P&G Perspectives on Small Companies and Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is part of an interview I did with Chris Thoen, Managing Director of the Global Open Innovation office at P&G. The overall topic is the intersection of big and small companies in open innovation.

Chris shares some great insights and I hope you will enjoy this…

How well informed do you find small companies to be about open innovation?

How well a company understands and adopts open innovation isn’t linked to its size, but more so to the focus of its leadership, its openness to new ideas and its commitment to innovation. We’ve seen small companies deeply engaged in leveraging open innovation to grow their businesses. And others either not committed, or still working to understand what it means and how it...

The First Mover Effect in Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I spoke with innovation people from a big automotive manufacturer last week. We talked about the automotive industry and open innovation. They said that there is already lots of collaboration going on in their industry and that it resembles open innovation in same ways.

It was interesting to hear their views and having some understanding of their industry, I agreed with them. However, I also asked why we do not really hear about automotive companies in the open innovation community.

Perhaps they are not really doing open innovation? Could it be more about alliance management and open source than open innovation? Or is it just an industry that does not want to share their open innovation insights and experiences?

It is most likely the latter....

Good Reads on Innovation #28

by Stefan Lindegaard

Here comes a list of blog posts and articles on innovation that I have enjoyed in the last couple of weeks.

You can follow me on Twitter: @lindegaard

How IBM Uses Social Media to Spur Employee Innovation by Casey Hibbard http://bit.ly/b0K0gs

Four Principles for Crafting Your Innovation Strategy by Carroll and Mui http://bit.ly/ffQUj3

Trust and Open Innovation by @innovationfixer – Kevin McFarthing http://bit.ly/dMni5v

What Venture Capital Can Learn from Emerging Markets by VJ Govindarajan http://bit.ly/hjjk3q

What’s Your Personal Social Media Policy? by Mike Brown http://tinyurl.com/4rx7864

Corporate Culture: Whose Job Is It? by John Kotter http://bit.ly/fQcE3q

The Experimenter – running a business by data rather than hunches by Schrage

Opportunities versus Threats: A People Aspect in Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

In this blog post, Todd Boone, Director of Market Development at Psion shares some insights and experiences on the people aspect of open innovation.

As you can read below, Todd focuses on making people understand that open innovation offers more opportunities than threats. I think this is a great approach.

By the way, this blog post originates from an interview in which I asked Todd this question:

Can you give some insights on the people aspects of open innovation?

His reply:

The traditional corporate philosophy towards information is secrecy at all costs. Protect the intellectual property. We know best. All of these point to one essential tenet of open innovation – you must give up control. If you are not prepared to relinquish...

Doers versus Thinkers: Open Innovation Implementation

by Stefan Lindegaard

I led a workshop with Swedish innovation people yesterday. It was an interesting session and among many discussions, we had one on the issue of whether you should have a doer or a strategic thinker as the lead guy when you implement open innovation programs.

The vote was split on this. One half said that you need a doer because things need to happen. The other half said that you need a thinker because a strong strategic approach is important in order to succeed in the long-term.

Personally, I believe a thinker is the most important piece because it requires quite an overview to become successful with an open innovation program having in mind that you need to deal with internal as well as external...

Innovation Marketplaces: A Major Resource for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

As open innovation becomes more widespread, the need increases for innovation marketplaces that can serve as intermediaries to which companies can quickly connect.

Some of these intermediaries will serve niche markets, whereas others will be more general. Some will be set up by companies to meet their specific needs, and others will be set up by third parties that want to position themselves as an interface between companies seeking solutions and the smart people—or companies—with solutions.

Such intermediaries have a role to play with small companies as well as with large. One of the challenges small companies need to tackle when they consider engaging in open innovation is getting employees up to speed on the skills that are required to be part of an open...

Why (Open) Innovation Requires a Why

by Stefan Lindegaard

Once they understand what open innovation is, many people conclude that it is the Holy Grail and they just jump aboard without asking this all-important question: Why is open innovation relevant to your company, its present situation, and its mission and vision?

If you haven’t answered this question thoroughly, you need to bring your feet back on the ground and remember that open innovation is just a tool, not a goal. The goal is to grow your company and make a profit.

You should also have in mind that open innovation is just a piece of the overall innovation strategy and it might not even work for all companies. So you have to start out by asking this question: Why do we want open innovation?...

5 Ways to Work With Open Innovation Intermediaries: NineSigma Cases

by Stefan Lindegaard

Innovation intermediaries such as NineSigma, InnoCentive and IdeaConnection play a big role in the further development of the open innovation movement.

I like to work with those mentioned as well as with others. I am also happy to say that NineSigma supports the work of 15inno as a sponsor. But how can NineSigma help you?

You can get some ideas by checking out these five case studies from their website:

Alternative Energy Solutions: A company wanted to develop geothermal energy solutions and had previously conducted research on geothermal opportunities. Before embarking on a path to align current technologies with geothermal energy solutions, the company first had to identify what they already knew. Read more…

Augmented Reality Greeting...

When Companies Are Not Ready for Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

What advice should we give to a company that wants to embrace open innovation, but is not yet ready because of their own culture and mindset? I got to think about this after an interaction with a company that wants to open up and even wants to incorporate openness into their values.

One problem is that the company is very successful by relying on their own internal resources, which are very impressive in terms of technologies, people and processes.

Another problem is that even though the executives really seem to believe in innovation – as in the kind that is very related to R&D – they seem to lack an understanding of and a true desire to embrace open innovation and perhaps also of innovation...

Open Innovation Definitions: A View from Clorox

by Stefan Lindegaard

I have often argued that companies need to develop their own definition of open innovation and I was thus pleased to learn that Clorox agrees with this approach while watching a video presentation on their open innovation efforts.

The slides in the presentation showed that Clorox views open innovation as:

MORE CAPABILITIES AND EXPERTISE: Using others to deliver meaningful innovation

MORE FIND: Developing external networks to exponentially increase the source of new ideas

Clorox wants to use open innovation to:

1. Find ideas, technologies and products

2. Outsource entire chunks of product development

3. License / sell internal ideas and technologies to others

Hmm, I do not hear number 2 that often. Interesting…

Clorox says that for open innovation to work, need…

• strong internal...