Legal Aspects of Open Innovation for Small Companies: A P&G Perspective

by Stefan Lindegaard

I recently asked Chris Thoen, Managing Director of the Global Open Innovation office at P&G this question.

“Small companies often have limited legal resources. What can they do to get better deals and protect their intellectual property?”

As you can see below, Chris provides a great answer. However, this is a topic that many have looked into and it would be great if we can get more perspectives. Let me know what you can add.

Here is the reply from Chris:

This is an area of critical importance — to both parties involved. Unless everyone is comfortable with and clearly understands the goals, parameters and expectations of a project and of both parties, the relationship will never grow into the deep and trusted...

Metaio: A Small Company Perspective on Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

In the coming months, I will interview and write about SME’s and their experiences with open innovation as I hope this can help us develop a more holistic view and understanding of open innovation.

The first interview is with Metaio, which develops software products for visual interactive solutions combining real and virtual elements. It is a privately held software company founded in 2003 with 65+ employees, based at 3 locations in Germany, South Korea and the US having 340+ customers.

A key to Metaio’s success is innovation with other partners. In this interview, Jan Schlink shares the some views on how a small company looks on this.

Before we get into the interview, I want to share a comment by Jan....

What metrics should we apply for open innovation?

I hear more and more requests on how to apply metrics to open innovation.

Personally, I do not really believe in metrics. The innovation community (companies, consultants and academics) has tried this for the last 20 years on innovation in general, but no success.

I agree that companies need some metrics to evaluate and hopefully convince executives that open innovation work, but they need to be careful not to turn this into too much of an issue. It is just so difficult getting this right and the efforts spend trying to get this right can be used in other ways.

What kind of metrics should we focus on? What works? What metrics can we compare across companies / industries?

Why I Like GE’s Ecomagination Challenge

by Stefan Lindegaard

I like GE’s initiative a lot. Here are some reasons:

• They have a clear strategic scope that seems to be part of an overall strategy.

• They have a strong ecosystem of partners that can help participants turn ideas into reality. This is can be much more rewarding the cash prizes for many people.

• They offer significant prizes which by itself raises awareness among potential participants as well as media and bloggers.

• They are developing a platform through the challenges using apps, YouTube, Twitter and other tools to drive awareness and idea generation.

I imagine that their initiative can turn into a strong platform for innovation on environmental challenges giving GE a...

Good Reads on Innovation #27

by Stefan Lindegaard

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

Connecting Ideas is Fundamental to Innovation by @timkastelle http://bit.ly/gXEckP

Taking the Open Services Innovation Road by @Paul4innovating http://bit.ly/hPFqTq – review of Chesbrough book

Top tips for building an innovation culture by@100open http://bit.ly/dR77sB

Tips to Overcome Internal Resistance to Open Innovation, Crowd-Sourcing by @chaordix http://bit.ly/fVJNDo

How to Bring Innovations to Market by VJ Govindarajan http://bit.ly/dIqp2v

Innovation – A New Match Between Need and Solution by @ralph_ohr http://bit.ly/euz9LX

7 Tips for Launching a Great Innovation Contest...

Open Innovation in Med-Tech, High-Tech Industries

by Stefan Lindegaard

I was recently asked for some input by Katharine Grayson, a journalist working on an article on open innovation in the Med-Tech industry. You can read the article, which focuses on the open innovation efforts by Medtronic here: Medtronic seeks ideas with new Web portal

The questions and my answers went like this:

Is there anything about Medtronic’s web portal that strikes you as unique compared to other open-innovation efforts out there?

No, on the contrary. The site is quite simple and looks like a first-generation site in which Medtronic is trying to test out how this will work. This is a good approach for some companies although it does seem to lack some ambition.

...

Opensource Idea management software tool, which’s the best?

looking for a management tool for the Ideas and innovations process in our company, Only see a commercial ones, does any body know any Opensource if so, which one do you recomend?

A Road Map on Social Media Tools and Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

What actions should an innovation unit take on the intersection of social media and open innovation? This is a question that I hear more often and it would be great to have a discussion on this.

I recently wrote a piece on the three circles for open innovation in which I argue that corporate innovation units should not only focus their efforts on the open innovation ecosystem in which open innovation actually happens. They should also focus on the thought leadership aspect, which happens in the innovation community and the interactions that can take place with customers and consumers.

Having this in mind, I suggest that companies should strive to become the preferred partner of choice within their innovation ecosystems. This status can...

What Innovation topic provides for a unique & meaningful MBA dissertation?

My MBA International Management dissertation is an opportunity to analyse a business or management issue issue in depth as an independent research project. While, I have selected Innovation as my area of reseach. That said, I am casting a wide net, to gather suggestions for unique & meaningful research topics. For example, a few of the topic areas I am considering are as follows:
1) Smart products and their specific characteristics and success factors.
2) Leveraging outside organizations e.g., university tech transfer, or similar research & develoment organizations in the pursuit of the next big idea.
3) Smart Product – Service Systems…In order to maintain company value, the establishment of a service framework around the core product becomes of value to both...

How should managers approach failure in the innovation process?

Failure is hard to avoid when working with innovation. Some failure is expected and can be labelled as experiments. But sometimes failure is more critical. It could be that a technology turns out to be flawed or that the organization is not ready internally to bring the innovation to market. What should managers do in such cases?