Cool Job Opening: Senior Leadership Position in Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

What do you think of the below job description? I think it sounds like a quite cool job opening for a senior innovation leader : – )

Please note that I cannot provide any further information. You need to contact David Majtlis – see his contact information below.

Feel free to RT in your network…

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Senior leadership position in Innovation with leading consumer durables manufacturer.

This concerns a technology leadership role within the Consumer Lifestyle (CL) Sector of Philips Electronics in The Netherlands. CL is a Euro 10 bn business, which includes the more traditional consumer electronics categories (TV, audio, video), as well as consumer durables like the Philishave or the Sonicare toothbrush. Philips Consumer Lifestyle is strongly pursuing a ‘health and wellbeing’ strategy....

Changing the Innovation Culture from the Bottom Up

by Stefan Lindegaard

I hear it so often. Innovation leaders do not feel they have top executive support and thus they are not able to create the innovation initiatives and culture that their company deserves.

It is unfortunately very difficult to influence top executives. One of several reasons is that you often need to go through your direct own boss, then his or her boss and perhaps even one or two steps further. There are lots of people with their own views on innovation that you need to get by before you reach the top executives. And they might not even listen if you are able to reach them…

So what can you do?

You could start an innovation revolution from the bottom up. Open innovation is a...

Open Innovation and Networking Insights from P&G

by Stefan Lindegaard

One of the cases, I will discuss at the Innovation3 conference in Orlando is an open innovation event in Brazil that I organized together with P&G.

This was a great success as well as a great learning experience on how to organize such events in emerging markets where the (open) innovation infrastructure is not as developed as in the more mature markets.

I asked if P&G would like to share some insights from the event as well on the topic in general. Once again, Chris Thoen and Lisa Popyk were open to do so. Thanks!

First, some direct comments from a presentation Chris recently did on Surviving, and Thriving, in an Open Innovation Future. While...

The Mindset and Key Skills Needed for Successful Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

In my talks, I like to get into discussions on why we need to update our mindset and key skills in order to become successful at innovation. Below, I have given a couple of reasons as well as some suggestions on the key skills we need to develop.

The world order is changing. The Western world faces formidable challenges in almost all aspects whereas many emerging countries seem to have a bright future. This has lots of implications. I like how this video captures this: Shift Happens

A creative destruction of the organizational setup, technologies and business models has begun at many companies. They have learnt the hard way that what they have in place today will not work for a future that...

5 Mistakes on Building Open Innovation Relationships

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the common mistakes or missteps that organizations should avoid as they try to build trust with their constituencies? It would be great to have a discussion on this so I look forward to your input based on my discussion starter below.

Mindset: We are bigger and better than you. Unfortunately, some companies still have this attitude even when they look into external collaboration opportunities. It does not help so drop it and find each other on equal terms.

Infrastructure: Some companies do not understand that a strong innovation culture requires a strong networking culture. There is no networking strategy, no process, no training of the employees and most importantly, the employees are not given the time to develop relationships.

Resources: This ties into...

When Leaders Know the Value of Failure: Inspiration from Tom Watson

by Stefan Lindegaard

A legendary story about Tom Watson Jr., who guided IBM in its glory days, bears repeating in any discussion about smartfailing.

According to the story, a vice president who had lost the corporation $10 million on an experiment that failed was called to Watson’s office. Fully expecting to be fired, the VP brought along his letter of resignation and presented it to Watson, who refused it with this statement: “Why would we want to lose you? We’ve just given you a $10 million education.”

After hearing those words, how hard do you think that VP worked on his next project…and the one after that…and the one after that? If ever a company president wanted to insure that someone would work his heart out, those were...

7 Critical Personal Competencies for Open Innovation Success

by Stefan Lindegaard

The personal competencies needed for open innovation success is a topic that I really care about and thus it is a key element in my book, The Open Innovation Revolution and in many of my blog posts.

This time, I am pleased to be able to share some perspectives from Gail Martino, Open Innovation Manager at Unilever in the form of excerpts from a presentation given by Gail a few months ago.

Personally, I think it is great to see how a company such as Unilever recognizes how important soft skills are for open innovation. Gail, thanks for sharing this!

Here you get seven critical personal competencies needed for open innovation success according to Unilever.

Intrepreneurial Skills:
- see opportunities...

Crowd-Sourcing: Toyota, InnoCentive and Saatchi Can Do Better

by Stefan Lindegaard

I just had a look at Your Ideas for Good, a new crowdsourcing campaign from Toyota.

My first notion is that this is a nice example on how a marketing unit plays a bigger role than the innovation guys when it comes to the use of crowdsourcing and open innovation like initiatives. As you can read here, an article in New York Times kind of supports my thinking on this.

Crowdsourcing can work well for both marketing and innovation units, but we rarely see initiatives that do both jobs at the same time. I do not really have a problem with that but I sometimes wonder why the companies – and consultants – behind such initiatives do not put more effort...

From Archer to Magnet: A Good Goal for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I just met with Jan Bosch, VP of Open Innovation at Intuit. As you might already know, I am a big fan of their work on Intuit Collaboratory and especially on how they combine virtual and real life activities.

During our talk, Jan and I discussed a situation that I have seen at several companies. The situation is about how a company goes from being an “archer” in which you aim and shoot for relevant contacts to being a “magnet” in which relevant contacts come to your company.

This is an important issue for companies that are ready to move to the next level of open innovation after having started and implemented a platform. At least, two things are important on...

Open Innovation Initiatives That Have Inspired Me: What Inspires You?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I was recently interviewed by Lucy Douglas for an article in Business Management. You can read the full article here: Out in the Open

During the interview, Lucy asked me this question:

Can you give some examples of open innovation initiatives from major corporations or brands that have inspired you?

My response:

I like how Intuit, the financial software company, try to bridge virtual and physical activities through their Intuit Collaboratory initiative.

I like how GE developed apps for their recent Ecomagination challenge and I hope this will inspire other companies to look into how social media tools can help open innovation efforts.

I have been working with Psion, the maker of handheld rugged mobile computers and...