Crowdsharing and Beyond: Innovation Lessons from O2

by Stefan Lindegaard

This is a guest post by Shomila Malik, Innovation Manager at The Lab – Telefonica O2.

I’ve been running an innovation programme inside O2 UK (part of the Telefonica group). It started as a small pilot and has grown into a company wide program that is producing new products, services and ways of doing things. It’s called O2 Crowd and includes a crowdsharing tool (provided by BrightIdea) to share ideas, comments and votes.

Employees from around the business with a problem or challenge to solve, come to my team to use O2 Crowd. We design and set up a challenge for them and ask the crowd to help.  One challenge was entitled ‘how do we create more fans?’ which led to the launch...

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...

Social Media Tools and Open Innovation: An Overview

by Stefan Lindegaard

According to Wikipedia, a common thread running through all definitions of social media is the blending of technology and social interaction for the co-creation of value. This fits well into what I see as the underlying concept of the intersection between social media tools and open innovation; it is about how we can involve various stakeholders in creating better innovation outcomes.

Kaplan and Haenlein, two researchers, state that there are six different types of social media: collaborative projects, blogs and microblogs, content communities, social networking sites, virtual game worlds, and virtual communities.

Within these categories, I find the below tools to be the most relevant for open innovation efforts:

LinkedIn: Knowledge is the key element to innovation and LinkedIn is a great tool...

The People Perspective in Open Innovation: The 15inno Open Innovation Roadmap

by Stefan Lindegaard

People are the most important element in making innovation happen. Yes, you do need good ideas and strong processes, but nothing happens if you do not have the right people.

You need a broad mindset and many skills in order to become a successful open innovator, but three things are essential; holistic approach, networking and communication.

The good thing is that people can really improve on these things. I often argue that this is one of the low-hanging fruits when it comes to getting open innovation success.

On networking skills, this is very much about setting a strategic direction for the corporate networking efforts and then giving employees training on how to become better networkers in both the virtual and real world. Having done this,...

Money and Resource Allocation in Open Innovation

by Stefan Lindegaard

The “standard” scenario is that companies start small with open innovation. It is often just one guy charged to create some quick, small wins. If this works, more resources are added and a team with several people will be formed.

Projects like this are common to companies so there is no reason to worry in the short-term. It is actually a good thing in some ways as it forces people to work hard and smart to earn their resources.

On the other hand, it can also make the efforts more short sighted with the potential of damaging the long-term potential. To counter this, an open innovation leader must fairly quickly be able to convince the senior executives about the long-term potential in open innovation and...

Why Big Companies Need Small Companies in their Open Innovation Ecosystem

by Stefan Lindegaard

Corporations that are taking the lead in open innovation are hoping to gain an advantage over their competitors as they will get access to a more diverse inflow of opportunities, which can lead to faster and better innovation. Specifically, as they look toward smaller companies to bring within the orbit of their open innovation program, corporations understand that small companies bring these advantages to the table:

• Small companies often are at the leading edge of breakthrough or disruptive innovation. Breakthrough innovation – that is, innovation with potential to be a real game changer – can be exceedingly hard to achieve in a large, bureaucratic organization where people work in silos, have their own turf to protect and are wedded to the status quo. In...

How to Approach Open Innovation: The 15inno Open Innovation Roadmap

by Stefan Lindegaard

As we can define open innovation in many ways, there are also many different approaches to open innovation.

How do you get started? OVO Innovation has developed a topology that builds on two defining attributes. It is a good inspirational starter.

Participative or Invitational: Should the sponsors invite specific people to submit ideas or should the innovation effort be open to all interested partners?

Suggestive or Directed: Should the ideas be influenced or directed by topics or needs specified by the sponsor, or should the participants be allowed to submit ideas with no asserted boundaries or conditions?

In a graphic form, it looks like this.

This model has been used in different variations at many companies.

The types of open...

How to Gain Management Support for Open Innovation

This is a guest post by Bart van As, Business Developer for the Document Services Valley, an open innovation initiative on document services founded by Océ, an international leader in digital document management. Bart’s blog on the Document Services Valley website is about open innovation in document services.

When companies start with Open Innovation, it is often said that it is of crucial importance for success to gain management support. Still, the somewhat obvious question remains: “How?”

It is not easy to gain your management’s support for something new, and especially for something that for your company might be radically new. There might be some sort of support present, otherwise you would not be allowed to start...