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Developing Open Innovation Talent

Developing Open Innovation Talent

Nov-24-10 By Aminda
While it has yet to appear on any lists of the year’s top jobs, the title of Open Innovation Manager is certainly an emerging career path as companies are no longer seeing open innovation as the next trend but as their next growth frontier. This leads one to ask how one qualifies for such a job and how can current college students and recent graduates position themselves to catch the wave of this business movement?  Here is an outline of how it might look.

Various tracks: innovation may often be centered around the development of technological advances however there are also plenty of opportunities in marketing & consumer research-based innovation.

Education: a specific degree in may be lacking but there are a number educational of tracks that could lead to a career in open innovation. The best options appear to be in a technical field or in business. Universities around the world are offering seminars, lectures and other forms of non-credit training on innovation that students should attend. Any innovation-focused education would best be supplemented by coursework in entrepreneurship and training in facilitation. Students should also take advantage of the many innovation competitions and challenges available like the Henkel Innovation Challenge or the Dow Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge.
GE Sets the Bar for Open Innovation Reward

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

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.
The Mark of Legitimacy?

The Mark of Legitimacy?

Nov-18-10 By Aminda
Crowdsourcing: noun the practice whereby an organization enlists a variety of freelancers, paid or unpaid, to work on a specific task or problem: Kodak used social media crowdsourcing to engage its customers in their naming contest.

While this looks like a legitimate dictionary entry, it's not. At least yet. The word crowdsourcing was among those nominated by the New Oxford American Dictionary for their Word of the Year. Unfortunately, it was beat out by "refudiate," a word invented by Sarah Palin in a misguided twitter post.

Fortunately, the selection of a Word of the Year does not mean the word will be added to Oxford dictionaries - at least any time soon. Rather the choice is based on buzz - the amount of attention the word has received over the previous year and whether its usage has grown. This is quite an accomplishment for "refudiate," a term that didn't even exist until July of this year and probably won't even be remembered this time next year. Case in point, does anyone still use "bovvered," the 2006 Word of the Year?  On the other hand, the word twitter and its many variations, none of which have made WOTY, have all become completely ingrained in our lexicon.

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