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Using Open Innovation to Help Save Children’s Lives

Sep-05-12 By IdeaConnection
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) is embarking on a series of open innovation initiatives to enhance its mission of improving the lives of children and their families.

It has launched the Innovate for Children website to work with others to develop innovative new solutions to the problems that millions of people face.

How Two Auditors Earned a Fabulous Payday

Sep-02-12 By IdeaConnection
Open innovation is not just about product innovation, it can also help businesses, organisations and industries transform their processes.  For example, in auditing.

Now the world of auditing is not a place where you’d immediately think the flame of inspiration burns brightly, but that’s because you may not have heard of the 2012 Audit Technology Open Innovation Contest sponsored by TeamMate.

Plans for Tesla Museum is a Crowdfunding Hit

Aug-30-12 By IdeaConnection
Although known as the father of the electric age and a man of considerable accomplishments there is no museum wholly dedicated to Nikola Tesla in the United States.

That’s something that The Oatmeal creator Matthew Inman wants to change.  So he's asking the crowd for help with his Let's Build a Goddam Tesla Museum campaign.

Launched a little more than two weeks ago on Indiegogo it has been an outstanding success, raising more than a $1 million from 28,000 followers, easily passing Inman’s original goal of $850,000.

Why Should We Innovate?

Aug-30-12 By IdeaConnection
In this globally competitive world your business is doing OK and keeping its head above water. You look around and see a happy workforce, a good product pipeline and a reasonable bank balance.

So, time to sit back and rest on your laurels then? Well, not if you want to remain successful.

If you have ever asked yourself why you need to innovate and keep propelling yourself forward an insightful blog post by Sanjay Dalal offers some nourishing food for thought.

How the Crowd Can Benefit Local Communities

Aug-29-12 By IdeaConnection
Local authorities are hardly awash with cash these days which means that some community and urban renewal projects may get put on the back burner indefinitely.

But thanks to the crowd, community-minded crowdfunding platforms can pick up the slack and start, develop and complete projects without having to wait for government bodies to get their acts together.

One such platform is Brickstarter. Conceived in Finland, the site is modeled after the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and could save buckets of tears of frustration by cutting through layers of red tape to get projects online in rapid time-frames.

Quotes to Help You Deal with Rejection

Aug-27-12 By IdeaConnection
Nothing stings like the pain of rejection. You've invested so much time and energy into your innovation or invention that hearing the word ‘no’ is like a dagger to your heart.

But a refusal is not the end of the journey as many successful innovators have discovered on their way to ultimate success.

Here are a few standout quotes from prominent people to help ease the hurt:

“I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat” - Sylvester Stallone, actor, writer, director

What are People Saying about Your Business?

Aug-26-12 By IdeaConnection
Social media is bringing brands much closer to their consumers and changing the way companies engage with external players.

From discovering what the target audience really wants from your products to working with them to co-create novel concepts, social media can positively affect every part of the innovation process.

It all starts with finding out what people say, think and feel about you.  A new web-based service is providing brands with notifications of when they are being talked about to enable them to make timely interactions with the crowd.

Turning the ‘Nos’ to Open Innovation into a Big Fat ‘Yes’

Aug-22-12 By IdeaConnection
If you are an innovator, someone trying to blaze a trail, break new ground and shake up the status quo there's one word that you hear all the time and better get used to - No!

It can be knuckle-gnawingly frustrating.

In this insightful TopCoder Innovation Series video, Thomas Baden, Chief Information Officer for the State of Minnesota, Department of Human Services details his first journey into open innovation and the onslaught of 'nos' that tried to stop him in his tracks.

Seven Ways to Prevent Innovation

Aug-21-12 By IdeaConnection
You know, there are some organisations out there that are looking at their plummeting bottom lines and wondering where it’s all going wrong.

They’re trying to innovate but are not meeting with any success. They cling to the past and the tried and tested but that's not a great recipe for success.

If you’re having problems with your innovation pipeline some of the following reasons might apply to you:

Five Factors to Consider Before Co-Creating with Consumers

Aug-19-12 By IdeaConnection
You have an idea, a giant of a brainwave that’s going to take the world by storm and net your company squillions. But you’re still nervous and wonder whether it really will fly with your customers.

So to minimize risk and to see if your idea is really as good as you think it is, you enlist their help as co-creators. After all you've studied the open innovation landscape and seen how companies like Nike, Nivea and Kellogg’s have successfully worked with the crowd and view customers as amongst their biggest assets.

But before you jump in consider the following points to help you shape your co-creation strategy: