Marketing Innovation: Keys to Open Innovation Success

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have to admit that I am not always impressed by sponsor presentations at conferences. This was not the case at the recent Open Innovation Summit in Chicago where I actually enjoyed several of them.

One came from Jeff Boehm, who is the chief marketing officer at Invention Machine. That company has other great thinkers than Jeff as you can experience by visiting the blog of their CTO, James Todhunter.

Jeff Boehm shared the below key messages.

• Successful open innovation requires a strong internal innovation framework

• Processes, information and communities should be integrated as three key ingredients for innovation

• Innovation success requires internal communications

I especially liked his focus on the last point and his suggested process on how to do this. It has 4 steps that go...

Open Innovation: The View from the Top

by Stefan Lindegaard

Twitter Chat: Thursday, September 2 at 9.00am – 10.00am (New York time)

Topic: Top executives and their view on open innovation

What do top executives actually think of open innovation? How do they approach open innovation? What do they see as the biggest challenges? What advice would a top executive give to innovation directors in charge of implementing open innovation?

I really look forward to hearing the perspectives on these and other questions from three top executives from Psion, the maker of mobile computer products and technologies.

The executives are John Conoley (CEO), Mike Doyle (CTO) and Nick Eades (CMO). Check out the Psion executive team here.

John, Mike and Nick and their colleagues have initiated a corporate open innovation initiative named Open Source Mobility, which includes their Ingenuity Working community. They...

Open Innovation Intermediaries, Service Providers and Platform Developers

by Stefan Lindegaard

Philip Sorensen of Advanced Technology Innovations recently asked me some good questions on the role of intermediaries and platform and service providers within the open innovation ecosystem.

His questions went like this:

—— I recently came across inno-360.  Do you think more companies are going to be trying, like PG and GM, to use such companies to bring their own OI ecosystems in-house?  Does this represent a threat to InnoCentive, NineSigma, and other partners?  Or is it just an additive thing, i.e., one more tool for them to use? ——

For your information, inno-360 is a software company that helps companies built their own platforms for working with external collaborators.

This was my reply to Philip:

—— Hi Philip, I definitely believe that larger companies will develop their own internal systems to...

Innovation at Nissan: All Flash, No Substance?

by Stefan Lindegaard

You might have picked up that Nissan is launching of a new corporate push dubbed “Innovation for All.”

This article from AdAge explains that the idea is to transition from a price-driven, model-specific strategy to communicate with consumers around a broader idea that Nissan cars come equipped with a range of innovative offerings, from keyless entry to air purifiers and smartphone apps, at an affordable price.

The article features an interview with Jon Brancheau, the guy in charge of the campaign. He states that “…the Leaf is the most recent example to believe that Nissan is an innovative company and that’s how we want to transmit our message to consumers, we want to turn it around a little bit — Nissan is the brand, and here’s the reason...

Social Media Tools in Open Innovation Efforts

by Stefan Lindegaard

Companies have begun using social media tools in order to further build their networks and engage with their innovation stakeholders.

This creates what we can call touch points – situations in which a person or company interact with their current and/or future stakeholders.

Here are a few touch point examples:

• GE has an app for their Ecomagination challenge, which gives them an additional touch point that interacts nicely with their website for the challenge.

• Chris Thoen @cthoen is an active twitter on P&G’s open innovation efforts and others things related to innovation. This can help Thoen and P&G build an innovation leadership position as the innovation community appreciates efforts to distribute knowledge and insights.

However, Twitter is just one touch point in order to reach such a position. Other touch points...

Good Reads on Innovation #22

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of blog posts and articles on innovation that I have enjoyed in the last couple of weeks. I hope you will enjoy this as well. You can follow me on Twitter: @lindegaard

Welcome Failure by Paul Sloane http://bit.ly/bPy6Zd

Consulting companies use social media tools to develop thought leadership positions by Bloom Group http://bit.ly/awnXDf

Lessons from Google Wave and MSFT Kin by Scott Berkun http://bit.ly/dtAxZZ

Beware the Open Innovation Backlash by Roland Harwood http://bit.ly/aiJ6q5

Are You Squandering Your Intelligent Failures? by Rita McGrath http://bit.ly/aOiSnQ

Innovate, Yes, but Make It Practical by Steve Lohr http://nyti.ms/bLH2U9

Open vs. Closed Innovation: How Much Evil Is Just Right? by David Rogers http://bit.ly/cstQCd

Five Warning Signs Your Innovation Efforts Are Going Off the Rails by VJ Govindarajan http://bit.ly/9mPe3S

Unilever, Cisco, Whirlpool: Communication in Open Innovation by...

Innovation Case: Creating A World Class Innovation Unit

by Stefan Lindegaard

A global and well-respected company in a fast-growing industry wants to set up a new innovation unit. Their current innovation efforts are technology-driven but there is a growing understanding that innovation efforts need to focus beyond technology and R&D.

Creating a cross-functional perspective is a key objective for the new innovation unit that faces several obstacles including:

• a lack of true innovation understanding from the executives

• strong focus on internal capabilities which hinders external contributions

• a lack of internal knowledge on how to set-up such a unit

In this case, I would like to focus on the latter obstacle thus giving us some key questions to ponder:

How can the project team in charge of establishing this new unit acquire the insights, knowledge and skills needed to make this happen?

How can...

Top 3 Innovation Trends and Issues – August

by Stefan Lindegaard

What is happening in the innovation community right now? In this post, I give a quick overview of the top trends and issues based on the interactions I have had over the last month or so.

1. Communication

At the recent Open Innovation Summit, communication in a more holistic perspective was a key topic.

Jeff Boehm of InventionMachine gave a great presentation titled Marketing Innovation in which he argued that innovation success requires internal communication. He’s right and I will share more from this presentation in a later blog post.

At a Think Tank session during the summit, we also identified communication as a key characteristic for open innovation leaders. Some keywords on this were internal & external communication, consistent behavior & messages, deliberate strategy, top-down modeling, confidence to share...

Open Innovation Characteristics: What Can You Add?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I really enjoyed facilitating a great think tank session together with Greg Fox, Cisco and Andrea Meyer, WorkingKnowledge at the Open Innovation Summit.

Our think tank participants were a nice, diverse group as you can see in the attached presentation. Open Innovation Summit Think Tank

Our objectives were as below:

• What are the top 3 characteristics that define an open innovation leader?

• Which companies come to mind as open innovation leaders?

We started out by developing this list of open innovation characteristics:

• Risk

• Proactively seek others virtually and IRL

• Opposite of “not invented here” & feeling comfortable with that

• Leveraging (external) others

• Adaptability / courage

• Collaborate to compete

• Customer-focused approach (focus on needs, both known & unknown)

• Persistence/ perseverance

• Communication

• Vision

We chose these as the top three characteristics:

• Adaptability (exemplified...

Open Innovation Summit: 10 Questions for the Big Companies

by Stefan Lindegaard

I really enjoyed the recent Open Innovation Summit in Chicago. You can see a great overview by Robert Brands on this link: Innovationcoach

As I reflect on the many presentations and interactions, I think of the follow-up questions I would ask these big companies that work hard on their open innovation efforts.

Here we go…

Procter & Gamble: You are perceived as the open innovation leader. What are the next practices for your efforts?

Whirlpool: You seem to be doing a great job on innovation. Why do we not hear more about your efforts?

Unilever: I was glad to see your strong focus on the soft side – the people skills – of open innovation. Why did you decide to focus more on this?

Grundfos: You developed a strong innovation intent that got much attention...