Appreciation: A Key Organizational Element for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I often say that executives need to create the proper settings and conditions for open innovation since it is so difficult to just make open innovation work and implement lots of tools.

One of the key elements on creating the right conditions is to make the employees understand that a stronger focus on external contribution is not a sign of disapproval of the work being done by them. It is merely an attempt to increase the overall innovation productivity by combining internal and external resources.

You do not want frustrated employees that do not feel that they are being appreciated…

Having employees that feel appreciated with regards to innovation also makes it easier for an organization to embrace a more holistic approach to...

Business Opportunity for Partners, Workshops on Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I am developing a workshop that looks into the next steps of open innovation. See my first take below.

I would like to offer this workshop in innovation hubs around the world and I am thus looking for local partners that would like to work with me on this.

In order for this to be worthwhile for you, your organization as well as myself, we need to be able to generate USD 10-20,000 in revenues. I can of course tailor the workshop the needs in your region and we can discuss our respective roles and the revenue split.

This open call for partners might be a bit unusual, but let’s see what happens.

Workshop description:

Next Steps on Open Innovation

Many companies are moving beyond...

Open Question: How Can We Make the Future Workforce Better at Innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I was asked the below question in a recent interview:

If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?

My response:

“I would look into how the future workforce can become better at learning from failures. We fail more often than we succeed when it comes to innovation and yet we do not manage to extract much learning out of these failures.

I believe such a learning capability can lead to better innovation processes as we will be able to develop new perspectives to our challenges faster.”

What is your answer to this question?

Open Innovation Insights: P&G Cases

by Stefan Lindegaard

How do the results of open innovation look like? I am sure many people wonder about this and I am thus pleased to share lots of short cases that P&G presented at our recent open innovation event in Brazil.

Check this document: P&G Case Studies Latin America

To give an example, this is how the case studies look like:

Swiffer Dusters®

• Out Licensing Agreement with competitor in Japan: Unicharm

• Three-way win for: consumers, both partner companies

• Turned a Japanese product into a global hot-seller

P&G engineers were working on a dusting tool to expand the Swiffer® mop line when C+D teams came across a hand-held product being sold in Japan.  They liked the sleekness and user-ease of the Japanese product...

Top 5 Open Innovation Quotes

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here are five quotes or sentences that I have heard or said myself over the years in my work with (open) innovation.

“Next steps to create a strong networking culture? Nothing. This stuff takes care of itself.” What a top executive said after one of my seminars.

A strong networking culture equals a strong innovation culture. What is your corporate networking strategy?

At a conference, I heard a big company representative say this – only half-jokingly – on creating win-win relationships: “Our definition of win-win is that we get to kick the little guy twice.” Sorry, this does not work in era of open innovation

The more time I spent on open innovation, the more I realize it is more about mindset than a...

CALL FOR ACTION: 15inno Twitter Endorser Network

by Stefan Lindegaard

#15inno Twitter Endorser Network endorses people with good views and approaches on innovation as well as projects and conferences that deserve a shout-out.

#15inno Twitter Endorser Network is facilitated by @lindegaard who frequently asks the network which people, projects and conferences that the network should endorse. This results in tweets like the below on which @lindegaard calls for action – you and others retweet.

You can join us by signing up for the 15inno newsletter on www.15inno.com, watch for updates on this blog post and follow our tweets with #15inno.

How does it work? Just tweet the below texts (not the headline):

Chris Thoen, Innovation Director:

Help Chris Thoen, MD of P&G C+D, one of the few corporate tweeters get even more followers...

Don’t Let Others Steal Your Ideas, Another Cool Idea

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently learned about two cool projects on the intersection of open innovation, IPR and ideas. They are still in the early stages, but I think they have some potential and if you work on this intersection, you should definitely check them out.

Creative Barcode

Creative Barcode™ is a unique protection system for creative and business concepts. It embeds application-driven digital codes into written and visual concepts, proposals or creative works to denote ownership and permission-based usage. Created by designers and innovators, it is a new, simple and effective form of intellectual property protection.

CREAX CreationSuite

Creax offers a suite that among other things lets you extract and analyse relevant information from patents. They argue this open innovation tool gives a helicopter view on technology...

Ideas to Innovation: People is Key

by Stefan Lindegaard

How do you get from ideas to innovation?

I was asked to give a presentation on this topic at an event for the members of Pure Insight.

This is a broad topic, but I think there is one key element that is more important than others and yet forgotten by many companies. This is people. The order of priority on this topic should be people first, processes next, then ideas.

Too often, I see that companies focus on just getting lots of ideas. I argue that you only need the “right” amount of ideas, which can be defined by setting proper filters. Then you need a process for identifying and developing these ideas and you need to match these ideas with the right...

Top 5 Open Innovation Leaders: Nominate your candidate!

by Stefan Lindegaard

I am calling out for the innovation community to recognize the open innovation leaders through this initiative in which we identify, pick and celebrate the top 5 open innovation leaders in two categories.

COMPANY: Open innovation is a hot topic at many companies, but some are more visionary and better at execution than others. Which company do you think deserves credit for their open innovation activities? Please add a few remarks on why you think so.

INTERMEDIARY / SERVICE PROVIDER: We need an ecosystem of intermediaries and service providers that help companies make open innovation happen. Which intermediary and/or service provider has the best approach in order to drive open innovation forward? Please add a few remarks on why you think so.

The process is...

Top 5 Countries for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation requires a global perspective, which is a key reason for all the travel I do in order to meet with innovation leaders around the world.

Right now, I am in Sao Paulo, Brazil and being here I began wondering which countries do well on open innovation. Brazil is not on this list yet but I am quite sure their time will come. There is just too much potential in this land of opportunity.

So which countries do well on open innovation? This is my quick snap shot.

1. United States. No surprise here. This is where it happens. We have the companies, intermediaries/service providers, top academics and all the best conferences. There are simply too many to mention here.

2. The Netherlands.