The Best Discussions on My Blog

We have had some good discussions on my blog during the last month or so. You might have read the blog posts, but perhaps you missed out on the many great comments and the chance to add your views on this.

If so, then you can get an appetizer from the most active and interesting discussions below.

10 Signs That Innovation Will Fail
6 comments including this from Jeffrey Phillips:
“Good list Stefan, and good insights as always. There are a few others I’d add, including 1) no clear scope for the innovation effort 2) expecting innovation but limiting or avoiding risk 3) No clear sponsor or senior executive involved in the innovation effort 4) the assumption that innovation is a project rather than a capability.”

When Sony, Japan Goes Open, Everyone Should Pay Attention
7 comments including this one from Sam Kondo:
“I have been spending considerable time the last couple of years discussing with and listening to Japanese companies about this open innovation trend in their own language, and I really cannot find concrete evidence that these companies are “getting it”. Most is hype and exaggerations. If you find such concrete evidence I would be glad to learn more about it. Actually it seems to me that Japanese companies operated more according to open processes in the early postwar years.

The Failures of Open Innovation
12 comments including this one from Francois Couture:
“Open innovation does not fit every organization. One should keep in mind that innovation is always a risky business internally or open space.”

The Next Practices of Open Innovation
7 comments including this one from Michael Fruhling:
“I tend to share your view that what’s Next may not be so different than what’s Now, and that possibly the focus should be on how to do it better, faster, and more efficiently. The reference point for this is going to differ by company.”

What Kills Curiosity and What to Do About It
7 comments including this one from Elver Loho:
“One of the problems I’ve seen is that one needs to constantly show results and justify one’s existence. It’s easy to measure how many hours and lines of code a programmer does each day. How do you measure daily innovation?”

Are Books Really Critical Or Just On A Steep Decline?
17 comments including this one from Paul Hobcraft:
“Each has its place. The blog can provoke, can inspire thinking, can generate a reaction, an immediate identification or not. The article, if well written, can deliver that initial detail on a specific subject but a book has a very different part to play in building our knowledge. A book builds the argument, builds a story by giving it a broader view and weight that delivers a greater substance.”

If You Can’t Innovate Across Silos, Don’t Expect to Succeed With Open Innovation
6 comments including this one from Hutch Carpenter:
“ Driving cross-silo improvements on internal innovation is a great basis for figuring out the right process:
- Cultural issues
- Roles and responsibilities
- Basis of evaluation of innovation projects
- Where bottlenecks lie
Of course, external open innovation has its own dynamics as well (e.g. management of IP issues). But it shares a number of those issues described above.”

The Bullies of Open Innovation
16 comments including this one from Russ Conser:
“Although your insight is often true, my experience is that ‘bullying’ is amateurish and simply symptomatic of the immaturity of the field of Open Innovation. My own 10+ yrs experience has led me to a point where I totally agree with something proposed at another recent conference – Open Innovation is all about the relationship, not the deal. Focussing on ‘the deal’ is what newbies in the space do to their own detriment, but they do learn to change (or fail).”