The ROI on Open Innovation: Call for Cases

by Stefan Lindegaard

What is the ROI – return on investment – for companies engaged with open innovation? I can imagine that many executives ask this question as they seek out more proof that open innovation is worth doing.

Truth told, there is much talk about the ROI, but it is very difficult finding solid documentation on the value of open innovation. I tried, but not much luck. This is a short list of cases on the topic.

I have previously written about research done by Belgian management school Vlerick in which it shows that the costs are higher than the financial benefits in the short run. However, the authors say” Indeed, in the short-term the costs are particularly visible, while the benefits take longer to...

BCG Innovation Survey: Top Priority Again, New World Order, No Reference to Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

The 2010 edition of the annual survey by BCG and BusinessWeek is as always an interesting read. I have inserted a few of their overall observations below and hopefully this inspires you to check out the full report.

• Innovation is once again a top priority for most companies

• Companies willingness to spend on innovation, and their satisfaction with the return on innovation spending, are inching higher

• Caution remains in the air, however, and companies are adjusting their strategies and tactics

• Executives consider a risk-averse corporate culture, lengthy product-development time, and inadequate measurement practices to be key areas of weaknesses

• The organizations that top their list of the most innovative companies remain unchallenged – but a longer-term change seems to be under way

On...

Driving Innovation in Large Corporations

by Stefan Lindegaard

It is great to experience an increasing interest on intrapreneurship – the process in which employees act as entrepreneurs within established companies and start new ventures.

The latest example is an interesting article, Driving Innovation in Large Corporations, written by Ricardo dos Santos from Qualcomm Ventures, Stig  Poulsen from Danfoss Ventures, Dr. William R. Wagner from HP Imaging and Printing Group and William Aulet from MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

They all have extensive experience on innovation in large corporations and in particular with corporate business plan competitions. In the article, they state that the benefits of business plan competitions are typically threefold:

• Create New Companies – The competitions can create new ventures as a result of...

Examples of Open and Global Innovation: Silicon Valley, India and China

by Stefan Lindegaard

I just had three interesting sources of inspiration that serve as good examples on how innovation is fast becoming more open and global.

My first source of inspiration was a great article in New York Time: The Rise of the Fleet-Footed Start-Up. Here we are introduced to the term “lean start-up” which is a concept that is gaining a following in Silicon Valley and beyond.

An excerpt from the article: “…so the lean playbook advises quick development of a “minimum viable product,” designed with the smallest set of features that will please some group of customers. Then, the start-up should continually experiment by tweaking its offering, seeing how the market responds and changing the product accordingly. Facebook, the giant social network, grew that...

Why Top-Down is a Better Approach for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Imagine a company that is taking a different approach on innovation. They want to be more pro-active and they want to work with external partners. So they identify 10 companies they have not yet worked with, they research on these companies and then they get ready to approach these companies in order to present and discuss potential ways of making innovation happen together.

This is a real case and the next question is important: Where should the first contact take place? One option is with the people on the ground as such a bottom-up approach gives you better access to the people who actually do the work. Another option is a top-down approach where you go as high as you can.

I think most will...

Open Innovation and Service Providers: How Big is the Market?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I got an interesting question recently. How “big” is the open innovation market for service providers? It came from an investor evaluating the potential in this market.

I have to say that I am not sure how big the market is. Actually, the first questions that come to mind is to how to define the market and what services to offer. Leading companies like InnoCentive, InventionMachine and NineSigma seem to become a mix of market place or software platform and consulting. A reason for such a mix could be that many companies are still trying to figure out business models that are both profitable and scalable. The latter is what really attracts investors.

Should new entrepreneurs and investors enter...

The Stop-Do List on Open Innovation: What Should We Include?

by Stefan Lindegaard

There is so much advice on what we should do to make open innovation work. Do this and do that. Often, we get sound advice and thus a good help.

Nevertheless, I am wondering what a stop-do list on open innovation should look like and I am asking for your help to create this list. A few starters:

• stop believing you can do everything yourself

• stop believing that open innovation can suddenly make innovation deliver if it has failed previously

• stop imitating the initiatives of others and instead find the real reasons why your company should do this

• stop blocking social media tools as they can be great for communication, collaboration and research efforts

• stop playing the devil’s advocate and use this as an excuse...

INVITATION Twitter Chat: Persuade Executives to Embrace Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Next Chat: Friday, April 23 at 9.30am – 10.15am (New York time)

Topic: What arguments / methods work best to persuade executives to embrace open innovation?

Let’s share insights and experiences on open innovation in a twitter chat. A twitter chat is simply a stream of tweets that are linked together as we use a hashtag (#15inno) in all tweets. An example:

“#15inno Welcome to the 15inno Twitter Chat. I look forward to your input on the above topic”

You need a Twitter account to participate and I strongly suggest that you also install a desktop application such as TweetDeck. This allows you to create a column using the search tag #15inno in order to get a full overview of all tweets with...

Good Reads on Innovation #18

by Stefan Lindegaard

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

• Are you too smart for your own good? by Mike Myatt http://bit.ly/9hMhrv

• Is Business Model Innovation Just Another Name for Strategy? by John Steen http://bit.ly/cpkLYa

• Three Key Ideas for Leading Innovation by Tim Kastelle http://bit.ly/cWyvqx

• The Power of Openness: Open Innovation Lessons from McLaren by Willings Botha http://bit.ly/96iz7W

• GREAT READ: Is Someone Stealing Your Ideas? Let Them by Penelope Trunk http://bit.ly/9C4mf2 – check the huge divide in comments

• Open Innovation Orientation...

How to Win in a Network Economy

by Stefan Lindegaard

Written by Tim Kastelle who is a Lecturer in Innovation Management at the University of Queensland Business School. He also writes on the Innovation Leadership Network blog.

The economy is a network. I’m Reading Smart World by Richard Ogle and he talks about a couple of the important implications of this. The networked nature of the economy tells us a lot about how innovations diffuse – particularly some the difficulties new ideas face in getting adopted. It sheds light on some questions like: how did Xerox go from having a 75% market share in photocopiers to a 37% share in less than five years in the 1980s? How did Google enter a crowded search market and come to dominate it so quickly?

It...