DHL Innovation Award was held at the DHL Innovation Center in Bonn December 1st. An inspiring day with seminars and award cermony, focusing on logistics. 

First of all I was really impressed over the innovation center. A whole building focusing only on innovation for the company. A lot of companies would benefit from such a dedicated investment in the future.

10000 visitors per year makes it not only an important contribution to the future products from the company, the marketing purpose might be even more valuable, showing the world that this company really is working hard to find the solutions for tomorrow.

DHL encourage their over 500000 employees to continously work with innovation, which make it natural that one of the Award-categories are dedicated to the most innovative employee-idea. The other categories covers customers, junior scientists and entrepreneurs.

DHL has really overcomed the “Red Queen-effect” written about earlier in this blogg. It´s seems like DHL has come to the insight that in order to find the best solutions they need to focus on their core business and strive for open innovation-encouraging and collaborating with their suppliers and customers in search for not only the best solutions for the company and it´s customers but also the environment.

Many thanks to Gülderen Tuna, Schabnam Djahanbakhsh and the rest of the team at the innovation center for organisating such a great event!

Kind regards,

Gustav Gorecki

Our video called the Red Hat Way starts:

“Your mother was right. It’s better to share.”

There’s more proof that your mom was right in the business world every day.  Today in Orlando, experts from around the world are gathering for the inaugural Open Innovation Summit, highlighting companies like Proctor & Gamble, Mozilla, Xerox, and Johnson & Johnson who have seen success with collaborative innovation. My company, Red Hat, has also done pretty well with this approach.

Now, in a new working paper released yesterday entitled Modeling a Paradigm Shift: From Producer Innovation to User and Open Collaborative Innovation, Eric von Hippel and Carliss Baldwin examine the body of research to draw some conclusions about why more people are moving away from simple producer/consumer models to open collaborative innovation models.

You may have heard of Eric von Hippel, one of the world’s leading experts on open innovation. I like that he’s written about open source many times before, including in his 2005 book Democratizing Innovation and in his 2002 HBR paper Customers as Innovators.

In this paper, von Hippel and Baldwin argue that the number of places where traditional 20th century “producer” innovation (companies making products for users without collaborating with them) makes sense is rapidly shrinking. Why? From the paper:

“Our analysis will lead us to conclude that innovation by individual users and also open collaborative innovation are modes of innovating that increasingly compete with and may displace producer innovation in many parts of the economy. This shift is being driven by new technologies, specifically the transition to increasingly digitized and modularized design and production practices, coupled with the availability of very low-cost, Internet-based communication.”

So the answer is simple. Design is cheaper. Communication is cheaper. And they continue to get cheaper every day due to technological advances. Yeah, we knew that– but still nice to see the academic evidence.

The authors go a step further by further concluding that this shift is a Good Thing that policymakers should embrace.

“We will argue that when it is technologically feasible, the transition from closed producer or single user innovation to open single user or collaborative innovation is also desirable in terms of social welfare, hence worthy of support by policymakers. This is due to the free dissemination of innovation designs associated with the open model. Open innovation generates innovation without exclusivity or monopoly, and so should improve social welfare other things equal.”

According to von Hippel and Baldwin, governments may need to do more to drive toward open collaborative innovation if we want to take full advantage of its promise.

“Are government policies currently at least even-handed with respect to these innovation models? Or do they on balance encourage closed innovation relative to open user and open collaborative innovation? We suspect the later is the case… The roots of this apparent bias in favor of closed producer-centered innovation are certainly understandable– the ascendent models of innovation we have discussed in this paper were less prevalent before the radical decline in design and communication costs brought about by computers and the Internet. But once the welfare-enhancing benefits of open single user innovation and open collaborative innovation are understood, policymakers can– and we think they should– take steps to offset any existing biases.”

Agreed. It is amazing to see how much collaborative innovation has taken off, even with the deck stacked against it. Your mother would be so proud.

Consumers around the world are more demanding than ever and require organizations to guide them to consume sustainable.  Hence corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ (eco-easy),  for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

Several companies have successfully challenged their internal processes to minimize the time it takes to bring a strong idea to market; however, they still find themselves unable to keep pace. This is often referenced as the “Red Queen” effect, a term derived from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Companies are in fact finding themselves in a position where their internal efforts, even when optimized and moving very quickly, are no longer fast enough to sustain the race. Many try adding money or people, only to find that this can only provide a temporary surge.

The key to overcome the “Red Queen” effect is to tap into and leverage the global pool of networks, individuals and suppliers outside the company. Collaborating and leveraging the network to get the job done offers the opportunity to make an increased speed sustainable, and keep you ahead of the game to serve the world sustainably and consumers eco-easy.

- Annelie Andersson

Globe Forum lanserar City Challenge på EUROCITIES 2009:

Globe Forum utmanar städernas hållbarhetsarbete

Globe Forum lanserar City Challenge i samband med konferensen EUROCITIES i Stockholm. Satsningen utmanar svenska och europeiska städer att dela kunskap kring hållbarhetsprojekt och att gemensamt sträva efter att lösa klimatproblematiken i urbana miljöer. Som ett första stöd drar Globe Forum igång en databas för att samla städernas innovativa lösningar, erfarenheter och metoder.  Målet är att skapa Europas största databas för information om hållbarhet.

-          Urbana miljöer står för en stor del av klimatproblematiken som vi snabbt måste komma till rätta med. Det pågår redan flera framgångsrika förbättringsprojekt, men vi måste öka tempot och dela med oss av innovationer för att gemensamt lösa problemet. Med vår satsning på City Challenge vill vi lyfta fram de bästa förebilderna som kan inspirera och sprida kunskap om hållbar innovation, säger Johan Gorecki, VD för Globe Forum.

I samband med EUROCITIES uppmanar näringsminister Maud Olofsson de deltagande borgmästarna att anta utmaningen.

City Challenge – Europas största databas för hållbar utveckling

Första steget i City Challenge är att samla in kunskap om hållbar utveckling. Kommuner och städer uppmanas att registrera urbana hållbarhetsprojekt för att byta information om innovativa lösningar. Att ta del av Globe Forums databas är kostnadsfritt för registrerade städer. Målet för City Challenge är att med gemensamma krafter skapa Europas största databas för hållbar utveckling och skapa ett verktyg för städer, forskare, näringsliv och innovatörer.

Under EUROCITIES-konferensen får borgmästare från hela Europa med sig budskapet hem för att uppmuntra sina städer att registrera innovativa hållbarhetsprojekt. I Sverige inleder Globe Forum en landsomfattande turné i städerna för att engagera lokalpolitiker och näringslivsprofiler.

Uppsala och Karlstad först ut

Alla städer i Europa med en befolkning på över 250 000 invånare är inbjudna att bidra med sina erfarenheter och byta information. I Sverige är Uppsala och Karlstad först ut att med att bidra med aktuella projekt till databasen City Challenge. Databasen öppnar för registreringen i december, fram till mars 2010 är det sedan fritt fram att bidra med information.

För mer information, vänligen kontakta

Johan Gorecki, VD, Globe Forum, telefon +4670 482 8282, johan.gorecki@globeform.com

Globe Forum är en internationell marknadsplats för innovation och hållbar utveckling, med experter, innovatörer och företag. Globe Forum i Stockholm 2009 lockade mer än 1300 företagsledare, entreprenörer, akademiker och politiska ledare från Europa, Asien och de mest dynamiska tillväxtmarknaderna. Under hösten arrangerades Globe Forum även i Gdansk.

Planerade mötesplatser under 2010:

Stockholm 28-29 April

Dublin 15-16 September

Gdansk 27-28 October

www.globeforum.com

The Skipso team is excited to annouce the launch of a new Cleantech innovation challenge today: The Green Lighting Challenge.

GC Illumination is an Italian company specialised in the design, production and distribution of fixtures for exterior lighting.

GC supplies utilities, municipalities and installation companies in Italy and internationally.GC is looking for innovative solutions and products to enhance the performance of its LED-based product line and extend its functional application to a wider range of fittings.

G.C.'s Wing-Sun Product

Win $10,000 cash award for submitting solutions that will allow GC to meet the required illumination coefficients and to expand its Green Lighting fittings to motorways, urban areas, sports installations and other public areas.

$10,000 Cash Award!

Submit your solution today or refer a friend and win $1,000 if they solve the challenge!

Stephanie Trunzo and Sera Lewis of IBM spoke with us recently about social media and IBM Rational.  IBM Rational software provides a software development platform that improves the speed, quality, and predictability of software projects. 

• Sera Lewis is an NCSU alumnus, with more than 15 years at IBM, currently managing the Rational Web marketing and developerWorks Rational teams.
• Stephanie Trunzo is entering her 10th year at IBM, currently as the Executive Dashboard manager and MCIF information architect at IBM.  Stephanie has an MA from Carnegie Mellon University, and in May 2010 will finish her MBA at NCSU’s Jenkins School of Business. She also teaches distance education courses on professional writing and digital media for NCSU and Chatham University. (Stephanie’s excellent presentation on teaching with social media will be covered in a future post on social media pedagogy.)
• Sera and Stephanie met on Twitter.  In fact, their first face-to-face meeting was in our class for the presentation!
• Stephanie and Sera gave an excellent presentation that was packed full of interesting, topical and valuable information. Here is an overview:

IBM’s Social Media Marketing Challenge is to balance listening to, learning from, and responding to customers. Everyone in the corporation is enabled to speak via social media and this is both a gift and a responsibility.  

(All images from Stephanie and Sera’s presentation)

Social Computing Guidelines at IBM

As previously discussed in this blog, establishing a social media policy is a critical step for any organization and the BEST guidelines are “by the people and for the people” of the organization.  IBM social computing guidelines are used as a model for many other organizations, and call for IBMers to be open, responsible, and honest and to be themselves. The guidelines evolved in one of IBM’s jams. (Since 2001, IBM has used jams to involve its more than 300,000 employees around the world in far-reaching exploration and problem-solving.)

• The IBM social computing guidelines

Social Media Used for IBM Rational

IBM has a huge breadth of social media in practice including:

Social Listening

There is a great deal that can organizations can gain by doing a better job of LISTENING, and IBM makes this a focus of social media activity. 

• Listening:
  •  IBMers work to listen first … to understand what is going on in the industry, with customers and other employees.  
• Reacting:
  • Once listening efforts are well place, members of the IBM Rational team react indirectly with statements such as “we’ve been hearing a lot about…”
• Responding: 
  • Team members will then respond specifically to direct comments about the product. 
• Engaging and Nurturing:
  • Focus on keeping the process going.

How?

• The process starts with team members listening for 70+ keywords that are important for the IBM Rational brand across social networking sites. Each team member takes 2 – 3 words – which makes this a manageable monitoring activity. Tweetdeck is a primary tool, as it is simple to create columns that filter for keywords. Other tools, such as Technorati, are also used.
• Let customers know that you are listening and focus on what is learned to improve relationships
• Show customers that you are interested in improving their experiences with your products by responding quickly with suggestions and/or fixes.
• Be sure there is a primary person who owns a particular topic so that too many people don’t respond to same customer
• Engage and nurture  through customer ratings and reviews – a low-touch consumer feedback mechanism in an “open” environment
  • Drive public dialogue around product experiences
  • Don’t filter out bad reviews – you want to follow up on negative reviews
  •  80% of IBM Rational reviews are positive  - nothing beats first hand feedback / word of mouth

IBM Rational Social Media Event Example

The recent Rational Software Conference, a huge event, showed how social media is becoming pervasive:

• Conference was advertised across social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, as well as in traditional and Web media
• Customers could ask questions and get information in whichever channel worked for them
• Remote and live attendees could interact with speakers via live displays of tweets

A good idea for a conference using social media is to define hashtags (hashtags are ways to unite Tweets around particular topics) ahead of time and get these out to participants before the event.  This is a great way to keep people involved in the conference even if they aren’t there live.

Global Social Media at IBM Rational

IBM teams from around the world are adopting social media designs from the U.S. and other countries and localizing. In 2010, the IBM Rational team will offer “Social Media in a Box” kits. This helps create design continuity across countries and makes the process much easier to implement at the local level. 

In China, a virtual event had:

• Video with over 2 million plays on video sites (Youku, Tudou, Ku6, Google video)
• Online banners generated 21 million impressions
• Live broadcast increased availability to larger audience via 7 IT media sites

A big Thank-you & Resources

With its social media guidelines, social listening and “social media in a box,” IBM and specifically IBM Rational shows that it understands to potential of social media.  Thanks to Stephanie Trunzo for making this presentation possible and to both Stephanie and Sera Lewis for sharing their valuable insights with us.

Resources:

•http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2008/04/04/the-variance-of-corporate-social-media-policies/

•http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_22/b4086056643442.htm

•http://erikkaiser.com/wp/2009/06/the-experiment-ibm-social-media-jams/

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/five-tools-i-use-for-listening/

IBM Rational software

The CEO of Sanofi-Aventis recently laid out a new plan for encouraging innovation within his company that differs drastically from the one that formerly existed there, and which differs from the typical model employed in most pharmaceutical companies.  The question is, will it stick?

Chris Viehbacher made a strong commitment to open innovation in his statement to the Financial Times, saying Sanofi-Aventis historically had “not a lot of external partnerships”, nor “[any] contact with our commercial organizations,” which along with the admitted complexity of the organization, combined to “kill the innovative spirit.”

Viehbacher’s commitment to change comes not long after Pfizer’s co-development of an online community to accelerate clinical research.   Two of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world are now actively or committed to relying on open innovation in significant ways; one (Pfizer) to expedite the time to market, and the other (Sanofi-Aventis) to ostensibly improve the quantity and quality of ideas coming out of their R&D.  It appears that, while some companies are willing to take advantage of the poor economy to acquire companies which are then grafted onto the buyer, others are making more substantive changes that require patience (but tend to cost less).  To apply a baseball metaphor, some companies are the Yankees, acquiring expensive but proven free agents (that are further along in their careers), while others are like the Red Sox, with money to spend but still willing to develop young players via smaller-scale acquisitions (i.e. the amateur draft).

The main sign of Sanofi-Aventis’s commitment to this plan is their lack of blockbuster acquisitions.  This stands in sharp contrast to Merck’s acquisition of Schering-Plough, among other major acquisitions in 2009.  Sanofi-Aventis will be an interesting company to watch over the next 6-12 months, because their message should attract many small companies with interesting ideas who would normally refuse to deal with a company of their size for fear of being swallowed completely.  Instead, Mr. Viehbacher seems to be saying, “We will nurture you from afar instead of possibly tainting your idea with our corporate philosophy which demands that all ideas be driven towards billion-dollar drugs or the discard pile.”

What happens when the economy recovers or the next blockbuster comes along (or doesn’t)?  Will the CEO stick to this philosophy?  Reverting back to the baseball metaphor, what if Mr. Viehbacher, under pressure from their board of directors and shareholders to extract value from these companies that were allowed to innovate away from corporate pressures (especially since pharmaceutical R&D is a notorious time and money sink), pulls a Steinbrenner and begins micro-managing these companies?  Many corporate strategies over the past year were initiated as moves of desperation to keep their company afloat, or to get some publicity; the fact that a positive change may have occurred was welcome but incidental.  The economic downturn probably got more companies thinking about innovation only as a way to seem innovative.  Sanofi-Aventis, through the statements of its CEO, seems committed to this new direction, which is encouraging, but I’ll be a believer when their actions follow suit.

Today we are going to receive some feedback about the open contributions from the readers of Eudald Domènech blog regarding the development of the new InOutTV media-center as an evolution of their present PVR device. For those not familiar with this Spanish company I like to say that the product and service they offer is like, but not the same, the one TiVo is offering in the USA market, a dual tuner TV recording system with an enhanced Electronic Programming Guide (EPG) service that enables you to see on TV what you like when you want.

This exercise is other example of how the user contribution is appreciated by manufacturers pursuing to bring a better product. Some particularities of these initiative are that the comments (more that 500 up today according Eudald) are hidden to avoid over-inform competition. This is a version of what I call “clospen innovation”, an hybrid approach to open innovation: “The open nature of the process, integrating a big number of actors like, potential customers, suppliers, designers, manufacturers, etc. some of them competitors among them on other projects, some of them with different interest on the project, place the platform in a sensitive situation. Is everybody able to contribute in the same way? Will be everybody granted with access to all the information? Is the platform or the management team able to handle a big number of people and enterprises? There is several questions like this that induces to consider an hybrid approach, open and close at a time, clospen”.

I is not only Eudald at InOutTV supporting this initiative, I think −this is a pure personal opinion− also their partners promote it, for instance David del Val, who recently spoke us about innovation and new innovative practices into the “Debate and Knowledge event” organized by “Fundación Telefónica” few weeks ago, furthermore I am sure he is strongly contributing into the strategic plan of the company regarding new products and services development.

InOutTV is into the radar of key player not only because of his product, his business model but his innovative approach to improve products and services. Congrats!

Last Tuesday evening I got back to the hotel after class.  The TV provided me with background noise, but I kind of woke up when I heard the name “Art Fry”. Who was that again? A local tv station brought a presentation from a seminar, maybe it was on innovation? After I heard ‘3M’ I remembered: the Post-It inventor!

The way 3M innovates has been described in many (management) books: give your employees some free times to spend on a project of their liking. After I found this video  I heard Mr Fry say: “there are very few things that people need, but endless thinks that people want”. This could have been a marketeer talking! He also mentions the control-trust paradox related to innovation and ends very humbly. Watch the retro video!

Since it is now almost inevitable that my thesis will be about Open Innovation, I have decided to blog about it in English. Makes more sense, Dutch people can read Denglish anyway and my changes for responses really will increase! And maybe my spelling as well…

I’m fascinated by the future of computing – Pranav Mistry has seen the future and demos several tools that help the physical world interact with the world of data — including a deep look at his SixthSense device and a new, paradigm-shifting paper “laptop”.

It’s also the kind of innovation that NPE’s  (patent trolls) acquire patents around…..

PART 2

yet2.com sees a lot of market interest in encapsulation technologies.

We are having a webinar on 4 that we think are particularly interesting. This live webinar features four new technologies and an overview of the market by Dr. Eugene Buff, yet2.com’s vice president of consulting. Not just a lecture, the webinar format offers ample opportunity for electronic interaction with the principals.

REGISTER NOW
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/310003931

As of the writing of this blog post 84 companies have singed up to participate on Friday December 11, 11:00–12:30pm US Eastern Standard Time.

Moderator:

• Dr. Eugene Buff, yet2.com vice president, consulting

4 New Technologies:

• Microencapsulation for drug delivery, Cory Berkland, Orbis Bioscience
• Efficient membrane coating and production technology, Luc Vanmaele, AGFA
• Microencapsulated, water-dispersbile nanomaterials, Ken Yoon, Vive Nano
• Controlling free radical polymers using “Living Polymers,” Vendy Tomko, DuPont

Dr. Buff will present opening remarks and overview, followed by the four presentations in order at approximately 15-minute intervals. Each presenter will answer submitted questions at the end of his presentation.

Consumers around the world are more demanding than ever and require organizations to guide them to consume sustainable.  Hence corporations and governments will have to forcefully make it ‘easy’ (eco-easy),  for consumers to be more green, by restricting the alternatives.

Several companies have successfully challenged their internal processes to minimize the time it takes to bring a strong idea to market; however, they still find themselves unable to keep pace. This is often referenced as the “Red Queen” effect, a term derived from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass:

“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else — if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Companies are in fact finding themselves in a position where their internal efforts, even when optimized and moving very quickly, are no longer fast enough to sustain the race. Many try adding money or people, only to find that this can only provide a temporary surge.

The key to overcome the “Red Queen” effect is to tap into and leverage the global pool of networks, individuals and suppliers outside the company. Collaborating and leveraging the network to get the job done offers the opportunity to make an increased speed sustainable, and keep you ahead of the game to serve the world sustainably and consumers eco-easy.

- Annelie Andersson

Volgens mij heb ik nu redelijk door hoe ik kan zoeken (en blijven zoeken) naar wetenschappelijke artikelen. Ik heb wat doorgezocht op strategische allianties en ook meer artikelen gevonden. Titels daarvan o.a.: capability-based framework for open innovation, complementing absorptive capacity, patterns of allignment in alliance structure and innovation; how different types of partners influence innovative product sales: does technology capacity matter? Hier zit nog meer in. Bestaat er een ideaal framework van organisaties om open innovatie vorm te geven?

Steeds kom ik een aantal van dezelfde namen/boeken tegen (von Hippel, Chesbrough, Conway/Stuward). De eerste twee boeken zijn goed leesbaar, het derde is wat taai. Ik heb ook Rogers nog eens doorgebladerd (Diffusion of innovations).

Na het lezen van een artikel maak ik een samenvatting en bekijk of ik andere artikelen moet nasporen. Het lukt me niet altijd die ook echt op te sporen (dat schrijf ik dan wel op). Regelmatig probeer ik de artikelen (zo’n 25) op de vloer in een soort puzzel neer te leggen. Wat linkt nu echt naar wat? Sommige papers gebruik ik toch weer niet, na het doorlezen. Hoe het nu verder moet, weet ik even niet.  Een troost: van de week weer twee dagen naar Groningen!

Overigens weet ik dat je vooruit moet spellen, maar er kleeft een verhaal aan: ik herinner me dat we op de middelbare school ooit een overhoring Grieks hadden. Bij de vertalen schreef de helft van de klas ‘voorruit’ in plaats van ‘vooruit’. Helaas, er waren nog geen ruiten in de tijd van de oude Grieken, geen enkel puntje dus. Waarom onthoud je zoiets?

How much wold have King Henry paid for internet search?  How much would he have paid for penicillin or access to GPS?  We largely consider these 3 technologies free today.  But would the King have given half his Kingdom for access to them?

I think he would have.

In 1980 how much would you have paid to keyword search the combined knowledge of mankind?

What else will be developed in the next 5 years – that will similarly be free – that we will all gain tremendous value from?  This is the question that kept me up last night.  Any ideas or insight?

Yesterday I had the privilege of of being the keynote speaker at the INDA conference in Chicago.  I really enjoyed presenting 3 macro trends on Open Innovation and what those trends might mean. There were lots of great questions and discussion.

INDA is the trade association representing the  nonwovens industry.  I was surprised at the diversity of technology and innovation on display.   The vendor floor was full of activity.  I was told the conference was a little smaller than previous years, but it did not look that way to me.

I met a wide variety of companies.  Filtration impacts almost every aspect of our lives – it’s critical for our water and air, and the car we drive, the food we buy and products we love – even in hospitals and healthcare is filtration critical.  Innovation in filtration can ripple through our economy  providing a great positive impact – and most of us might never know.  I love events like this

I met a few companies that really impressed me:

www.elmarco.com – Elmarco is the industry’s first supplier of industrial scale nanofiber production equipment.  Nanofibers are very interesting and have broad application in semiconductors and filtration.  This is a firm I’d watch as a source of great innovations.  I’d also watch their customer base.

www.filtrationgroup.com – I met the CEO of this 3rd generation family business.  The Filtration Group sells a wide variety of filters.  They seemed to me to be a market leader in air but they are moving into some new segments.

www.freudenberg-filter.com – I’m told they are the worlds largest nonwovens producer, looking at their product line, it seems accurate.  They manage filtration for the world’s largest ship – the Oasis of the Sea and a host of other challenging applications. This is the 4th family business I found at the show, and clearly a market leader.

A lot of great innovation is going to come out of nonwovens, that will make the world a cleaner safer and nicer place to live.  The venture capital community needs to be watching, so do the the technology scouts – I know I will be watching closely.

László Szombatfalvy’s new book “Vår tids största utmaningar” (The big challenges of today) is really interesting.

He assesses the risk of 4 big mega threats of today: The pollution of the environment, the climate change, the political violence, and the world poverty.

The risks associated with these threats are much higher than the risk we normally accept within for example transportation by car or aeroplane.

If we manage to keep the global warming to the 2 degrees set by UN there is still a quite high risk for the shocking scenario, with a temperature increase without control.

It´s time to act. Since it seems to be hard to reach a world agreement, my recommendation is that companies, organisations and individuals shall take the opportunity and lead by good example to fight the global warming.

Kind regards,

Gustav Gorecki

Back from the wonderful ESOMAR Qualitative 2009 conference in Marrakech I would like to share our presentation with everybody interested in “Human-Centred Innovation” and “interdisciplinary Innovation”.

This presentation provides insight into the open innovation and co-creation idea and describes a human-centred innovation approach with respect to the changing roles of market research and product design outlining the potentials of merging different techniques and competencies of the two disciplines “Market Research” and “Product Design” in order to align products and services along consumers’ wants and needs. The increased importance of strong interdisciplinary (internal) collaboration of researchers and designers for being successful in open innovation is emphasized. Only the combination of external co-creation and internal collaboration make open innovation programs successful.

We also show how interdisciplinary innovation research projects can be supported with adequate research methods (like Netnography, Lead User Method, Crowdsourcing and Co-Creation toolkits) that create actionable results for all involved stakeholders. The importance of this close collaboration of market research and product design is shown by means of a selected case study. The presented diggit backpack case is closely connected with the foundation of HYVE and our concept of an innovation agency.

More detailed information as well as another more methodological-oriented case can be found here in the related ESOMAR paper.

I’ve had the good fortune of serving on the Board of Trustees for Millsaps College for the past nine years.  Like most such  boards, its members are mostly older business executives who have given their time, talent, and treasure to the college.  And, of course, have a high-likelihood to provide for the college in their wills.  (Which lead one long-time member to comment that when he was young, he strolled around board meetings checking the health of elderly members but, now that he has had by-pass surgery, he strolls around wondering who is looking at him!)

At one particular board meeting, a sophomore Co-Ed detailed a special study abroad program in which she participated.  Rather than spend a semester at a particular foreign college, students board a modified cruise ship and spend a semester traveling between ports in Asia while attending classes on-board.   Sounded really cool; but of interest to the Board (and hopefully to my readers) was her recount of her social schedule during the trip.  Before boarding, she already had defined her friends, outlined their tourist schedule at each port, and become reasonably acquainted with other students (from other universities that they didn’t know) enough to define a solid social circle for the experience.

The study abroad program didn’t organize this socialization.  The students did it organically.  All through Facebook.

The purpose of the Co-Ed’s presentation to the Board was to reinforce the Social Media phenomenon that so impacts the College in recruiting, fund-raising, college community development, and more.  In effect, it was reverse mentoring at its best.

Alan Webber, co-founder of Fast Company describes reverse mentoring:

“Its a situation where the old fogies in an organization realize that by the time you’re in your forties and fifties, you’re not in touch with the future the same way the young twenty-somethings. They come with fresh eyes, open minds, and instant links to the technology of our future.”

Which leads to the main postulation of this post:  that Innovation Scouts should be appointed according to, among other things, their propensity to leverage social media and their ability to mentor their organizations (esp the ‘Old Fogies’) to leverage social media, too.  Scouts must do more than find innovation.  They must influence others to find innovation, as well.

I’m often reminded (somewhat erroneously) that there is nothing new about all of the innovation strategies being pursued today.  Companies have always bought and licensed outside ideas.  And companies have always tried to beat their competition’s product features.  But I don’t agree with these positions because  social media empowers outside collaboration like never before.

Many people I speak to often point out that the biggest limitation they have related to outside collaboration is the lack of knowledge of what is going on outside of their company.  How can this be?  The Millsaps Co-Ed knows her new friends’ ITunes music lineup but you don’t know who is innovating in your business space?

Fortunately, most of the people who take this position are older, less inclined to social media and online research, and less inclined to maintain massive networks of community friends within their industry space.  Unfortunately, too often these are the people in an executive position to sponsor innovation strategies.

To be effective, they need mentoring.  And the first step towards that is to recognize and admit that they need mentoring.  Then identify the scouts who can do it.

Kate: One of the potential challenges to maintaining Australia’s capacity for mining innovation is predicted to be the increasing dominance of large, conglomerated, multinational organisations.

Historically, the mining industry had a number of medium sized organisations that could drive rapid and diverse innovation, however the rationalisation in the industry means that the policies and objectives of the large players may increasingly narrow the focus on future mining innovation. Head of Innovation and Technology at Rio Tinto John McGagh, recently spoke about Rio Tinto’s Innovation Strategy being implemented through a closed innovation model, whereby research and development is done by Rio Tinto and selected partners with innovations retained exclusively. This Closed Innovation Model is very different to the traditionally more open innovation models in the sector where typically university research projects are funded by a large number of mining industry sponsors through an intermediary such as AMIRA. This Open Innovation Model allowed any innovative mining solutions to be taken up fairly rapidly across the sector. The early adopters have an advantage of several years but any significant advantage is usually short lived.  With closed innovation, companies can lower their mining cost curve (a competitive advantage) preferentially over their competitors until the competitors obtain the innovative solution themselves. One potential downside of such a strategy is the risk associated with the typically high staff turnover within the mining industry. Time will tell. An overview of the implications of closed and open innovation models for industry more broadly is provided by the Australian Institute for Commercialisation here.

Another challenge arising from the global reach of multinational mining companies is the ability for Australia to maintain flows of benefits from innovation to Australian companies and institutions. Any successful innovation produced in Australia will be quickly transferred to the other global operations of a given international company. In this environment niche technology innovation (such as the technology developed by GroundProbe) may be important, as long as first mover advantages are significant. Agility may be the key for smaller companies operating within a market dominated by large players. In the worlds of Rupert Murdoch, in a rapidly changing world “Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.” (IBM Global CEO Study 2006)

Small innovative companies and research groups are going to have to develop evolving strategies to deal with the challenges of operating in an industry dominated by large multinational players. It will be the role of the Australian mining industry, universities, research centres and government to develop coherent policies to maximise the potential of competitive advantage from innovation in Australia.