People First, Then Ideas

by Stefan Lindegaard

The chief thing you as an innovation leader must realize is that when it comes to making innovation happen, people matter more than ideas.

Take a moment to think about that. Many innovation initiatives fail miserably because their leaders don’t understand this simple fact. In fact, it is actually more important to have A-grade people than it is to have a slew of A-grade ideas because A-grade people can take a B-grade idea – or perhaps even a C-grade idea – and turn it into a successful reality. B-grade people, on the other hand, will struggle with even truly great ideas.

So before you get all fired up about generating a ton of ideas, first figure out how you’re going to match those ideas to...

Corporate business plan competitions – an initiative to identify intrapreneurs and create open innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

You know that some people in your organization have the potential to drive innovation forward, but how do you identify them? And once you’ve found your potential “intrapreneurs,” how do you train them and support their success? The chief tool I recommend for this purpose is a corporate business plan competition.

Such competitions are patterned after the business plan competitions run by educational institutions such as MIT and Harvard Business School, but the idea has been successfully adapted for a corporate environment or even used to drive open innovation. Companies that have successfully used this strategy to foster intrapreneurship include Danfoss Ventures, an international leader in mechanical and electronic products and controls; Novozymes, the world leader in bio-innovations; and computer giant Hewlett-Packard.

Corporate business plan...

Lego wins through innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

While competitors are bleeding, the Danish toy-producer and one of my favourite companies, Lego continues to grow and one of the key reasons is a constant focus on innovation.

I have just read an interview with their CEO, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, who mentioned that Lego focuses on two growth paths besides organic growth in selected geographic markets. One path is the development of products and services that help customers re-think the classic Lego. They do not go into radical innovation – check this earlier post – as they want to stay close to the core of their business; the bricks. An example is their new board game based on Lego bricks.

The other path is driven by Lego’s desire to develop a...

Five reasons why companies should forget about radical innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Radical innovation is too difficult for most companies and they should play it safer when it comes to innovation. You can read why I think so below – and you can get a few ideas how to do it should you decide to give radical innovation a try.

First of all, let me say that I define radical innovation as projects that had an identified team and budget, and were perceived as having the potential to offer either

• new to the world performance features
• significant (5-10x) improvement in known
  features
• significant (30-50%) reduction in cost

The definition is developed by the Radical Innovation Group which works hard to establish innovation as a management discipline. They know a lot about radical innovation....

Great cases of intrapreneurship

by Stefan Lindegaard

I stumbled over a couple of blog posts from BNET and after having read this I urge you to visit their feature on intrapreneurship if you aspire to build new businesses within your company. Great stuff – check this link: Unleash Your Inner Intrapreneur

Open innovation marketplaces

by Stefan Lindegaard

Many companies work to position themselves as the interface between companies seeking solutions and smart people – or companies – who can help deliver the solutions.

I did some research and came up with the below companies that you should look into if you want to know more about open innovation marketplaces.

InnoCentive:

Founded in 2001, InnoCentive connects companies, academic institutions, public sector and non-profit organizations, all hungry for breakthrough innovation, with a global network of more than 160,000 of the world’s brightest minds.

Innocentive is the largest open innovation platform, and they have especially been successful within pharma. They are now working to enter other industries and they have recently closed an important deal with SAP.

- Crowdsourcing Innovation: Q&A with Dwayne Spradlin...

Why open innovation is not just hype…

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation has been a business buzzword for years. The word is tossed around so often and in so many different contexts that it’s meaning and value have been muddied, but innovation is here to stay and it will be one of the tools that will get us out of our current economic mess.

Open innovation as a term is even more sensitive as it has not yet fully developed – and is not yet fully understood by most companies. Nevertheless, I believe there are several signs why open innovation is more than hype:

Open innovation rides on two global megatrends.

The first one is that innovation has become a global 24/7 operation. Many companies have setup R&D and innovation labs outside their corporate headquarters. This...

Open innovation by Procter & Gamble, Netflix, Kraft, BMW and Airbus/EADS

by Stefan Lindegaard

Which companies understand open innovation and have initiatives on this? In this post, I look at five companies that embrace key external partners in their innovation processes and/or involve external partners and customers in the early stage idea generation phases.

Procter & Gamble:

Why… They are the pioneers and you can learn a lot by reading about their initiatives.

Corporate websites:
- www.pg.com
- www.pgconnectdevelop.com

Articles and blog posts:
- P&G’s new innovation model by HBR
- Connect & Develop with P&G by Idea Connection
- Open innovation with Procter & Gamble by The Innovation Diaries
- Procter & Gamble re-ignites growth – XBD and open innovation make it happen by Federici Business Group

Number of current Procter & Gamble employees on LinkedIn...

Do you speak “open innovation”?

by Stefan Lindegaard

When you work with innovation – and especially when you start to look into open innovation initiatives – a key objective of your communication strategy should be to develop a shared language about innovation within your company.

When everyone uses the same language, it is significantly easier to frame the issues in ways that everyone can understand and relate to. As reported in an MIT Sloan Management Review article entitled “Institutionalizing Innovation,” Intel Corp.’s response to competitive threads at the low end of the microprocessor business in the late 1990s illustrates the value of a shared language.

Clayton Christensen, a Harvard Business School professor and founder of Innosight, a consulting and training firm, made numerous appearances at Intel to educate hundreds of managers on the...