The Intersection of Yammer and Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is a guest post by Colin Crabtree, Account Manager at the IT company Gijima. Colin has been in the IT industry for over 30 years in various positions and is currently involved in a number of initiatives at Gijima to promote and support innovation in the workspace.

Background

I work for Gijima (Pty) Ltd. a large IT company in Johannesburg South Africa. About a year ago, the company realized for a number of market related reasons that it needed to shake itself down and redefine where it wanted to be in 2025 in order to remain relevant and one of the leaders in the South African and a player in the Global IT market. Thus was borne its client centricity...

Social Media for Innovation Brings More Questions than Answers

by Stefan Lindegaard

The use of social media services and tools in innovation efforts bring more questions than answers. This was concluded after a session I led on the open innovation meets social media intersection.

Interestingly enough, only 1 out of 17 participants, who were a mix of corporate and university people believed that the use of social media for innovation was highly overhyped. So it is not really the why that is being questioned; it is the how.

We lack good cases especially on how B2B companies use social media for innovation. The cases we discussed/liked at the session were IBM’s Innovation Jam, Psion’s Ingenuity Working, LEGO Cuusoo and GE’s Ecomagination Challenge.

I have no doubt other cases will...

Direction, Training and Time – Requirements for Success

by Stefan Lindegaard

Yesterday, I gave a presentation on Open Innovation Meets Social Media in Bergen, Norway. One question went like this: What can be done to enable organizations to extract value out of social media?

The question got me to think back on an encounter I had with an executive a few years back. I had just given a presentation that among other topics touched upon how networking is becoming an important element for creating an innovation culture. During this talk, I pointed out that successful networking efforts at a corporate level require a strategic reason that sets the direction, the training and education of employees and the time needed for employees to build and nurture networks.

After the talk, I spoke with the executive...

An Overview of Social Media Tools and Services for Open Innovation Efforts

by Stefan Lindegaard

On the intersection of open innovation and social media, I find these tools and services to be the most relevant.

Communities: Open innovation has many channels for business opportunities – virtually as well as physically. There is a growing need for companies to have a strong destination site, and I believe we will see a shift in which this has to look more like a community rather than pure needs/assets sites such as P&G’s Connect+Develop. Communities will have a mix of content, business functions such as needs /assets listings and social networking features.

Ingenuity Working is an example. With over 12,000 registered users in the community, the site receives over 60,000 visitors per month. Adoption has been so successful that it has more...

Innovation Fun? – A Picture Does the Job

by Stefan Lindegaard

As I am working on yet another update for my presentation slides on Open Innovation Meets Social Media, I stumbled across the below picture at Ingenuity Working – a community by Psion. I like it when we get some fun into innovation. I think this picture delivers : – )

This is my presentation. Let me know what you think and click here if you want to discuss how I can help your company or give a talk to your audience.

5 Functions for Open Innovation Meets Social Media Efforts

by Stefan Lindegaard

You need five functions to build a strong, internal team that can take the lead and help other innovation people extract value out of the intersection between open innovation and social media. They are:

1. Researchers. You need people who are good at finding information online and more importantly, they need to be very capable at judging what is good information and what is irrelevant noise. This is where you start building your content and knowledge about innovation opportunities within your industry.

2. Communicators (writers). You need people who can take the good information found by the researchers and “package” it in appealing ways. This includes writing good blog posts and raising interesting discussion on own destination sites and setting guidelines on writing good tweets...

CALL FOR MONEY: A Social Media Service for Corporate Innovators

by Stefan Lindegaard

We live in the era of openness so here comes a straight-out call for funding for a social media service that can help corporate innovation units extract value out of social media.

What is the challenge?

Social media plays an increasingly important role when it comes to corporate innovation. Yet, most companies do not know how to use social media tools in relation to innovation and as a result they miss out on benefits such as:

• a better understanding of market or technology trends and insights

• a better feedback loop on existing products and services

• faster development cycles for new products and services

• improved marketing, promotion capabilities for new projects

• increased collaboration on and sharing of ideas and...

The Innovation Interest Graph: New Ideas for Bringing Better Innovation to Market Faster

by Stefan Lindegaard

Think social versus interest. Think personal versus business. Then take a look at these numbers:

LinkedIn: 857
Twitter: 6976
Facebook: 44
Google+: 0
Klout: 68

What do they tell you? Probably not much, but when you have read this post, you will know why these numbers fit someone that focuses on the business and interest elements rather than social elements in social media.

First, you need to know about the social graph and the interest graph.

The social graph is a term coined by scientists working in the social areas of graph theory. It describes the relationships between individuals online. Think Facebook, which is the world’s largest social graph.

The interest graph is described by Brian...

FREE SESSION: Open Innovation Meets Social Media

by Stefan Lindegaard

Interaction and involvement are key elements for open innovation as well as social media and companies need to build strong capabilities on this intersection if they want to out-innovate their competitors.

I help companies develop strategies and initiatives on this intersection and I write about my learnings on 15inno.com. I am also working on a book and as a part of my research, I can offer your company a free 3-hour session in which I give a presentation and we discuss your issues.

You can get an idea of issues to discuss in this link:  A Learning Experience on Open Innovation and Social Media

The session is FREE OF CHARGE as I believe the value from learning from each other is worth the...

A Learning Experience on Open Innovation and Social Media

by Stefan Lindegaard

Interaction and involvement are key elements for open innovation as well as social media. Companies need to build strong capabilities on this intersection if they want to out-innovate their competitors.

This fall, 15inno launches a network to make this happen.

You can read a short overview below and you can forward an e-mail to stefanlindegaard (@) me.com if you would like to discuss how your company can join the network.

What is the purpose?

The network is a learning experience that helps companies develop insights and capabilities on how to use social media in innovation efforts.

What are the benefits?

• Your company can join 3 half-day sessions in the U.S. during the next 9 months. A company can participate with up...