Open innovation through R&D outposts

by Stefan Lindegaard

One of the things I like about Silicon Valley is the many R&D outposts. I am often in touch with people from such units at Sennheiser Communications, BMW, Siemens and Swisscom and I think they have some great – although challenging – jobs. The great part of it is that they get to work on the frontier of innovation in an eco-system that they can usually not find in the countries of their headquarters. Actually, the headquarters is also the biggest challenge as it can be quite difficult to setup knowledge transfer among the different locations.
 
These outposts are great for open innovation. Not only do they create lots of external contacts, they also stretch the mindset of the organization making the...

Cool video – Intel creates the future through open innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Check this video to get an idea of how Intel works with partners to create the future.

Is innovation dead?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation guru Bruce Nussbaum says so. I disagree. Innovation as a term has been over-used but it is here to stay. It will also keep evolving.

First you should check out Bruce Nussbaums article: Innovation is Dead…

Why do I disagree? Let’s consider the innovation piano or the Ten Types of Innovation which is a concept developed by Doblin several years ago. In short, Doblin argues that when people think of innovation, they often think products. As Doblin learned that product innovation alone has the lowest return on innovation investments, they set out to find out why this is so and in the process they identified nine other types of innovation that should be combined to achieve the best return on your innovation...

Open innovation versus user-driven innovation: Lego and Toyota cases

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently had a discussion with a senior leader at a global fast-moving-consumer-goods company. We got into definitions of open innovation versus user-driven innovation. What are the similarities and the differences?
 
I am sure I will have such talks many times as open innovation starts to take off in the next few years. In such cases, you should not get too tied to your own viewpoint as you will often end up in a situation where both parties can be right to some extent. Stay flexible and try to move things forward rather than getting bogged down in a fight over semantics.

I believe the differentiator is the level of involvement you get from external partners, customers or suppliers. What usually happens with...

Open innovation output from Netflix and LG Electronics

by Stefan Lindegaard

It started about a year ago and now Netflix and LG Electronics has announced that they will soon introduce TV sets that can screen Netflix movies directly from the Web without an external box.

The idea is that Netflix subscribers who buy such a device can hook it up to their TVs to watch movies downloaded from the Internet instantly, as part of their monthly rental plan. Read more in this link from Reuters: Netflix and LG

Netflix is becoming an interesting player to follow in the open innovation community as they also other interesting initiatives such as the Netflix price. It is a user-driven initiative with some open innovation elements to it. In short, they have invited outsiders to help them improve an...

Open innovation in China?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Max von Zedtwitz, a director and professor at Peking University raised the question whether China will adaopt open innovation as we start to see in the Western world.

Based on several visits and talks/workshops in China, it is my experience that Chinese companies has a steep learning curve to climb in order to understand – and execute – innovation. The good thing is that they have the will to make the effort and they learn quite fast.

The question made me draw a line to Africa. For years, the Western world looked at their almost non-existing telecommunication infrastructure thinking they will never catch up. However, they were able to skip a lot of steps and move directly to a wireless setup. Now the future looks...

Identifying the people driving innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Companies need two kinds of people to make innovation initiatives successful. They need innovation leaders who focus on building the internal platform required to develop organizational innovation capabilities. This is work on the strategic and tactical level.

Innovation leaders are often also involved as coaches and facilitators for the second group required for innovation, the intrapreneurs who turn ideas and research into new products and services. Intrapreneurs are much more operational minded, and they are rare within most companies. Usually, about 10% of white-collar employees have an intrapreneurial mindset and skills that enable them to contribute in one or more phases of a process in which the goal is higher than incremental innovation. With some efforts, you can train another 20-30% within your company.

How...

Why leaders fail on open innovation – (and what to do about it)

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have noticed three main ways in which leaders and managers fail on open innovation. These causes of failure focus on networking, ideas and x-vision. I also have a couple of suggestions on how to work with this. Read below and let me know what you think of this. 
 
1) They lack the understanding of why a networking culture is important for open innovation. In a world of open innovation, you need to be an expert at networking and building relationships. This holds true at the corporate as well as the personal level. So this is my question to leaders and managers; where is your strategy, commitment and structure needed to create a networking culture?
 
WHAT TO DO: First,...

Measuring innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

How do you measure innovation? The question often pops up at our network meetings and at workshops. Recently, we also had a good discussion in our Leadership+Innovation community at LinkedIn and I want to share some of the key points.

The question was raised by Jimm Feldborg, who is R&D Manager at Grundfos in China. Jimm pointed out that a good start is to understand whether your indicator is a:

- Lag indicator. The results are lagged with weeks, months or years and cannot be changed. Some examples are rewards and the number of patents.

- Current indicator. The results happen right now giving you some possibillities to act and change and thus affect the future results. Some examples are the number of ideas generated and...

Ten critical elements for an open innovation culture

by Stefan Lindegaard

In our Leadership+Innovation community on LinkedIn, Chris Thoen who is a R&D Director at Procter & Gamble asked the question which elements are needed in order to create an open innovation culture. Our community had an interesting discussion and I want to share the key elements that came up.

- Willingness to accept that not all the smart people work for your company. We need to work with smart people inside and outside our company.

- Willingness to strive for balance between internal and external R&D. External R&D can create significant value; internal R&D is needed to claim some portion of that value.

- Willingness to give part of the control to others. We don’t have to originate the research to profit from it....