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Growth Through Government Partnerships

Feb-24-11 By Aminda
Government organizations may get stereotyped as being slow and unadaptable but stories from around the globe demonstrate that plenty of government departments are open to utilizing tools like crowdsourcing and open innovation to meet a variety of goals from listening to constituent opinion to developing more efficient and strategic policies. Accordingly, private organizations should not rule out government when looking for innovation partners.
For example, this year the EU is launching an Innovation Union, as a way of addressing the challenges of the current economic climate and changes in competitive pressure. The initiative is about facilitating practical innovation that can happen quickly enough to maintain competitiveness and living standards under historically unique pressures.

Trust: a Scarce Commodity?

Feb-23-11 By Aminda
Plenty has been written about how to develop an innovative culture. One word frequently thrown around is trust – something that can be difficult to define and even more so to put into practice. Trust extends in many directions; one must trust and be trusted both on an organizational level and the individuals that make it up. Even in partnerships that are built upon a healthy amount of mutual respect and confidence, there is usually room to improve.

Innovation Opportunities in Senior Care

Feb-19-11 By Aminda
For creative types looking for industries that could use their talents, consider Senior Care. In North America, “demand for senior care is outpacing the solutions that providers are prepared to offer.”  In the U.S., as healthcare reform will be directing funds into improving senior care, there is growing pressure to push standards of care ever higher, and competition is fierce, according to recruiting firm Witt/Kieffer. Canada too, is expected to experience a surge in people requiring nursing home care.
Mather LifeWays Institute on Aging has recently Identified 10 Senior Living Trends which should provide plenty of inspiration for inventions. Among their forecasts:

What does the U.S. Think of Innovation?

Feb-17-11 By Aminda
An interesting project, called Advise the Advisor, was launched by the White House this month. It’s billed as a way to help senior staff at the White House stay connected to the American people. The process starts when a short video presentation is posted on-line by a senior staff member who outlines an issue that currently has the attention of the White House. They then ask a series of related questions to which they would like responses to.

CSR and Crowdsourcing: a Powerful Combination

Feb-15-11 By Aminda
Research continues to come out in support of the benefits of crowdsourcing, this time a recently released study showing that crowdsourcing and social media play vital roles in helping companies raise awareness and drive engagement for their corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs.
A survey of executives found that 44 percent of companies have asked customers to provide ideas and help in decision-making on how to tackle issues and achieve goals, with 95% of executives who have used crowdsourcing finding it valuable to the organization's pro-social or CSR efforts.

Harley Davidson Embarks on Crowdsourced Campaign

Feb-14-11 By Aminda
Last November, iconic motorcycle maker Harley Davidson showed the world that even the most classic of brands need to stay current, when they enlisted crowdsourcing-based advertising-agency Victor & Spoils, after releasing Carmichael Lynch, their primary agency for the past 31 years. This week the first media effort to come from that partnership has been released, first on YouTube, to be followed with cable TV spots later in the week. The video, called "No Cages," promotes Harley's HD1 customization program, in which buyers can design their own rides, which was launched earlier this month. The video was the idea of Kentuckian, Whit Hyler, described as a "passionate amateur."

QualComm Launches New Open Source Project

Feb-11-11 By Aminda
Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. (QuIC), a wholly owned subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated announced yesterday the launch of their AllJoyn™ open source project -- a peer-to-peer technology framework enabling ad-hoc, proximity-based, device-to-device communication without the use of an intermediary server. 
 "QuIC is excited to launch the AllJoyn open source project with the hope that it will drive innovation and creativity by empowering developers and device manufacturers to create new types of user experiences that expand the use of peer-to-peer technology beyond just traditional wireless handsets," said Rob Chandhok, president of Qualcomm Innovation Center, Inc. in a press release.

When Good Intentions Go Bad

Feb-10-11 By Aminda
Procter & Gamble has been a leader in open innovation, with their Connect + Develop program helping to bring products like the Swiffer Duster to the world. Their new goals call for open innovation to contribute $3 billion USD in sales. Part of this goal includes becoming the “partner of choice for innovation collaboration by consistently delivering win-win relationships, bringing the best minds to work against the biggest projects to deliver the biggest game-changing wins for consumers,” according to their website.

Finding the Right Research

Feb-08-11 By Aminda
Crowdsourcing may be trendy and Open Innovation the latest business buzz but companies still waiting to see whether these business practices are sustainable, might be interested in looking beyond the headlines and at some of the academic research indicating legitimacy.
IdeaConnection posted a thought provoking article on this subject last fall, quoting a report called“Web-Based Creativity: Can Working in Virtual Communities Be More Effective Than Face-to-Face Cooperation?” in which Science Daily reports on the work of Piet Kommers of the University of Twente in The Netherlands. The article reports “growing evidence that working in virtual communities and using online tools together can be even more effective in some areas than face-to-face cooperation.”
Recently, researchers at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University have added support to this study, finding that the quality of crowdsourced articles compared favorably with articles written by a single author and with Simple English Wikipedia entries.

The Winner’s High

Feb-07-11 By Aminda
“Winning two challenges within two months was so amazing!! I can’t explain that feelings in words.” Sanjay Parmar
“Winning the challenge was such a great feeling. . !” Shane Mayack
“(upon finding out I had won, I felt) disbelief – and I still haven't rid myself of the feeling. This was too unexpected for me.” Julia Skripka-Serry
“(upon finding out I had won, I felt) elated, and gratified.” Keith Everett
These are just a few quotes from problem solvers that have participated in IdeaConnection challenges. They point out a well-known truth; winning feels good. Decades of psychological research and billion dollar gambling industries support this fact. What’s interesting is why winning feels good – because it is a risk-taking behavior. This is seen in an R&D challenge, where a problem solver risks not receiving monetary pay for his or her time and work but they take that risk for the chance to win the compensation.