Communication Strategies for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is an excerpt from my latest book, Making Open Innovation Work. CLICK THIS LINK FOR A FREE DOWNLOAD!

Strong communication programs are important at any time within an organization, but never more so than when open innovation is your goal. Without a good communication strategy, your odds for success do not look good. To move forward, people need to know where to go and how to get there. Here are three reasons why communication is a critical element if you want to succeed with open innovation.

• “We are in the matchmaking business.” This quote came from Chris Thoen, former managing director of the Global Open Innovation office at P&G, during his presentation at a CoDev conference. Chris also stated that one...

Ten Red Flags for Innovation: Why It Fails

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the signs that innovation in a company is set up to fail? Wouldn’t it be great to have a checklist on this? Unfortunately, innovation is too complicated and company-specific for one standard rule.

It is possible, however, to become better at spotting the signs of failure.

Here’s a list (in no particular order) of the red flags I look for when I talk with executives and innovation leaders trying to get an understanding of their corporate innovation capabilities.

• The lack of an innovation strategy

Executives and innovation leaders have failed to link innovation with overall corporate strategy. As a result, the innovation efforts have no clear direction, and there is not the necessary mix of incremental and radical innovation. No strategy, no...

Intrapreneurship: An Overlooked Tool for Corporate Growth

by Stefan Lindegaard

In 1992, The American Heritage Dictionary acknowledged the popular use of a new word, intrapreneur, to mean “a person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

Wikipedia continues: Intrapreneurship is now known as the practice of a corporate management style that integrates risk-taking and innovation approaches, as well as the reward and motivational techniques, that are more traditionally thought of as being the province of entrepreneurship.

I believe there are three key benefits for embracing intrapreneurship:

• Intrapreneurship increases revenues and raises profits; short and long term. Intrapreneurs – once they are spotted and used the right way – will have an impact on core activities. They are, however, at...

Social Media Guidelines: How IBM Does It

by Stefan Lindegaard

As you begin using social media for your innovation efforts, it’s important to have in place clear guidelines such as the ones below developed by IBM (called social computing guidelines). This is important in order to guide your employees through the often treacherous waters of what they can and cannot do as they engage with social media.

Such guidelines should be reviewed periodically to keep apace with the fast development of new social media tools that may give rise to a need for new policies.

In addition to the information below, you can find a more in-depth discussion on this topic by IBM on this blog post: IBM Social Computing Guidelines

IBM Social Computing Guidelines

• Know and follow IBM’s Business Conduct Guidelines.

...

The Big Innovation Leap

by Stefan Lindegaard

How does a company move from a phase where innovation is more about awareness or curiosity to a phase where innovation is a capability that becomes a key element in the overall strategy?

This is a big innovation leap that many corporate innovators struggle with. Here you get some of my suggestions on what you can do:

• The full picture: Taking the big innovation leap is not easy and you have to deal with lots of different issues and challenges. The first thing to do is to get an overview of these issues. Then, you can start prioritizing them and decide whether to go through them in a parallel or sequential order. Try to put the many issues into no more than 6-8 categories...

FREE WEBINAR by @lindegaard – Social Media: Add Power to Your Innovation Efforts

by Stefan Lindegaard

Webinar: Tuesday April 17, 15.30 – 16.15 (CET / Copenhagen time)

As I am working on my next book, Social Media: Add Power to Your Innovation Efforts, which is due this fall, I have learned that the use of social media for innovation efforts is unchartered territory, yet full of interesting opportunities.

In this webinar, I will share some of my insights based on these five key aspects on how social media can bring out better innovation faster:

1) better interaction with customers, consumers and other partners

2) idea generation and feedback loops for the ideas that are being developed

3) business intelligence that helps you better understand your ecosystem

4) identification of new people who can assist in your innovation efforts, and

5) branding,...

How Ericsson Uses Developer Competitions for Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

The recent newsletter from Ericsson Labs had a piece on their developer competitions, which I find worthwhile looking into for inspiration on how to engage external developers and contributors.

The main event is the Ericsson Application Award, which is an annual competition for application developers on the Android platform.

Ericsson Labs also runs other competitions based on the Application Award setup and the processes they have developed. They recently announced the winners for the Apps for Africa and Vasaloppet App Challenge competitions.

Overall, I like their initiative for having a simple and intuitive approach. I also like how they try to use social media (Facebook, Twitter and YouTube) to recruit and engage...

Open Innovation Insights by @Lindegaard

by Stefan Lindegaard

These insights are based on a recent interview I did with Allagi, an open innovation service provider in Brazil.

What are the most important opportunities and challenges that open innovation brings to companies?

I think the below benefits are the most relevant for small as well as big companies when it comes to open innovation:

• Faster development and market launch of new products and services, which will build revenues, market share, and profits;

• More diversity brought to innovation, which will result in uncovering more opportunities;

• Improved success rate of new products and services by making the innovation process stronger; and

• Diversified risks and the sharing of both market and technological uncertainties of innovation.

As companies embrace open innovation, they...

25 Key Questions on Open Innovation Implementation

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the key questions that corporate innovation leaders must consider as they prepare to make important decisions related to the implementation of open innovation at their companies?

I have compiled a list of questions that I would consider if I were in their shoes. It is not complete, but perhaps it can work as a discussion starter.

The Big Picture:

Why are we doing this? What is the purpose?

How does open innovation fit into our overall corporate strategy and how does it relate to our innovation strategy?

Are the top executives really ready for this journey?

What are our strenghts and weaknesses for making this happen? What is the best way of mapping this?

Who should be the leader of this initiative? What...

The Information Needs for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

What are the information needs of companies who are implementing open innovation?

I was recently asked this question in a client engagement. It led me to a series of other questions for which I share my reflections below. It is still work in progress so perhaps you can build further on this?

How can you filter out relevant information given the incredible amount of noise out there? At first, you need to figure this out which force project leaders to better understand what they are trying to achieve with the open innovation initaitive. Is it just a short-term project on a given challenge or is it part of a broader initiative to change the culture of the company? It is most likely a mix of...