive (one for pedals, one for motor)

For a full list of requirements click here.

To help steer participants in the right direction Local Motors has created an ‘ignition kit’ that includes images of bicycle components.

If you want to see some of the designs that have already been submitted click here.

Closing Date is Soon

The competition’s submission period ends on June 6th and the winners will be announced on June the 18th.  There’s a $2,000 first prize as well as the first production LM Cruiser.  There are also monetary prizes for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th place.

Local Motors’ previous crowdsourcing vehicle projects include a car built for desert drag racing and a Domino’s pizza delivery vehicle.

They are, Year of the Bay, 500 Novels, and Living with Railroads.

History Comes Alive

Year of the Bay is an initiative that’s collecting photos, videos, audio recordings, and memories to build up a vivid and diverse history of the Bay Area.  A recent story in Stanford News outlines how one contributor is getting involved.  Michael Rettie has boxes full of old photographs that he’s picked up from garage sales.  He is posting his finds on a publicly accessible virtual map of San Francisco.

500 Novels is asking fans of British novels to help map how London was represented in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Living with Railroads connects amateur railway enthusiasts with scholars to combine their different sources and interpretations. The idea is to see if they can come to a better understanding of the rapid expansion of railways in the nineteenth century and how they changed communities in the US.

Crowdsourcing and Scholarly Research

Crowdsourcing enables scholars “to engage people locally, across the country, and around the world in real research,” said Zephyr Frank, an associate professor of history and director of Stanford’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis (CESTA).

However, there is some debate in academic circles about the merits and value of crowdsourcing for scholarly research.  The three projects should provide a lot of information to help scholars find the best ways to engage the public to generate the most fruitful research.

The owner of the popular Green Giant brand was looking at ways of offering vegetables that didn’t require the addition of sauce or butter. Though it could have taken on the research and development, the multinational felt it would be more efficient and economical to adopt an open innovation approach.

The innovations were driven by consumers as feedback had revealed that plain vegetables were thought of as boring, but many customers didn’t have the time to prepare more elaborate dishes.

Through its online open innovation portal, the Fortune 500 company located Burley Foods, an ingredients supplier to food manufacturers.

External World-Class Innovators

“The culinary knowledge of Burley’s chef provided the expertise we needed to bring more complex seasonings and unique vegetable pairings to Green Giant,” said Kate Gallager, Green Giant R&D manager. Together, Burley and General Mills devised and developed new recipe ideas.

The net result was ‘Seasoned Steamers’, a line of six flavor varieties that include broccoli with Parmesan cheese and Tuscan-inspired seasoning, and carrots flavored with honey Dijon seasoning.

Pursuing Future Goals Via Open Innovation

Having hit product gold via an open innovation route, both General Mills and Burley Foods will continue to work together to innovate for the future.

“We believe this model and our partnership with General Mills will be the blueprint for success in the future,” added Mike Burley, owner of Burley Foods.

But they don’t have all the answers.  In recent years we have seen a number of open innovation contests as research agencies seek wider input into their R&D endeavors.  Here are three examples:

Apps for the Army

This was an open innovation mashup competition to help the army speed up its development of mobile software apps, to be able to deliver software applications as quickly as industry.  It was open to military personnel as well as civilians and there were five winning ideas. They included an app to help soldiers develop their own PT program, and an app that assists army personnel working in humanitarian relief.

Design the Next Humvee

A crowdsourcing contest organized by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for a new Humvee that could be used for combat reconnaissance and combat delivery and evacuation.  More than 150 viable designs were submitted and voted on, and the winning blueprint was FLYPMode (seen in the picture above).  It has 35” tires and a 430-horsepower V8 engine.  A full working prototype was built in just 14 weeks.

Gamification Techniques to Tackle Somali Pirates

Massive Multiplayer Online Wargame Leveraging the Internet (MMOWGLI) is an online game that involved 800 players from the military, federal and foreign governments, and NATO.  There was also a version for the general public. Players had to deal with a number of war-game scenarios and devise solutions.  It was the first major effort by American military to combine crowdsourcing and gaming in war-game exercises.

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” – Steve Jobs, entrepreneur and inventor

“Learning and innovation go hand in hand. The arrogance of success is to think that what you did yesterday will be sufficient for tomorrow.” – William Pollard, clergyman

“Innovation by definition will not be accepted at first. It takes repeated attempts, endless demonstrations, monotonous rehearsals before innovation can be accepted and internalized by an organization. This requires ‘courageous patience.’” – Warren Bennis, scholar and organizational consultant

“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.” – Elbert Hubbard, philosopher

“A business has to be evolving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative interests.” – Richard Branson, business magnate

“Statistics suggest that when customers complain, business owners and managers ought to get excited about it. The complaining customer represents a huge opportunity for more business.” – Zig Ziglar, author and motivational speaker.

“Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision.” – Peter F. Drucker, management consultant and author

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” – Howard Aiken, computer scientist

“Large corporations welcome innovation and individualism in the same way the dinosaurs welcomed large meteors.” – Dilbert comic strip

“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier to apologise than it is to get permission.” – Grace Hopper, computer scientist