You Always Have to Sell Innovation!

by Stefan Lindegaard

As an innovation leader or intrapreneur, you always have something to sell. In the end it is a product or a service, but during the development of a revenue-generator, you have to sell a vision to internal and external stakeholders.

You communicate that vision by:
•   Developing a value proposition that can be adapted for various stakeholders, and then
•   Capturing the very essence of the value proposition in a short and brief elevator pitch that focuses on the recipients of the message.

In Geoffrey Moore’s classic book, Crossing the Chasm, he provides the term “value proposition” as a way to choose from among what is presented to us for consideration. Options include choosing nothing at all, if there are no choices that...

8 Pointers for Building Corporate and Personal Strategies for Social Media

by Stefan Lindegaard

Not so long ago, I hosted an event together with Cheryl Perkins of InnovationEdge. The purpose was to bring together a group of innovation leaders and discuss social media and how to use this for innovation.

It was a great session and we were able to extract several interesting insights on how corporate people view and approach social media. These insights were useful in helping the participants start building corporate and personal strategies for their use of social media. I am sure they can also bring some inspiration to your thoughts on this and thus we want to share this overview of insights:

1. The group defined two aspects of social media:

• Communication of relevant messages
• Collaboration including sharing of...

Charlie Sheen and Innovation People: A Connection?

by Stefan Lindegaard

I just read an article about Charlie Sheen. He is a strange guy. The article had a couple of headlines that made me wonder how this self-acclaimed larger-than-life character compares to innovation people. Maybe there are a few things we can learn – or just laugh about.

Be Yourself

Charlie Sheen insists that he is unique and one-of-a-kind. We can learn from this. We need to be ourselves and allow our colleagues to be themselves. Let’s play to our strengths and use those unique strengths to create strong teams.

Sky-high Salaries

Well, this is not comparable. Innovation people do not make lots of money and never will in this job. Hey, a decent salary and great challenges are not so bad.

The Bad Boy

There...

Top 3 Innovation Trends and Issues – April

by Stefan Lindegaard

What is happening in the innovation community right now? In this post, I give a quick overview of the top trends and issues based on the interactions and inspirations I have had over the last month or so.

1. User-driven innovation – does it work?

How valuable is user input for innovation? This is a classic discussion that picked up more steam with this article, User-Led Innovation Can’t Create Breakthroughs; Just Ask Apple and IKEA, by Jens Martin Skibsted and Rasmus Bech Hansen who states that companies should lead their users, not the other way around.

The article spurred lots of re-tweets, comments and a several counter-articles such as this one by Chris Grams, User-led innovation can’t create breakthroughs. Really?, and...

Open Innovation Is Hyped – and Why This Is a Good Thing

by Stefan Lindegaard

I met with a new client last week. It is an interesting and successful company that has decided to look further into open innovation and how this can help them become even more innovative.

As we introduced ourselves, the CTO noticed that open innovation is very hyped right now. This is not the first time I have heard this in the recent months and I agree. Open innovation is hyped. This is a hot topic at conferences, in blogs and articles and now it also seems to be catching fire within companies.

Hype is often a bad thing because things that are hyped tend to overpromise and under-deliver. This could very well also be the case with open innovation. However, the current hype is also...

Metrics and Open Innovation: The 15inno Open Innovation Roadmap

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is a difficult topic. I believe what’s worth doing can also be measured and there is also truth in the adage of “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. However, I have seen too many examples in which smart people get side-tracked on what really matters –the output – as they try to develop metrics in order to satisfy executives further up in the system.

The development of metrics for innovation in general has been a major topic for more than two decades. Yet there is no clear guidance on how companies should approach this in a way that makes it possible to measure internally let alone across competitors and/or different industries.

One reason that it is very difficult developing metrics that...

What a Networked Innovation Culture Looks Like

by Stefan Lindegaard

In a recent post, 4 Key Elements for Open Innovation Success, I mentioned that a networked innovation culture is critical. But what does a good networking culture looks like? It’s such a new concept that there aren’t a lot of examples available to illustrate it, but here are some key components of a good networking culture:

• Top executives have outlined clear strategic reasons why employees need to develop and nurture internal and external relationships. This includes making clear how your company’s networking culture links with and supports your innovation strategy.

• Among the things to consider when developing your networking culture strategy is what types of networks you hope to build to support your innovation efforts. If your organization is moving toward...

4 Key Elements for Open Innovation Success

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here are four key elements that are necessary for turning an open innovation strategy into a success:

• Stakeholder Analysis. You must get an overview of your internal and external stakeholders and analyze the pros and cons of the open innovation initiative for these people. Who will be affected by the open innovation intention? What issues bother these people? How can you create a value proposition that will make the stakeholders support the initiative?

One approach is to create a stakeholder map that identifies all the various groups that might be impacted by your open innovation initiative, then develop specific value propositions for each group. Don’t forget to focus on informal influencers, that is, people with a disproportionate level of influence. Find these people and...

Open Innovation and the Solar Industry

by Stefan Lindegaard

I am currently in San Diego, which seems to be the solar capital of the world based on the number of solar-related companies that I have driven by : – )

This made me wonder on what is happening within the solar industry when it comes to open innovation and I did a quick search that resulted in these fairly relevant links:

The Festo Engineering network – a closed photovoltaic community with a virtual platform for collaboration

Opinno helped Spain-based Cidersol find new applications for already available technology

Joel West blogging on the topics of clean-tech, solar, innovation and entrepreneurship

A list of solar technologies for sale on IdeaConnection (other intermediaries such as NineSigma, InnoCentive and Yet2.com are also active on this)

I...

Book a Workshop with Lindegaard on Social Media Tools and Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have developed a workshop on the intersection of social media tools and open innovation. Those are hot topics and I believe this workshop can bring value to innovation people at many companies. This could very well include you and your colleagues.

Interested? Please contact me on stefanlindegaard @ me.com and let us discuss how we can make this relevant for you and your company.

P.S. You can find some more information on this intersection in this blog post: Social Media Tools and Open Innovation: An Overview

Workshop Description: Social Media Tools and Open Innovation

Many companies have begun using social media tools such as Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs and apps in their open innovation efforts. Done right, this can put companies in a...