Innovation Scouting seems to be a hot topic these days but I’m not sure why.

Last week Nerac hosted a roundtable event on Innovation Scouting at the Executive Conference Center at Babson College. The idea was to invite Nerac clients to come to an open forum to learn about current practices in innovation scouting and discuss how companies are dealing with their challenges. We were thrilled when we had more registrants than we had chairs to hold them (only to be deflated by nasty New England weather that kept some folks home), but I’m still not sure what motivated these clients to attend.

Are companies fresh out of ideas? Are they scared straight because they aren’t hitting their numbers through internal development efforts? Are they in a mature industry dying a slow death? Have they been tasked with figuring out what open innovation means to their company and they’ve scratched their heads long enough? Maybe all of the above. Maybe there are other reasons.

I would argue that companies scout for external innovations for one fundamental reason. Not all smart people work for them. Now I didn’t come up with that (Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems did), but the rational ones among us will agree that although we (think) we hire smart people and that we support them with smart tools, processes, and other resources, that doesn’t cover all the bases.

For decades now, companies have tried lots of different ways to grow their business and beat the competition. They’ve cut their way to profitability. They’ve spent millions gaining ISO 9000 certifications believing it would get them more customers. They’ve patented everything that walked (and didn’t) to lay claim on anything that might possibly be commercialized. They’ve adopted rapid prototyping and stage gate methodologies to deliver a better product faster. And the list goes on. Now that we, as a collective business enterprise, have exhausted all techniques for growing the business through internal methods, we have turned to what the world outside our corporate walls has to offer.

This was echoed in the presentations and audience participation at Nerac’s roundtable. My benchmarking study found that the more integrated a company’s products are with other companies’ products, the higher the likelihood that scouting is considered important. This makes sense. A packaging company can’t “guess” at what kind of shelf life protection a particular perishable item will require. It has to work closely with its customers and other members of the value chain to understand breakdown and spoilage characteristics, distribution/transport times, labeling requirements, etc. So while a packaging company may have very smart people at its employ, it must by virtue of its business work closely with these other parties in order to deliver a sustainable and competitive product. Professional scout Jacob Wildeson (BASF) represents scouting at the extreme. BASF’s culture is shaped by the importance of networks, both internal and external. So while he no doubt identifies innovations outside of BASF worth exploring, he may also find innovations in other parts of his company. Further, he relies on smart people outside his small Future Business group to help evaluate a particular technology. Kevin Blackwell’s talk emphasized the importance of mission (versus specification) in order to reap the highest rewards – a truly disruptive innovation. Mission-oriented innovation leads to out of the box thinking, something organizations often struggle with internally due to ingrained processes and expectations, resource limitations, corporate cultural norms, etc. Opening it up to “outsiders” can result in addressing the problem or challenge without those unintended limitations.

So where does this leave us? Why is innovation scouting such a hot topic? It’s easy. Because the competitive and stockholder pressure is so high, companies need to pull out all the stops. This includes the willingness to use both internal and external innovations to their advantage.

Dans la vie, il y a des choix à faire mais surtout des évidences qui s’imposent.

Je suis descendu chez mes grand-parents ce week-end pour les revoir. 700 km nous séparent depuis que je suis petit et plus je grandis, moins je prends le temps pour les voir. Ils habitent à côté d’Agen (Nérac) et ce week-end de quatre jours m’a permis de rattraper un peu le temps.

Il me faut toujours un ou deux jours pour m’habituer au changement de décor. J’ai donc passé 2 jours à me mater la 4e saison de Lost et la 2e (et dernière) de Jericho.

Mais une fois installé, impossible de ne pas voir les sourires, les paroles, la ballade en ville, le cousin-éclair (1h c’est rapide). Impossible de repartir d’ici sans avoir une boule dans le ventre. Impossible de savoir quand je reviendrais. Impossible de se dire qu’un jour, ils ne seront plus là…

Le chateau d’Henry IV.

L’Hotel de Ville

Débit de vin

Oeuvre d’un artiste connu de la ville

Elle n’a jamais été aussi marron… Pauvre Baïse.

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