Good Reads and Discussions on Innovation #12

by Stefan Lindegaard

Why Communication is Key to Successful Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here are three reasons why communication is a key element if you want to succeed with open innovation.

• “We are in the matchmaking business.” This quote came from Chris Thoen, P&G during his presentation at the recent CoDev conference. Chris also stated that one of the key objectives of open innovation is to become the preferred partner of choice. As with any kind of matchmaking, we strive to find the best possible partner and in order to do so we must be able to articulate our propositions in an attractive manner. This is very much about communication.

• Open innovation needs to become top of mind within organizations; not just within innovation teams. By now, many innovation teams understand the value of open innovation and those that do not will soon learn the hard way.

It is a tougher challenge making the rest of the company fully understand and buy into the value in open innovation. Nevertheless, this has to happen in order for them to change mindset and behaviours and thus be able to fully support open innovation and benefit from this. This is very much about communication.

• Find and be found. In a previous post LINK, I advised companies to communicate more and better. Let the eco-system in your region – as well as globally – know what you are doing. Tell about your open innovation initiatives, share your learnings and ask for input.

Messages with substance move very fast within such eco-systems. This can help companies to be perceived as a preferred partner of choice or at least as a company with a potential for this to happen. You need to find the right partners, but it would be great if they also came to you, right? This is very much about communication.

What can innovation teams do to communicate better?

• Work with the communication team to develop clear messages. I do not know of many innovation teams that work closely with their communication department. These people know how to communicate and they should be able to almost any kind of message including those from an innovation team. Get them involved!

• Develop elevator pitches and train your people on how to deliver them. Some companies develop elevator pitches – very short pitches aimed at getting to the next level of customer contact – for their products and services. Why not do the same for the messages and propositions used towards potential partners as well as the colleagues you need to turn into backers of your open innovation initiatives? Check this link for further inspiration: Elevator Speech

• Develop a common language on innovation that everyone understands – internally as well externally for your partners and those that could be. This starts by developing a corporate definition of innovation that everyone should learn and you expand by developing innovation tools and processes that can be adapted by the entire organization – and external partners as well.

Can you add other reasons why communication matter and/or suggest other ways on how innovation teams can communicate better?

The Definition of Win-Win Relationships

by Stefan Lindegaard

Sorry, this is not a lengthy, informative post on an important topic, but a tweet from Chuck Frey (#chuckfrey) really caught my attention – and gave me a good laugh. I think you will enjoy this as well.

It went like this:

“Overheard at #codev: “I once worked w/ a company whose idea of a ‘win-win’ supplier relationship meant that you got to kick them twice!”

Funny, but unfortunately this view is not just a joke at many companies…

Work Approaches: Rude Or Effective?

by Stefan Lindegaard

Another week just flew by and once again I had several issues that I did not get to attend. One particularly nagging example is the lack of my responses to the many great comments given on my blog last week.

Unfortunately, trips to Las Vegas and New York took away the time needed for this and suddenly I am facing a dilemma. Should I focus on the past and spend quite some time on the many comments on my blog and on LinkedIn? Or should I focus on the new ideas that springs up and hopefully are capable of inspiring others and starting some discussions in the innovation community?

Of course, the right answer is to strike a proper balance. This is most likely also what you need to find when you find yourself flooded by requests to pursue new interesting opportunities while having to just get things done.

Perhaps we can help each other by sharing our insights on how we try to get the most out of our time and efforts? Let me start out by sharing some of my work approaches:

• Know what really makes a difference. In my previous blog post, URGENT: The Box We Live In And Why This Is So, I argued that that 20 % of our efforts create 80 % of our outcomes. Having this in mind, I try to focus on what really matters in terms of reaching my short, mid and long-term goals. For example, thinking about innovation and sharing my insights helps build my “personal brand” and it helps develop my business as a network facilitator and occasionally as a consultant. Furthermore, I really enjoy this work so it also provides a great personal satisfaction. Thus, I spend most of my time on this. Can you indentify what really matters to you?

• Know when to respond and when to ignore. This might come off a bit cynical to some of you, but I hope I can get you to understand the reason behind this. Many of us live in a world where we get so many different kinds of requests that we could spend a significant part of our work week just replying to those. Not good as we also need to get things done. A great example is the many friend requests from LinkedIn and Facebook.

As mentioned in this earlier post, Why Should I Connect With You On LinkedIn?,  I have decided only to use LinkedIn and not Facebook as I do not have the time to manage two active profiles. LinkedIn is much more business-minded so Facebook had to go. On LinkedIn, I have also decided only to connect with people with whom I already have had a certain level of interaction with. If someone I do not know asks whether to connect, I look at the message. Is it just the standard message or does this person express a reason for us to connect? I always ignore the standard messages just as I really try to get back to the others with a reason why I do not want to connect right now.

• Test whether people are serious, relevant and persistent. I initially ignore business proposals that might look interesting at first hand, but do not have a direct match with my current priorities. Why? Simply to test whether the other person is serious about their proposal and shows enough persistence to follow-up.

I have been on the other end many times and I often had to initiate contact three or four times before I got a reply. I learned that many “influential” people often ignore requests simply because they are too busy; not because it might not be of interest to them. In such cases, the “influentials” take a wait-and-see approach trying the judge the person sending the message. Persistence is seen as a good character trait here and it carries you far if you also have a relevant message.

You should understand that in a networked world we almost always reach upwards to someone who can help out on our issues. Unfortunately for us, the people we try to reach up to have their own agendas making them reach higher as well. As time is limited, we often have to ignore those requests from below unless this really fits into our own agenda.

• Prioritize your ways of communicating with others. My prioritized way of communicating with others is 1) email 2) phone 3) meetings. It has surprised some that I did not want to meet with them as I believed—and as it turned out—the task could be done by email or phone. It is not to be rude. It just saves time for all involved and it works fine. Just think of the many meetings you have attended in the last six months. How many of those were to some extent a waste of time? I think this proves my point.

Well, this became a bit personal, but I hope you see my approaches as a way to be effective rather than being rude. As a sort of defensive argument for my chosen approaches, perhaps I should also mention that I am actually a very introvert person.

This might seem strange and counter-intuitive to my work as a network facilitator and speaker, but hopefully it also serves as an example that you do not have to be an extrovert to connect with others. Even introverts can do well on this once we set our goals, apply the proper techniques and understand how social media tools work. More on this in a later post…

Are Engineers Really That Good For Innovation?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have been pondering on this since I had some comments on my The Faces Of Open Innovation post where I expressed some concern that most of the profiles working with open innovation had an engineering background.

In the blog post, I mentioned that engineers do add value to innovation, but we need to get a broader focus in the overall innovation process by giving room to other functions and competences as well. Innovation should be about much more than just technology and products for which many engineers have a tendency to over-focus on.

Two comments in particular caught my interest. The first one went like this:

“Why so surprised at the preponderance of engineers in the open innovation community? Good engineers are, by necessity, innovative. This is not so obvious with other professions. Engineers are prone to share, to seek out other engineers when they face a mental block.”

Wow! Are good engineers by necessity innovative? My response is whether you really can be innovative when the next sentence mentions this is not so obvious with other professions. This is borderline arrogance and to some extent hubris.

In today’s innovation environment, I believe you need a T-shape in which you bring strong depth to the table. Engineers often do this, but to me this is worthless unless you also have an understanding and empathy for how other business functions and competences work and add value to the products and services to be created.

You could also raise the question whether the limited thinking displayed in the comment is not exactly the reason that have caused so many products to be brought to market that were filled with all sorts of doodads and capabilities that the engineers thought were just fantastic, but that real consumers had no use for. I think it is fair to say that how this guy defines innovation is skewed toward the ability to solve technical challenges, which is only part of innovation.

The second comment went like this: “The natural place for open innovation to start is in the technical function, in my view because it can be neatly defined and encapsulated without excessive risk.”

What is actually being said here is that open innovation should be defined from an engineer’s perspective. Hmm, I would argue that we should define and embrace innovation from the customer’s and/or end-user’s perspective as they will end up paying for what we do. It is important we understand this and it is my experience that engineers as a profession often do not get this. Other professions and business functions better understand this making them just as important and valuable – if not more – in the innovation process.

Engineers, of course most of you are good for innovation. You should be proud of what you bring to the table, but you also need to wake up. The way we innovate is changing fast and engineers need to adapt to this just as everyone else. This is especially true as we open up our innovation processes to external partners rather than doing almost everything internally.

Perhaps you should try one simple approach next time you face a mental block; seek out non-engineers. This might broaden your horizon which I am sure will benefit all of us.

I look forward to your comments on this.

Troublemaker! You?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I often think back on an old post from David Nordfors on the Innovation Journalism blog. I have found his words to be true many times and if you work with innovation in a large company you can most likely relate as well and in particular to the part I have inserted below.

—–
When someone tries to innovate within a traditional organization,
few will understand what he/she is doing,
but everybody will understand who is a trouble-maker.

After the innovation has been embraced by the organization,
few will remember who started it,
but everybody will remember who was a trouble-maker.

This is the dilemma encountered by many intrapreneurs -
they risk punishment for success.
—–

Are you a troublemaker? : – )

Good reads on innovation #3

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of reads, videos and podcasts on innovation that I have enjoyed and re-tweeted in the last couple of weeks. I hope you will enjoy this as well.

You can follow me on Twitter: @lindegaard 

Markets or Communities? The Best Ways to Manage Outside Innovation -  a must-read interview with Karim R. Lakhani

Winning The Contest Of Ideas – examples of cash prize contests to spur innovation from Netflix, X Prize and Cisco

How Does China Compare To Europe and US in Innovation? – podcast with Kevin Ryan

A Look Behind the Silver Lining – Boris Pluskowski’s honest and helpful review of The Silver Lining book by Scott Anthony

Buying, Not Making Innovation – good thoughts on Google by Joel West

Why Segway Failed To Reshape The World: Focused On Invention Rather Than Innovation – a post by Mike Masnick

Implement Open Innovation Strategy: Focus On Input – Rob Veldt urges you to focus on the input side of open innovation

The Open Minded Professor – Erich Von Hippel on open source, lead user and open innovation

Video With John Hagel On Innovation In Emerging Countries

How Customer Co-Creation Is The Future Of Business – Graham Hill presents a series of principles that guide our thinking about what co-creation is (good focus on life-time usage)

Why Creative Leaders Are So Rare – insights by Navi Radjou

How Knowledge Can Hurt Innovation – Scott Anthony focuses on the “curse of knowledge”

The Next Step In Open Innovation – McKinsey looks into the direction of knowledge creation

Today´s Disruptions Are Tomorrow´s Incrementals – Jeffrey Phillips writes about two significant challenges for disruptive innovation; danger and time

The Crowd Is Wise (When It’s Focused) – great piece in New York Times; one of the most tweeted articles on open innovation

Enjoy!

Inspiration on innovation by Stefan Lindegaard

by Stefan Lindegaard

As one of my last touches on my upcoming book, I am creating a list of resources and people that I find useful in my work with innovation.

What and who do you consider to be good inspirational resources when it comes to innovation? I am always open for new inspiration…

Academics:

Chris Trimble (strategic innovation)
C.K. Prahalad (co-creation)
Clayton Christensen (disruptive innovation)
Erich Von Hippel (lead user innovation)
Henry Chesbrough (open innovation)
Kenneth P. Morse (entrepreneurship)
Vijay Govindarajan (strategic innovation)

Bloggers and thought leaders:

Blogging Innovation by Braden Kelley
Chris Anderson (author of The Long Tail and Free)
Innoblog
Innovate on Purpose by Jeffrey Phillips
Innovationtools by Chuck Frey

Gary Hamel (author of The Future of Management, Leading the Revolution)
Geoffrey Moore (author of Crossing the Chasm and Dealing with Darwin)
Guy Kawasaki (author of Reality Check, expert on blogging and Twitter)
Killer Innovations by Phil McKinney (executive at HP)
Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers)
Open Innovators
Personal Branding Blog by Dan Schawbel
Seth Godin (marketing expert and best-selling author)
Think for a Change by Paul Williams
Tony Ulwick (Strategyn)

Corporate websites – examples of open innovation and crowdsourcing-like initiatives:

Dell Ideastorm
IBM
Netflix
Kraft
Procter & Gamble
Philips
Starbucks
Toyota

Consultants:

Bhaskar Chakravorti (McKinsey, Harvard)
Chasm Institute (Mark Cavender, go-to-market strategies)
Doblin (Ten Types of Innovation)
IDEO (design thinking and innovation)
Innosight (disruptive innovation)
Mike Grandinetti (go-to-market strategies, global innovation)
Radical Innovation Group (Joanne Hyland,  breakthrough innovation and corporate venturing)
Whatif! (innovation and marketing)

Conferences:

Front End of Innovation
World Innovation Forum
Open Innovation Summit

Media, resources and tools:

Alltop
Bloglines (blog aggregation)
BusinessWeek
LinkedIn
InnovationTools
Twitter (searches on open innovation, innovation and US – India – China)

Open innovation marketplaces / intermediaries:

Ideablob (entrepreneurs and small businesses)
Innocentive
NineSigma
Yet2.com
Topcoder (software development)
YourEncore (retired and veteran brains)

Good reads on innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of my reads on innovation that I have enjoyed and re-tweeted in the last couple of weeks. I hope you will enjoy this as well.

The crowd is wise (when it is focused)

Today´s disruptions are tomorrow´s incrementals by Jeffrey Phillips

List of open innovation and crowdsourcing examples by Open Innovators

The golden rules of innovation by Andy Bruce

Cheap guitars strike a cord with consumes – ways to connect with budget minded customers and fend off low-cost competiton by Scott Anthony

Google opens up for open innovation – article by BusinessWeek

Use an innovation tournament to find the most promising opportunities – interview with Terwiesch and Ulrich

Open innovation as a differing series of shocks across industries

Are you ready for open innovation? by Michael A. Dalton

Why business model innovation matters by Joakim Björkdahl

Review of Free, the new book by Chris Anderson in Business Week

How LinkedIn and Twitter disrupts the job search giants

The burning platform for innovation by Jeffrey Phillips

Enjoy!

The full picture of innovation: Observations from Hewlett-Packard, Doblin and IDEO

by Stefan Lindegaard

Paul emphasized that successful intrapreneurship requires this level of innovation to differentiate it from standard business growth initiatives. This contrasts sharply with most people who are accustomed to innovate one thing at a time.  He explained that this is true, in part, because many leaders understand the need for a controlled plan or experiment — many are scientists and engineers who were taught the Scientific Method, or many have been fully trained in Quality Management, both employ the discipline of changing only one variable in an experiment at a time. But in order to be an intrapreneur, you need to think like a composer, not a musician, making changes to the entire orchestra simultaneously.

Paul’s emphasis on the number (three or more) and the approach (simultaneous, coordinated change) reveal some insights to intrapreneurial success for us all and why he is a highly-accomplished serial intrapreneur.  As a way to share his expertise to aspiring leaders, Paul teaches his methodology at the business schools of both Stanford and University of California-Berkeley.

Ten Types of Innovation

Not only do you have to think and work across business functions, you also have to innovate across the key areas of business when you move from ideas and research to revenue. Doblin has made some groundbreaking research showing that 96 percent of all innovations fail to meet their targets –  not necessarily because companies perform poorly at the core product or service innovation, but more often than not because companies fail to follow through with innovation in other key areas of their business. Businesses must be able to master all types of innovation – everything from business model innovation to innovation of products, processes, and services. This “whole picture” approach is important in delivering successful innovation, and is another key part of collaboration.

The T-shape from IDEO

On a more personal level, consider whether or not you are a “T-shape.” Innovation consultancy IDEO uses this term to describe people who are more likely to thrive with innovation. You should bring superior in-depth knowledge as an engineer, sales person or something else to the table. That is the vertical part of the T. But you should also have the breadth and empathy – the horizontal part of the T – to understand and appreciate the skills that other people bring to the table as you work as a team to become successful with your innovation projects.

As a T-shaped person, you accept that you don’t know everything and have the courage to seek help and advice from others. Gain a broader perspective by learning from those whose experience and views differ from yours.