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A Woman’s World

Oct-28-11 By Aminda
In 2010, the growth rate of women-owned businesses in the U.S. slowed, for the first time in the past 14 years. During that time period, the number of women-owned businesses has grown at a rate that exceeds the national average—one and a half times the national average. Women today have influence in all areas of business and industry but who are the most influential women in innovation?

There have been lists of the most innovative companies, most innovative countries but none recognizing these leaders. Here we’ve profiled a few standouts who could start this list but there are clearly many more. What do you think? Who would you add to the list of women leaders in innovation?

Make Your Contribution to Robot Education

Oct-25-11 By Aminda
Robotics enthusiasts have the opportunity to contribute to research in artificial intelligence through the Open Mind Common Sense (OMCS) project based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The goal of the project is to build and utilize a large commonsense knowledge base through crowdsourced contributions. Through such a knowledge base, robots can be designed to work in environments like homes and offices more intelligently. Such robots need to have commonsense as well as recognize objects and indoor scenes.

New Network for Innovation Professionals

Oct-17-11 By Aminda
Co-creation professionals now have their own place in cyberspace to talk about the industry and build new business opportunities together. On October 6, the Co-Creation Forum launched a social network offering executives more opportunities to engage in dialogue with each other. Professionals can use the moderated private network to build regional chapters and networking groups, post news and messages, and send instant messages to other members, among other things.

The Data Dilemma

Oct-14-11 By Aminda
A recent post looked at the many opportunities available to firms who capitalize on the abundance and ease of data. To maximize these efforts, firms must also learn how to maintain control over quality and value.

Accuracy of data

An article on a digital media industry site points out that in the world of big data, cooking the data is the new cooking the books. As the barriers to obtaining data fall, the new challenge is getting real data. Statistics can be counter-intuitive and inaccurate analysis may be difficult to spot. As more and more people jump into the game, the chance of errors increases. Forward thinking minds are needed to solve the dilemma of how to keep data both open and transparent yet accurate, perhaps through legal or industry-specific regulation.

Don’t Give Up on Openness

Oct-12-11 By Aminda
A recent study from the Warwick School of Business explores the benefit of open innovation; specifically how firms learn from prior openness.

The report explores how learning from openness enables firms to be ‘better’ at open innovation, i.e. to generate more innovation outputs from any given level of openness. It found that the accumulation of innovative practices has a positive effect. A heartening finding for organizations that may be facing resistance or a steep learning curve from a venture into open innovation.

Turkey’s Time to Shine

Sep-28-11 By Aminda
The country of Turkey may not yet appear at the top of anyone’s list of most innovative nations. But the country sure seems determined to change that. The European Innovation Scoreboard describedTurkey as a “catching up” country, with current innovation performance falling below average compared to the EU-27 but with an above-average rate of improvement. Finance and Support, Firm Investments, Throughputs and Economic Effects have been the main drivers of the improvement in innovation, as the country has achieved rapid recovery from a 2001 financial crisis.

Accelerating the Automotive Industry

Sep-22-11 By Aminda
New innovations and innovation platforms have the potential to produce big change in the automotive industry. The U.S. Airforce Research Lab (AFRL) is currently developing a design from the Air Force’s Open Innovation Pavilion. The design is for a remote-controlled vehicle that can deploy an airbag under a fleeing car that would slide it to a complete stop, potentially keeping police officers and citizens out of harm’s way. The technology will have both military and law enforcement utility. A retired engineer won $25,000 for the winning vehicle concept which is electric-powered and has the ability to accelerate up to 130 mph within three seconds.

GE Launches New Innovation Challenge

Sep-16-11 By Aminda
GE is well known to innovators for the company’s Ecomagination Challenge, which offers significant prize money to winners of various clean energy-related innovation challenges. Now, GE Healthcare, along with four venture capitalist firms, has announced a $100 million Healthymagination challenge.

The challenge is focused on “Assembling Tools to Fight Cancer” and is described as an open call to action for businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students with breakthrough ideas for accelerating early detection and enabling more personalized treatment for breast cancer. More specifically, the challenge is aimed at funding promising initiatives that may improve diagnostics and lead to better understanding of the aggressive triple negative cancer. Enhanced early detection and treatment options will improve care for 10 million cancer patients.

A Stimulus Alternative

Sep-14-11 By Aminda
A recent post discussed the positive role many believe open innovation can play in economic recovery. Another writer agrees, believing open innovation can provide an alternative to stimulus programs, bailouts and traditional government job-training schemes. He provides a well written, concise outline on how open innovation is a pro-business, pro-taxpayer and, ultimately, pro-consumer strategy benefiting private industry, government agencies and academic institutions.

Is Open Innovation the Solution to Economic Growth?

Sep-08-11 By Aminda
Today in the U.S., President Obama informed the nation of plans to aid the economy through the American Jobs Act. If approved by Congress, measures in the $447 billion package would, among other things, provide a tax break for companies who hire new workers, and payroll tax cuts for small business. The plan comes in the wake of a national credit downgrade earlier this summer.
 
Naturally, open innovation experts are going to have a different perspective on how the nation’s economics can be improved. Henry Chesbrough cautions about taking a nationalistic approach to recovery. “Open innovation seeks useful industrial knowledge from all over the world and open innovation companies actively engage with suppliers (among others) from all over the world”, he writes. As a case study, he points to the open innovation model used by Taiwan Semiconductor Corporation (TSMC), which helped “propel the US past the Japanese in the 1990s, at a time when the Japanese were threatening to take over the semiconductor market.”