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The Next Generation of Openness

Dec-06-10 By Aminda
In contemplating the societal shift that the practice of openness has created over the past two decades, it’s hard not to think about what this means for the future. Two current generations, “The Millennials” (born somewhere between the late 70’s and late 90’s) and “The Net Generation” (born since then) will have been raised completely in this increasingly open, innovative society. They haven’t had to purchase anything from a camera to a car without the aid of hundreds of user reviews and opinions. They don’t know life without mass product customization from retailers from Nike to Café Press. And if they’re not designing the product themselves, it’s completely normal for them to be fully engaged in providing input into retailers’ product inventory thanks to online stores such as Threadless and ModCloth.
Here are some other examples of how life is different for these generations.

Nike Keeps Making Strides

Dec-03-10 By Aminda
This week, Nike, Inc. made an internal design tool publicly available to the rest of the apparel design and retail community. The Environmental Apparel Design Tool evaluates waste, energy, toxics and water in materials and manufacturing, enabling companies to affect the most significant components of a product’s environmental impact. It has been used internally for four years at Nike after a seven-year, six million dollar investment to design and build the software-based tool.
 
“By releasing the tool we want others to improve on it and we hope to inspire further collaboration to create global industry standards for a level playing field, encourage widespread industry adoption of sustainable design practices and have more sustainable products available for the consumer.” said Hannah Jones, Vice President of Nike Sustainable Business and Innovation.

Plan Your Most Innovative Year Yet

Dec-02-10 By Aminda
With the end of the year rapidly approaching it’s a great time to start thinking ahead, setting goals and committing to education, networking and other ways to keep up the momentum of your innovation efforts.  To help you with those plans, here is calendar of the major Innovation conferences and events to be held around the world in 2011. One of these might be just what you need!
 








24-26 January, 2011
CoDev, Scottsdale Arizona
At the TENTH annual conference on Co-Development and Open Innovation: Accessing Networks & Knowledge to Create Business Value you can expect to hear from and network with top open innovation thought leaders and advanced practitioners across multiple industries on questions that are challenging early open innovation adopters.

Capitalizing on Internal Crowdsourcing

Dec-01-10 By Aminda
A recent report on internal communications from UK-based Melcrum Publishing shares the findings of a company who asked all 100,000 of their workers 'what percentage of your intellectual capital do you use'. The results found that 70 percent of staff felt that only 15 to 20 percent of their intellectual capital was being used. 15 to 20 percent! How many other large corporations would find similar results? Probably a lot. Yet in a competitive business environment employers can’t afford to pay their staff 100 percent only to get 15 percent in return.
Fortunately, crowdsourcing practices offer some fresh ways to extract unused intellectual capital from within organizations. Here are some tips on how to build a solid foundation for utilizing this tool effectively.

Walmart Uses Crowdsourcing to Connect with Consumers, Contribute to a Cause

Nov-29-10 By Aminda
As part of its 2010 holiday giving initiative, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have pledged $18 million to fight hunger in the U.S.  They will be using Facebook to engage and educate consumers about the program, allowing U.S. consumers to vote on which cities should receive $1.5 million in grants to fight hunger.  Between November 15 and December 31 participants can "like" a community on Facebook, selecting from 100 communities where hunger rates are the highest.  The city with the most support will receive $1 million in grants and the next five cities with the highest support will receive $100,000 each.

The Netherlands Knows How to Innovate

Nov-27-10 By Aminda
November 29 kicks off the third and largest Open Innovation Festival bringing together Dutch communities. According to the event’s website, the festival aims to innovate the public domain in order to showcase how governmental organizations, the profit sector and knowledge institutions can cooperate. Furthermore, it aims at showing that by working together we will create a more effective, more efficient and better government. The central theme of OIF2010 is working in communities.

Maximizing Your Open Innovation Project

Nov-25-10 By Aminda
A classic business leadership story tells of Tom Watson Jr.’s, former head of IBM, meeting with a Vice President who had lost $10 million on a failed experiment. The VP came into the meeting fully expecting to be reprimanded and fired. Instead, Watson asked “why would we want to lose you when we’ve just given you a $10 million education?”

Most leaders will agree that there are plenty of benefits to developing a culture of risk-taking and by fostering an environment where employees are not afraid of failure. However, those same people will probably also agree that they’d prefer that ideas be tested thoroughly enough that they fail early on rather than after sinking significant time and resources into them.

If your organization has been considering utilizing open innovation to solve a business problem but are concerned that it might be too risky, here are some questions to ask yourself.

Uniting Strangers to Solve Open Innovation Challenges: What’s It Like?

Nov-23-10 By Stefan Lindegaard
In writing and making public presentations about open innovation, I often remind people that while process is important, in the end success comes down to having people with the right mindset and skills. So much can be accomplished when a good team comes together, even when that team consists of experts in various disciplines around the globe who are total strangers to one another.

This is an experience that, as yet, relatively few people have experienced. So the question naturally arises of what it’s like to join with a team of strangers to solve R&D challenges?

According to individuals who have participated in teams via IdeaConnection, such groups offer a rich opportunity for learning, for honing one’s own problem solving abilities, and to experience the satisfaction that comes with solving a difficult problem that might not have been solved if people were working individually.

Here’s what participants in IdeaConnection challenges report about their experience:

GE Sets the Bar for Open Innovation Reward

Nov-21-10 By Aminda
General Electric announced this week the first round of winners in the world's largest open innovation challenge. The 12 investments, totaling $55 million, represent the first dozen winners of its $200 million Ecomagination competition.  The challenge was launched in July as part of GE's commitment to creating a cleaner, more efficient and economically viable grid, and accelerating the adoption of smart grid technologies.
The challenge is backed by four venture capital firms who collectively contributed $10 million with GE contributing $45 million.

An Historical Perspective on Innovation

Nov-20-10 By Aminda
The great inventor Leonardo Da Vinci contributed tremendously to advancements in the arts and sciences with his study and invention in fields including human anatomy, civil engineering and optics. His designs were so advanced that it was not even feasible to construct most of them during his lifetime.

Despite his great contribution, Da Vinci had the potential to be even more effective. The man was known for working in secret, writing and drawing in coded, unorganized notebooks most of which weren't even published until hundreds of years after his death.  In our modern society, where information moves in seconds, not decades, such research, requiring a team of project managers and linguists to sort and interpret, might likely end up in the trash. While big, future-oriented ideas certainly have their place, most companies would like to break through the many immediate challenges that are hindering them from progress.