Allow me to discuss my use of the term "trash" which I used in an earlier post to describe the vast majority of unsolicited submissions received via corporate open innovation portals. I have a window to some of these unsolicited submissions through the work I do with corporate clients.

My point is not that the ideas have no merit or are totally worthless. Rather, by "trash", I meant that they are discarded by the receiving company without their yielding any value to them. They are very often screened out without even getting past the administrative gatekeeper who is assigned to do triage and decide which of these to disseminate within the organization for further review. The technical reasons for dismissing a submission can vary: the idea is considered off-strategy, it lacks technical and/or clinical substantiation, it doesn't offer a consumer-meaningful benefit, it caters to a niche that is not of sufficient size to merit business interest, there isn't a reviewable prototype, it is not sufficiently developed to be reviewable, it is not protected or protectable…and more…

Companies should uniformly strive to demonstrate that they appreciate the unsolicited ideas that they receive. This should include being responsive to submissions by providing feedback to the submitter in as timely a fashion as possible. I have done consulting and training work to assist a major corporation to enhance their corporate processes and communications involving external parties who make unsolicited submissions.

One important footnote: occasionally, in the world of external innovation….one man's trash may be another man's treasure. A couple of years ago, a major company declined an unsolicited submission for strategic reasons and then referred the submitter to me as someone who could assist him in furthering his goals. I helped introduce him to another company…who acquired his company earlier this year.

Best regards,

Michael

Extremely insightful post. After having spent the last 10 years at Red Hat, I can tell you that, in the open source software world, most of the actual open innovation work doesn't happen on web portals, but instead in the trenches between people inside and outside of our company who have developed networks of relationships over time. All of the normal tools of the trade are utilized: email, mailing-lists, phone calls, even social media tools.

Having said that, I do disagree with Michael's depiction that most submissions coming in on innovation portals are trash. There is one audience for which they are definitely NOT trash: the people who sent the ideas.

If we approach the free gift of feedback from people with such a dismissive view, we risk throwing away one of the key benefits of an open innovation initiative: the ability to form deeper, more meaningful relationships with people who care about your company and its products.

Even if you do not use the ideas, it should be very clear that you appreciate every one you get. The simple act of listening is a very powerful brand strategy. And might be just the thing that encourages someone to submit an idea that eventually becomes your next big business.

Graham, I also would like to see some cases on this. Hopefully, they will come as this area of innovation matures.

On your point 1, we should keep in mind that we always need ideas to move us forward. Why shut down a potential source which can work if you set the right directions for it?

On your point 2, I believe we have to take into account that contributions made through such portals are only a part of the bigger picture. This can help find ways to new kinds of innovation that we have not yet thought of and it can help us make the connections needed to make it happen.

Stefan

Interesting discussion.

Just curious: Do you have data to support this statement? "By and large, the majority of the thousands of submissions received by these corporations are trash."

Shyam

"In 1960, Donald Campbell proposed that we think of creativity as "Random variation + Selective Retention." That is, we need two processes, one to generate things we can't think of in advance, and another to figure out which of the things we generate are valuable and are worth keeping and building upon.

In science, the arts, and other creative activities, the ability to know what to throw away and what to keep seems to arise from experience, from study, from command of fundamentals, and—interestingly—from being a bit skeptical of preset intentions and plans that commit you too firmly to the endpoints you can envision in advance. Knowing too clearly where you are going, focusing too hard on a predefined objective, can cause you to miss value that might lie in a different direction."

Then he summarizies this with "On the other hand, if you think there is a very significant overlap between accident and important innovations, you'd design the innovation process differently. You might want to design in some "accidents," and you'd want to nurture your capability for "selective retention"—your ability to know what to throw away and what to keep.

Interesting thinking as we learn perhaps?

obviously portals such as innocentive.com are very targeted, and presumably have a "trash" rate which is close to zero. certainly they will not get thousands of trivial ideas, but fewer well thought out ones. but i don't think thats the kind of open innovation you mean.

perhaps we need some good examples. i would be interested to see examples of breakthrough innovations (either product or business model) which were obtained from a public portal. does anybody have one?

i don't doubt that there are areas in which the public portal type of open innovation is applicable, but i suspect that in a few years, when it has been thoroughly studied and evaluated, that we will find that it is much more limited in scope than is currently believed.

here are two arguments – perhaps someone can refute them.

1.
look at idea management. this is basically the same idea (invented in 1872, by the way). the only difference is that it is applied internally, rather than externally. with few exceptions, idea management has totally failed to live up expectations (for reasons which are well understood.) if this type of open innovation is to work, it will have to solve all the problems that are still prevalent in the idea management world.

2.
has anyone found a way to negate henry ford's observation "if i had asked the public what to build, they would have told me 'faster horses'".

Based on several of your comments, I think you tend to underestimate the skills and mindset of at least some of the companies that work hard to understand and successfully implement open innovation.

Yes, there are issues on equating open innovaton with crowd-sourcing or user-driven innovation, but lately I have seen some maturity on this.

Companies are getting more sophiscated and there is a lot of behind-the-scenes activity that shows some pretty good development on this. My referring points are interviews done with General Mills and other companies, talks with many participants at the recent Open Innovation Summit and comments as above.

I believe portals done right will be important vehicles in the future as well. No doubt they need to improve just as many of the above comments indicate. This maturing phase will also lead to a shake-up of the many companies trying to sell services and systems on this. This is just a natural phase of companies trying to position themselves for a market that could become quite interesting.

I agree with you that many companies tend to focus too much on the quantity of ideas rather than making sure they have the right settings for idea generation and the subsequent follow-up work in place. Hopefully, this will change as well in the future.

Stefan

as far as i know, no so-called "open innovation" internet portal has delivered on expectations. this has to do with several factors:
- people misusing the system (deliberately inappropriate input)
- people misunderstanding the system (inadvertently useless input)
- poor execution (website is hard to find or use, or doesn't provide motivation to participate)
- the difficulty and effort needed to evaluate the input obtained

much is known and has been written about the first three points. regarding the last point i would claim that anyone who is actually able to recognise a genuinely good, innovative idea while sifting through thousands of items is much too valuable a person to be allowed to do it!

even in a dedicated environment such as a professionally led ideation workshop, the quota of truly good ideas is only about 1%. how much smaller will it be in an uncontrolled setting where anyone can submit whatever they want without any guidance whatsoever?

this type of event is fine when a company wants to promote an image of innovation and customer-awareness. for simple B2C applications it may even yield a few good ideas (assuming that they are recognised.) however, for substantial innovation goals and for all B2B innovation, crowdsourcing is (to me, at least) obviously inappropriate.

i predict that – as with all fads – it will continue to thrive as long as the media (and the vendors making a profit out of selling it) can sustain the hype, after which it will either …
- be reduced to the niche for which it is in fact appropriate
- be replaced by something more efficient
- disappear completely.

Sifting through all the submissions made I would certainly believe does often feels like they are of little value but in the old days of gold digging, you panned in the thousands to find that nugget of gold.

We are only beginning to understand all the right mechanisms and protocols for open innovation to become more effective in matching search and solution and the more the company strengthens its description of needs the better the submissions back will become. Like panning for gold, you begin to understand the fertile regions this is likely to be found and the ideal concept of "open" will become more closed.

As for a fad or a fashion- I do not think so. We are only just 'crossing the chasm' on this for it to evolve in its adoption- it is discontinuous and will go through different progressions over time.

Keep championing this Stefan it is to valuable to growing through innovation to not be in a clear and constant 'line of sight' for all involved in development