You can use this session to give your employees and/or external network an opportunity to gain fresh insights on open innovation. You can get an idea of the topics I can get into on my website and we can of course tailor the session to fit your needs.

All I ask for is that I can blog about the insights I gain from this experience and that you cover my travel costs (my base is Copenhagen, Denmark). I believe the future of innovation is open and global and I am thus willing to travel to worldwide innovation hotspots.

This no-charge offer is good for THREE sessions this spring / early summer; one for each category. If several companies, firms or organizers show an interest in this, I take the liberty to choose those that fit my areas of interest best.

Let me know if this is of interest to you before April 9. My e-mail is: stefan@intrap.com

In this post, I argue that small and medium-sized enterprises often have to approach open innovation differently. Here are some key reasons why:

•  Control or contribution? Big corporations can split their open innovation efforts on projects in which they are either are in control or just contribute with IPR or other resources. Smaller companies should only get involved in projects where they are in control or more likely, where their contribution is truly important and valued. The project should also fit the overall strategy of the smaller company.

• Big corporations can drain a smaller company. Signs of this include long planning periods, difficulties in identifying and working with the right people and too much time spent on patent lawyers too early in the process. If these tell-tale signs appear, a smaller company need to evaluate whether this will become a drain of valuable resources that could be better spend elsewhere.

• Smaller companies need to be more active looking around whereas big corporation can focus more on being found and becoming a preferred partner of choice. Companies can look for projects and partners in their own networks (such as customers, suppliers and partners) or in external networks (such as universities, intermediaries and consultants).

On similarities regarding open innovation in big and small entities, I would like to emphasize that…

• Companies of all sizes must decide in advance whether they are ready for open innovation. Any company must ask themselves why open innovation is relevant to them, how it should be defined to their situation, how it links with the overall strategy and how it can be implemented.

All companies must also prepare the organization for a cultural change, develop and implement a networking strategy and train their employees on innovation, stakeholder management and how to work with external partners.

• Open innovation is about communication. Companies must understand the importance of communicating internally as well as externally. New social media tools such as Twitter (search and share information) and LinkedIn (identify the right people, search and share information) must be understood and leveraged.

Please feel free to share your views on this topic.

The reason for this topic is that the ability to communicate well on innovation efforts is becoming even more important as innovation turns open and global.

Innovation leaders and their executives need to convince employees as well as external stakeholders that they understand innovation and that their efforts are relevant and rewarding.

The name of an innovation programs reveals a lot. P&G calls one of the their key programs Connect+Develop, General Mills labels their efforts as Connected Innovation and Intuit runs a program called Intuit Collaboratory.

This states that they believe the future of innovation is about openness, external relationships and collaboration.

Open innovation is about finding other partners. However, it is just as much about letting potential partners find you and the title of your programs can help guide companies into your direction.

How should companies approach the naming of their programs? Actually, this starts by how they define the term innovation.

I have just had some interesting discussions on the term, innovation. Some people believe we should simply drop the term as it means so many different things to different people.

I think we are stuck with the word and we can just as well get used to it. It will not go away.

The big question is how companies will define innovation to their situation. It does not really matter how academics, consultants or others define it; each company need to define this in a way that makes sense for their company, their employees and their partners.

Then, they can start developing a common language on innovation that can help them build a strong innovation culture. When companies do this, I urge them to do it in a way that includes the open and external elements.

Why? I believe that in about 5 years of time, we will no longer talk about open or external innovation. It will just be innovation. P&G has already reached this level of innovation maturity and many others are about to follow.

I recall a recent session where the company I worked with had no definition of innovation. We looked into this and they first started to define innovation and then looked at open innovation. We quickly reached the conclusion that there is no need for two definitions. They can do just fine with one definition. The same goes for other companies, yours included.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Their first initiative is the BMW Group Idea Contest in which you can share your ideas for innovative mobility services in cities and metropolitan areas of the future. You get the opportunity to discuss and evaluate the ideas of others and win great prizes. By the way, the great prizes are not really that great, but perhaps real great prizes will just attract lots of junk ideas. Perhaps quality input comes from people who care more about kudos and recognition?

After a well-executed campaign, 3M in Austria and Switzerland launched the Zukunft Innovation initiative; a German-language platform that helps companies – not just 3M –get in touch with creative minds who want to help solve problems.

I like how 3M promoted the initiative through frequent pre-launch updates and a short video that demonstrated the initiative. This is another example that communication efforts are becoming increasingly important on innovation initiatives.

I can’t help notice that German-speaking countries seem to have many interesting open innovation-like initiatives. I look forward to visiting Germany soon in order to learn more. One company to visit will definitely be HYVE that pointed me to the BMW initiatives as well as other initiatives in the past.

Let’s consider a growing startup or a small company that is on its way to become a mid-sized enterprise. The early phases are very much about executing on single, great product, idea or technology. However, as the company grows focus tends to shift towards control rather than keeping the visionary thinking and bold approaches that build the company. This must be re-ignited. Open innovation can be the vehicle for accomplishing this objective.

Because of the high level of risk-taking involved with young ventures, leaders of entrepreneurial enterprises often have healthy or even outsized egos; it takes a certain amount of hubris to believe you can defeat the high odds against the success of a new venture. This can lead you to believe that you and your people have the best ideas. But in reality, there is a strong possibility that the best people and the best ideas are to be found outside your organization.

One key reason for Procter & Gamble to initiate open innovation programs was that they learned that for each of their 7,500 R&D people there were 200 people outside the company with equal skills and competences. An ignorant – and arrogant – company would ignore these 1.5 million people, arguing they do not matter as they do not work for us. P&G did not ignore this. They understood they should connect their own organization with the best and brightest from the outside world. Given the limited size of smaller companies, this mindset becomes even more important.

As I wrote earlier, SMEs often start with one great product or service idea and as they grow they might fail to recognize that innovation is about more than just bringing the core product or service to market. Innovation can occur at all stages of the business process, from the business model itself through to the customer experience. By broadening their thinking about what actually constitutes innovation, SMEs can more easily see the wisdom of open innovation, which can help them innovate in areas where they may not have internal expertise.

I will post more thoughts on open innovation for SME’s this week. Let me know if you have any comments on this or if you know of smaller companies that have adapted open innovation. It would be interesting to get to know more about their processes, failures and successes in order to get a better understanding of how this is different from large companies. Since small and large companies meet on open innovation, they need to start learning more about each other on this.

One of Scott Berkun’s comments went like this “If we dropped the i-word, or at least attempted to define it, I think we’d get to the core of all this much faster.” This comment builds further on an interesting article, Good Beats Innovative Nearly Every Time, in which Scott urges us to loose usage of the word innovation.

I appreciate Scott’s comments as well as I enjoyed reading his article. However, as I believe innovation will become even more important for companies, I think we are stuck with the word and we can just as well get used to it. It will not go away.

The big question is how companies will define innovation to their situation. It does not really matter how academics, consultants or others define it; each company need to define this in a way that makes sense for their company, their employees and their partners. Then, they can start developing a common language on innovation that can help them build a strong innovation culture.

In another discussion related to my article, Ralph Kerle stated that innovation is an outcome. I have to disagree as I believe innovation is a process; not an outcome. The outcome is what you get out of an innovation process in which creativity plays a big role.

You can plan this process just as you can plan other management and business processes/disciplines such as sales, logistics and finance. You can also train people to become better innovators especially when you understand that innovation works best with a holistic approach. It needs to be about more than just products and technologies.

Innovation is beginning to look more like science than art, as we in many cases are now capable of taking previous patterns and experiences and use this to predict outcomes based on the input and processes we use. This maturity is one key reason why innovation is becoming even more important – and complex.

Both Scott Berkun and Ralph Kerle argue that we should forget about the term innovation. My response is that innovation is no longer a buzz word. It is here to stay and we can argue on definitions – which I always try to avoid, as I believe each company must find their own definition. But we can’t just pretend the term does not exist or should be replaced by another one. Those days are long gone.

Let me know what you think.

April 2, Corporate Mind Exchange, Beijing – I organize and facilitate a one-day session with open innovation leaders from General Mills, P&G, Shell, Qualcomm and other companies.

April 8, Open for Business, London – I participate in or moderate a panel on open innovation.

April 19, Corporate Mind Exchange, Las Vegas – I organize and facilitate a 24-hour session with open innovation leaders from General Mills, P&G, Shell, Qualcomm and other companies.

May 3, Front End of Innovation, Boston – I am moderating a panel with Jeff Bellairs, General Mills and Chris Thoen, P&G.

May 4, IBM Impact, Las Vegas – I will be giving two separate talks on the topics of open innovation and intrapreneurship.

August 11-13, Open Innovation Summit, Chicago – I will be giving a talk and/or hold a session on open innovation.