• Psion, a maker of rugged mobile computers, gets better access to and interaction with their stakeholders through their IngenuityWorking.com community. SAP gets similar benefits with their Co-Innovation Lab.

• Key benefits of crowdsourcing initiatives like Dell IdeaStorm or MyStarbucksIdea are idea generation and feedback loops on ideas and projects.

• Twitter is a great tool for doing business intelligence on an industry, competitors or to get a better understanding on how the innovation community or ecosystem talks about your company. I have some difficulties time finding established cases specifically on innovation, but this will definitely become an important factor in the near future.

• Marketing and promotion of projects and innovation outcomes is a already established way of using social media and scores of companies do this.

• A thought leadership position can help a company become the “preferred partner of choice” within an innovation ecosystem. IBM is a good example of a company that is often mentioned in blogs and articles not only for their products and services but also for their ability to use social media for innovation efforts.

• You can also use social media to develop innovation and business skills for your employees.

No single social media tool is going to enable you to achieve all of these objectives. You are going to need to develop a mix of tools and you will need to determine the right mix for your company through experimentation.

A key element of open innovation is to become the preferred partner of choice within your innovation ecosystems. This status can in part be achieved by facilitating a community that is acknowledged as a key innovation resource by relevant innovation partners in business areas that are important to your company.

The status can be build on three elements: (1) the destination site, which is a company-controlled platform/website that functions as the hub of the community and enables relationships related to your innovation needs/assets; (2) thought leadership activities through social media channels; and (3) physical events that allow the community members to meet face-to-face. Neither physical nor virtual activities can stand by themselves; they need to be integrated with each other.

I will soon have a longer paper ready on how social media can add value to innovation efforts. Let me know if you have know of cases or insights that I should include in the paper.

It does not help when I look into Telecom Italia and their initiatives on (open) innovation.

My first encounter was @NextInnovation, a Twitter account for Next Open Innovation, an open innovation initiative by Telecom Italia. I like to see corporate Twitter accounts and especially when they focus on innovation. Unfortunately, there has been no updates on @NextInnovation since Nov 18 despite the account has gathered a fairly respectable number of 741 followers.

Since the telecom industry is as international as it is, I am also surprised that this open innovation initiative is in Italian language only. Perhaps they believe there is enough value to extract in the Italian innovation community or perhaps there are some language issues involved? Nevertheless, I think you need to have an international approach to open innovation in almost any industry and this requires a site in English.

When you look at the innovation section at the corporate website, you also have a hard time taking Telecom Italia serious as an innovation partner. Most of the “latest” updates are months or even years old and there are several broken links.

I often talk about that companies need to look good – and perform well – as they compete for the best innovation partners. Telecom Italia does not look good at all. It is just plain awful.

Actually, I would really appreciate some good Italian examples on (open) innovation so I can get a better perspective on the innovation capabilities in Italy. Let me know if you can help.

A recent comment from Rudolf Kutina went like this (slightly edited):

“What you see today is “Just follow the money” strategy, but in 10 years Asians well beat us on innovation and in 20 years they will teach us innovation methodologies. The main reason is that Asians today are managed to be multi-disciplined, while we just try to dive deeper in just one direction. Thus in the long term view our ability to innovate is really limited BY TIME.”

As I spend more time in Asia, I see innovation is maturing and getting more sophisticated. Overall, I believe the future of innovation belongs to Asia in particular and to some extent also South America and perhaps even Africa. I do not have much faith in Europe due to a general lack of the entrepreneurial drive you find in emerging markets as well as in the United States.

Let me get back to the title question and let me ask a couple of related questions.

Can Asia beat Europe and perhaps even the United States when it comes to innovation?

If so, when will this take place and what will be the key drivers for this to happen?

How will Asian innovation impact the global innovation community?

Which Asian countries are best prepared to climb the innovation rankings?

In short, what is your take on Asian innovation and the impact it will have in the next 5-10 years?

Reverse innovation is good example on what could happen – or is happening. Check these links: What Is Reverse Innovation? by VJ Govindarajan’s blog and Reverse Innovation on Wikipedia

Why do I believe that the use of social media and personal / team branding techniques is important for innovators? Because more than ever, corporate innovators and entrepreneurs need to build strong brands not only around their offerings, but also around their own capabilities. This is important as companies compete to build the strongest innovation ecosystems in order to get better innovation to market faster.

Simply put, corporate innovators and entrepreneurs need to pay more attention to terms such as “preferred partner of choice” and “we are in the matchmaking business” and here you can get strong results fast through the use of social media and personal / team branding techniques.

It would be great to share insights with others who believe this topic can bring value to innovators. As a discussion starter, I suggest the below topics as key elements for future articles and perhaps also for a session or workshop on this topic.

• Your Foundation and Strategic Reasons: Whether you are a big corporation or an ambitious startup, you need to have the right foundation in place and you need to know your strategic reasons before you start promoting and branding your innovation capabilities.

Are companies ready for this? This varies and it would be nice to have a quick-and-dirty assessment tool or exercise that can help shed more light on the starting point of those about to start this journey. Do you have any input on what such a tool or exercise should look like?

• Social Media for Innovation Efforts: How do you attract people to your blog or community? How do you get 8,000 followers on Twitter? How do you get value out of your followers? How can social media help your company bring out better innovation faster? I could ask many similar questions, but the key point is that we need to look further into the value of social media in innovation efforts. No need to say that this has to go beyond marketing and customer service where social media already is accepted.

• Personal / Team Branding: Everybody has a personal brand and so do teams. Taking control of this brand creates freedom and opportunities and unlocking these opportunities are imperative for you to achieve your goals. We need more insights on how to apply personal / team branding techniques in the innovation context.

Your feedback to my ideas and your views are highly appreciated.

Things have changed. Corporate innovation units have let go of people and they have scaled down on projects (size as well as number) because they are given less money. This raises a big question.

How can we get better innovation with less money?

Let’s have a discussion on this. I can start out with five suggestions that can help upgrade the innovation engine without spending too much money. The key is to focus on the most valuable resource available. Yes, you are right. I am talking about people.

Develop executive training programs: Contrary to what I wrote in this popular chapter from my first book, Why Top Executives Do Not Get Innovation, Much Less Open Innovation – and What to Do About It, I no longer believe that executives are lost on innovation.

They have moved on quite fast in recent years and corporate innovation units need to push further by developing training programs that help their executives better understand how corporate innovate works and bring them tools that enables them to weave innovation into the overall corporate strategy.

Provide coaching for the innovation unit: An increasing deal of my work is coaching for innovation leaders and/or innovation units. This work often focus on helping them focus on the bigger picture as it is quite easy to lose this due to the many daily tasks that keep piling up. This could also be part of an executive training program.

Build a better understanding of the people skills needed: Sometimes you can do more with fewer people. The trick is to better understand the skills needed. How we innovate is changing dramatically in these years due to the open innovation movement and thus innovation units might need to be re-assembled in order to make sure they have the skills needed.

On this, I have noticed that innovation units that understand their role is to facilitate innovation within the organization – rather than make it happen themselves – and to integrate internal and external resources tend to be quite successful.

Upgrade the people skills: This builds further on the above point. As things are changing fast, you need to upgrade people skills. Unfortunately, I see too many cases where this does not happen and often the reason is that people are too busy doing their day jobs.

Develop branding programs for corporate innovation capabilities: More than ever, corporate innovators and entrepreneurs need to build strong brands not only around their offerings, but also around their own capabilities. This is important as companies compete to build the strongest innovation ecosystems in order to get better innovation to market faster.

Ok, this one is a bit different than the others as it is not really about people, but it is still related since a key element for this is that innovation units need to build a much better understanding for the value of social media for innovation efforts.

Let me know what you think and please share your insights on an important question: How can we get better innovation with less money?

By the way, if you like this post, you should also read this one: 7 Challenges for Corporate Innovation Units

Lego and NineSigma have two attractive job openings. They are international jobs based in Denmark. You can read further here:

• Senior Manager, Open Innovation at Lego

• Senior Sales and Business Development Manager at NineSigma

In their 6^th year, The Front End of Innovation Europe conference in Zurich on Feb 27-29 continues to be a great place to be inspired on innovation. This year, I look forward to hearing Alexander Osterwalder on business model innovation and lots of corporate speakers. Check this link and get a 20 % discount with this code: FEI2012NINE

If you get to visit Silicon Valley this spring, you should consider dropping by at the Open Innovation Speaker Series hosted by UC Berkeley and Henry Chesbrough. The spring program has just been announced.

The book, Best Practices Are Stupid – 40 Ways to Out-Innovate the Competition, by Stephen Shapiro is a great read. Check out my review here.

80% of Innovation Projects Fail – What Should We Do? This question got some great comments worth reading.

All for now!

• “We are in the matchmaking business.” This quote came from Chris Thoen, P&G during his presentation at the recent CoDev conference. Chris also stated that one of the key objectives of open innovation is to become the preferred partner of choice. As with any kind of matchmaking, we strive to find the best possible partner and in order to do so we must be able to articulate our propositions in an attractive manner. This is very much about communication.

• Open innovation needs to become top of mind within organizations; not just within innovation teams. By now, many innovation teams understand the value of open innovation and those that do not will soon learn the hard way.

It is a tougher challenge making the rest of the company fully understand and buy into the value in open innovation. Nevertheless, this has to happen in order for them to change mindset and behaviours and thus be able to fully support open innovation and benefit from this. This is very much about communication.

• Find and be found. I advise companies to communicate more and better. Let the eco-system in your region – as well as globally – know what you are doing. Tell about your open innovation initiatives, share your learnings and ask for input.

Messages with substance move very fast within such eco-systems. This can help companies to be perceived as a preferred partner of choice or at least as a company with a potential for this to happen. You need to find the right partners, but it would be great if they also came to you, right? This is very much about communication.

What can innovation teams do to communicate better?

• Work with the communication team to develop clear messages. I do not know of many innovation teams that work closely with their communication department. These people know how to communicate and they should be able to almost any kind of message including those from an innovation team. Get them involved!

• Develop elevator pitches and train your people on how to deliver them. Some companies develop elevator pitches – very short pitches aimed at getting to the next level of customer contact – for their products and services. Why not do the same for the messages and propositions used towards potential partners as well as the colleagues you need to turn into backers of your open innovation initiatives? Check this link for further inspiration: Elevator Speech

• Develop a common language on innovation that everyone understands – internally as well externally for your partners and those that could be. This starts by developing a corporate definition of innovation that everyone should learn and you expand by developing innovation tools and processes that can be adapted by the entire organization – and external partners as well.

Can you add other reasons why communication matter and/or suggest other ways on how innovation teams can communicate better?

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 improve our current situation.

Here are the six elements Geoffrey Moore describe as needed to communicate an effective value proposition:

• For (target audience)
• Who are/wants/needs (statement of needs or opportunity or compelling reason to buy)
• The (product name) is a (product category)
• That (statement of key benefits)
• Unlike (primary competitive alternative)
• Our product (statement of primary differentiation)3

Keep in mind that some adaptation of these elements might be required for communicating value propositions for things other than products or services. However,  this approach allows you to convey all important aspects without providing too much information. It also enables you to explain your product or service in a few sentences, which is short enough for people to remember. This framework can also be used later when creating your “elevator pitch.” Here the idea is that if you can convey your message to others in 60 seconds or less, they will remember the majority of the value proposition. Since word of mouth is one of the biggest forms of communication, this is extremely important.

You will most likely never get to use an elevator pitch in the true sense, as you will almost always have more than a minute to make your case when you interact with others. However, if you think that means  there is no need to do this, you’d be wrong. Preparation is the key point of value propositions and elevator pitches. The learning you gain while defining your value proposition and tuning your pitch will make you understand your product, service, or message so well that it will become much easier for you to achieve success. That creates all the reasons in the world to take this very seriously.

Picture this: you have worked on an idea that can really make a difference at your company. Nevertheless, you have difficulties getting in touch with the key stakeholders, and when you do, you keep hitting the wall of indecisiveness.

Then one day you get a break. After having given yet another so-so presentation to people who seem unable to make a decision, you step into the elevator with the person who can singlehandedly decide whether your idea is boom or bust. You know this is your big–and perhaps only–shot. Your pulse quickens. Your body temperature rises. What do you do?

Too few people are prepared to deal with such a situation. They have not given such a situation much thought, let alone prepared something to say or rehearsed saying it. So instead of capitalizing on the opportunity, they just let it walk out the door or mess it up and end up looking like an incompetent fool. Do not leave this to luck. Prepare. Prepare. Prepare.

Would you like to help define Lego’s open innovation strategy? Would you like to help build a culture at Lego where open innovation becomes an integrated part of doing business?

Then you should apply for this job: Senior Manager Open Innovation at Lego

Your mission will be to support Lego’s growth ambition by establishing a systematic and disciplined approach to open innovation. Lego define open innovation as “systematic value creation through collaboration with internal talent, external partners and consumers”.

You will help define the strategy, set best practice standards, design processes and build their open innovation toolbox. All of this to enable the organization to effectively leverage ideas and concepts coming from employees and consumers as well as professional partners.

In addition, you will establish a strong network of practitioners across the company and together you will run pilot projects and create a culture that embraces open innovation as a natural and integrated way of innovating and creating new growth opportunities for Lego.

I have had several interactions with Lego over the years and I can promise you that you will get to work with smart as well as nice people if you land this great job. Click here for more information.

If you want to know more about how Lego embraces external input for the innovation process, you can check out these links:

You Gotta Love Lego – Crowdsourcing Meets Open Innovation

Lego’s $50 Million Open Innovation Failure

Managing Innovation – Lego Case Study by Joe Tidd and John Bessant

Open Innovation – The Key Factor Behind the Success of Lego

Lego Success Built on Open Innovation

Case Study: Lego vs P&G – open innovation

MIT’s Erich von Hippel: Open Innovation and Lego Mindstorms (video)

Connie Kalcher, VP on Lego Mindstorms (video)

Open Innovation, Crowdsourcing and the Rebirth of Lego

Singapore, January 20
Sao Paulo, March 9
Beijing, March 20

Let me know if you would like to work together on having such a session in your region.

Making Open Innovation Work
- Innovation Insights by Stefan Lindegaard

Many companies are moving beyond the basics of open innovation making this new paradigm of innovation even more complex, challenging – and rewarding. This is the outset for a session led by open innovation expert, Stefan Lindegaard, in which we look into these issues:

• Connecting the Dots: An overview of the many kinds of external input and insights on how to use social media to unleash the full potential.

• The People Perspective: The role of employees, managers and executives and a discussion on how open innovation impacts corporate decisions and organizational culture.

• Big Meets Small: Insights and cases on making open innovation between big and small companies work.

This will be an interactive session in which Stefan Lindegaard starts conversations on the above topics. Lindegaard will share his views, but does not have all the answers so your input and insights are highly appreciated in a workshop where we all learn from each other.

About Stefan Lindegaard:

Stefan Lindegaard is an author, speaker and strategic advisor. His focus on the topics of open innovation, social media tools and thought leadership has propelled him into being a trusted advisor to many large corporations. He believes open innovation requires a global perspective and he has given talks and worked with companies on open innovation in Europe, South America, the U.S. and Asia.

Stefan Lindegaard has written two books: Making Open Innovation Work (Oct 2011) and The Open Innovation Revolution (May 2010). His blog is a globally recognized destination on open innovation. You can read further at www.15inno.com

Program:

08.45 – 09.00: Networking
09.00 – 09.45: Connecting the Dots
09.45 – 10.30: The People Perspective
10.30 – 10.45: Networking
10.45 – 11.30: Big Meets Small
11.30 – 11.55: Open Q&A
11.55 – 12.00: Closing remarks

Who should attend?

The session is primarily for executives and managers working with corporate innovation strategy and execution. Entrepreneurs, consultants, and academics with an interest in innovation will also benefit from the session.

Price:

The participant fee is USD 250. If 2 persons from the same company sign-up, you will get a 3rd ticket for free.