ideaken blog - collaborate to innovate

Crowdsourcing week Singapore 3-7 Jun 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Mon, 20 May 2013 23:17:59 PDT

If you are a decision maker around Crowdsourcing, co-creation or open innovation then Crowdsourcing week happening at Singapore between 3-7 Jun would be a very relevant event to attend.

Agenda includes extensive line-up of expert sessions on various topics around Crowdsourcing for design, How to get results from crowd, Social innovation, Academia industry collaboration and many more. There is also a Crowdfunding workshop on the last day giving a deep focus opportunity to study and benefit from this new concept.

I am sure you would be able to learn from the vast spread of latest trends in Crowdsourcing by attending this event (see list of speakers here). Below I point out some of the key principals (and food for thought) of Crowdsourcing as a curtain raiser to this gala event.

Purpose of Crowdsourcing = Does your purpose for Crowdsourcing have one of the following?

Open innovation – You know what you don’t know and now you want someone to help you with solving your known problem.
Co-creation – You are simply after creating an additional delight factor for your customers using untapped knowhow of the crowd.
Crowdsourcing – You kind of know what you want but instead of going to a traditional vendor for it you would go to a place where you can get diversity, speed, reduced cost and most importantly creative options.

Infrastructure to enable your Crowdsourcing = People, mindset, IT and social enablers which can sustain your Crowdsourcing ambition.

People with open mindset would most probably sit at the top of the list of enablers for success in Crowdsourcing; reason being - it is very easy to script a failure, either by creating milestones and expectations which are not realistic or by rejecting the outcome of Crowdsourcing. The slow and steady rise of Crowdsourcing can be single-handedly attributed to the folks who believed in it and spread the word about their success stories.

Connectivity is at the core of Crowdsourcing, so the social strategy and online IT infrastructure (own or hired) would play a decisive role as well.

Managing the crowd = Meeting the business goals using Crowdsourcing.

If you play the above two cards well, you might end up getting more than a plateful of ideas, solutions or desired options for your Crowdsourcing campaign. It would be of prime importance to manage the contributors by finding a right balance between acknowledging only the contributions which really add value to your organization and at the same time not downgrade the rest of the contribution; after all, in all probability those may have read? merit albeit in different context or for a different situation. Challenge of managing the crowd and their inputs, as they say, is a good problem to have!

ideaken is proud to be a sponsor for Crowdsourcing week, If you happen to be at the event then we would love to catch up with you in person. Do write to us here.

Asia Academia & Industry – recipe for innovation success! (2 of 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 21:20:57 PDT

(Continued from the previous blog on this subject).

We spoke about 5 modes of engagements between Academia and Industry in our previous blog. Here we would get into the details around “What it is”, “How it will shape”, “Recipe for success” for each of the 5 modes below.

1. Niche Academic projects:

What is it?

Niche Academic projects are the select projects in which there is some niche involved on both sides – i.e. academia and the industry. In other words, it is a collaborative R&D but in the context of the academic projects that students are supposed to undertake in their curriculum.

How it will shape:

a) Currently most of the projects are taken up where only one side has an agenda. For example - student wants to do a project and approaches an industry, somehow he gets the approval and then industry somehow tries to provide some opportunity for him to create something which can be treated as a project. We believe that much more value can be created if somehow we connect industry and the academia on the premise where both have real interest in each other.

Recipe for success:

a) For academia: Make academic projects a whole lot relevant to industry needs.
b) For industry: Do not say yes to academic projects if you do not know what you want to do with the academic talent.

2. Innovation & Design competitions:

What is it?

A contest where students are asked to submit innovative or creative solutions and ideas for a given problem statement. The purpose on industry side can vary from branding and positioning their company to the young and educated crowd. Or tap into a creative cool of new generation and feed the findings into their innovation funnel.

How it will shape:

a) Contribution from students will increase for the sense of self achievement and self fulfilment; these traits would have replaced some of the traditional expectations of getting a job after finishing education.
b) Academia would use innovation achievements for better positioning of the academia.

Recipe for success:

a) For academia: Give credit for being creative and the same should find its way into the mark sheet.
b) For industry: Provide more avenues for the students to really showcase their creativity in a meaningful way.

3. Competitive research funding:

What is it?

As the name says, it is a typical research funding but is competitive in nature. Unlike the commonly exercised way of research funding, which is either geographical proximity based or alumni driven, here company will put up an initial challenge to call for proposals from set of academia in that region by forming teams. Only the best fit based on initial response will be given the said research funds. This will bring diversity and the competitiveness, will also improve overall innovation throughput.

How it will shape:

a) Proximity or familiarity will give way to right match (where right match will be valued more than agenda of funding someone somehow). Proximity issues will be taken care by communication technologies and familiarity will give way to the need to be competitive.
b) Academia and Industry both worry about the black hole at the other end, wherein neither one trusts each other enough, going forward we see this comfort level will improve.

Recipe for success:

a) For academia - Strategy for research focus is one thing; you also need strategy for getting funded.
b) For industry – Industry must understand and encapsulate currently neglected academia goals, in their relationship with academia.

4. Open innovation:

What is it?

Open innovation is a systematic inflow of external know how to accelerate enterprise innovation, resulting in a new or improved products, services, or processes, and therefore increase market share. So OI is always about solutions which are already existing – may be the in minds of people, in labs or on a notepad. You really don’t start from scratch. Power of many, power of diversity, and Power of Pull makes this tick.

How it will shape:

a) First, though slowly, the misconception and wrong comparison with “open source” is declining and will get eliminated. Open in open innovation means problem is in the public domain, not the solutions.
b) IP related issues will get addressed by the realization and learning that these issues are no different than the IP issues they anyway face in other aspect of business. More importantly, there will be a realization that because there are ways to mange IP related challenges, same can be applied in case of open innovation.

Recipe for success:

a) For Academia: Spend less time on the solution, spending time on problem makes you far better prepared to solve something. Provide equal opportunity for your innovative talent, do not identify some folks, group them and label them as innovators.
b) For Industry: The point at which open innovation gets a chance - is moving backwards. So companies are starting to utilise open innovation at the same time they begin the work on a new product or a new challenge internally.

5. IP commercialization:

What is it?

Getting an IP in place is only a beginning in the technology world, there are lot many things needed to get the ball rolling and create value from the IP you have. Market assessment, Value assessment, information chart for Licensing or Sale, Locate and showcase technologies to prospects, Negotiate and Make Deals; are some of them and as a whole called as IP commercialization space.

How it will shape:

a) IP marketplace will be common soon; it may no longer depend too heavily on specialised skills in patent domain.
b) On the other hand IP transactions and licensing across borders will increase, in turn increasing the complexity and hence opening up new business opportunities.

Recipe for success:

a) For academia: Go pictorial to explain your IP, Crowdsource ideas within the campus, move fast.
b) For industry: There is lot to learn from M&A concepts when it comes to IP commercialization, be in terms of bringing IP inside the company or licensing out of the company.

ideaken - a leading provider of collaborative innovation platform in Asia, is now also a leading innovation and research mediator for academia and industries in Asia.

Why don’t our leaders say – We should imagine more!

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 22:22:42 PDT

You routinely hear leaders asking their staff to innovate or think out of the box. But frankly won’t they be better off asking their staff to imagine more. Why? Since imagination is the key and sometimes the only way to innovate truly. But that is easier said than done. Imagination is a skill which needs to be developed especially since for most of the time in the adult world, we have spent being a realist and we are generally criticised for imagining or dreaming about things.

The best way to see imagination in its purest form is in children. Observe closely the next time your child or his friends play. They have no boundaries, they are not scared of being laughed at, they don't know what is possible and what is not and hence they can imagine freely. As for the majority of us, we will be lucky if we could be spared some time in this state before we are brought down to our practical world.

So what can we do? Suggest we set aside dedicated time for imagination sessions every week at our offices. What do we do in these sessions? Here are some thoughts to get you started. Once you get in the flow of things, sky is really the limit.

1. Ask folks to imagine how their product will be used by consumers in the future.
2. Imagine how new features for your product will be used by your customers
3. Imagine a world where your product is not present. How does the customer satisfy the need that your product caters to?
4. Come up with at least 10 non-traditional uses of your product. The product should not have been designed with this use in mind.
5. Imagine how you will sell your product to somebody who does not understand your language.

I think you get the drift. These exercises are not important and there are no right answers. But it is very important for your team members to start visualising and letting their imagination fly again. Ensure that criticism is not allowed and reward the most revolutionary thoughts. Over a period of time, your staff should be able to imagine freely again and then the true magic of innovation can happen.

Happy Innovating! I mean happy Imagining!

Photo Blog - ideaken as innovation sponsor at TECHfluence, a technology carnival at Anna University, Chennai on 14the and 15th Feb 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 22:36:27 PST

Asia Academia & Industry – recipe for innovation success! (1 of 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:13:49 PDT

Belief, enforcement and preaching that we are not innovative enough and we need to be more innovative are highly inaccurate and misleading!

We cannot innovate MORE by planning to innovate more. Innovation is an intersection of market dynamics, personal passion & quest for delight which follows it. Innovation will happen as long as there is a need for it to happen. The ONLY thing we as responsible citizen need to do is get out of its way, provide infrastructure and a passage for it to happen, for when it wants to happen. Period.

We won’t define innovation - it has varied meaning to different people and it is ok that way. The reason you are reading this implies you already know that Academia Industry collaboration can bring in benefits for both parties, so we will not get into why it is good and all that. Instead - We will talk about MEANS to do it. Many things I write here is part of and a derivation of information I have collected while talking to many eminent people from Academia and Industry.

We have identified 5 key modes of engagements between academia and industry, and I will explain each of them along with challenges they face and how we think this mode of engagement will shape in the near future. And then we will talk about one key success recipe for academia and one for industry.

We would exclude internships; industry led trainings, academic consulting etc. though they too play a role in here.

Here are these 5 modes of engagements. I will get into details for each of these in following blogs, but here is the list with concise description.

1. Niche Academic projects: Most of us ignore this as a routine activity as academia and students go on with mindset as one of the task to finish. This tiny piece holds lot into it as long as someone explores it to the extent it deserves to be explored.

2. Innovation & Design competitions: They take place all around us, but what is that one thing which can make it far more impactful in an academia industry context?

3. Competitive research funding: When you add “Competitive” word in front of ‘research funding’, can it make a bottom line difference – on ROI?
4. Starting & restarting open innovation: There are far more half baked solutions than the ones which innovators have finished working on. We will tell you why these incomplete solutions are good for their incompleteness.

5. IP commercialization: Have you recently heard a complaint from an innovator in your academia that he or she has an excellent innovation but no one wants to know about it, far from using it for their business growth. Do you wonder what wrong is prevailing?

To be continued in the next blog … (for challenges each of these modes face and how we think they will shape up, we will also talk about one key success recipe for academia and one for industry in the next blog).

ideaken as leading provider of collaborative innovation platform in Asia is now also a leading mediator for academia and industries in Asia.

Changing face of Academia Industry collaboration.

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 18:34:14 PST

A common ground, where academia lends the conceptualization & generalization skills and the industry provides the practical reality in which the conceptualization can be rooted.

This has been and will be the root factor for this collaboration. Like every other trend, this trend too is adding another dimension to it – ‘impact’.

The expectations from the industry have risen. Not only do they look at academia for fresh ideas and primary research but they now, for a valid reason, also expect them to provide real differentiation to their outstanding problems, fulfill a need and, of course, help them make money.

Though academia has been a top source of fundamental research and know how, it also has been the biggest black hole for huge sum of funds from organizations across US and Europe. But gone or going are the days when companies invested in academic research for a tick in their strategy checklist. Gone are the days when companies never came back to see what happened to their funds, and gone are the days when an organization funded same academia, same department, headed by the same person for decades.

The reasons for this shift are many,

a) Earlier the small number of organizations who got it right, had got it right for a long time, and large number of organizations who got it wrong continued doing it wrong for a long time, and they never knew or could never admit it.

b) The most common route to industry academia collaboration has been the alumni of that academia in the respective organization as a key interface. As one can imagine this restricted the possibilities and almost made it an one to one exploration i.e. top 2-3 executives would collaborate with 2-3 academia they came from.

c) Availability of large number of fundamental innovations, be it electricity, communication technology, computing power, nanotechnology and so on, has created millions of not so fundamental but immensely beneficial applications or call it sub innovations which we all use in our daily lives.

I will leave the interpretations of above three points as to why they act as reason for the shift wherein now organizations are increasingly looking at academia for applied research and impact driven innovation, incremental innovations, even non technical and design innovations.

Companies like ideaken play a key role in this new equation, where diverse yet systematic, based on primary research yet with sufficient social and business impact, is the new norm for academia industry collaboration.

How can SMEs benefit from Crowdsourcing?

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 18:25:24 PST

Typically Crowdsourcing has been associated with large brand names that have huge budgets and try to involve the crowd to co-create products. Best examples which come to mind are Coca-Cola or Lays. The key thing in these engagements is millions of fans and also budgets to spend on advertising and build up awareness.

So the question is - Can Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) use Crowdsourcing techniques since they don't have huge budgets or millions of followers? Thankfully the answer is yes, and to do so SMEs can adopt some of the techniques described below.

More the merrier, yes but no – While it may be OK and acceptable for big brands to just focus on getting anybody to contribute, SME firms need to be very focused on who they are trying to attract. When you are small, you may not have a brand image which you can give back and which a contributor can relate to, so providing a very specific reason or a trigger is of utmost importance in order to get fewer responses which are more relevant. This will help you save lot of effort, time and money in dealing with thousands of responses. For example - if your product offering is for sports persons, then challenge their intellect such that they would want to be part of your innovation.

Be trustworthy, but how? - Creating the trust of your customers is good for your business, but creating trust with a casual contributor overnight is not worth the effort. Use a trusted partner like ideaken, to reach out to large number of relevant and willing contributors. Once someone contributes, then you would also have time and reason to build the trust.

You are better than your bigger competition, at least at this one - One of the areas where large brands may falter is in acting on good suggestions from the crowd quickly. This is mainly because large brands have existing businesses which they can't afford to change. On the other hand, SMEs typically don't have such limitations or say have less of it. Be nimble in your approach and act on good suggestions early.

You might as well learn few new things about open innovation while Crowdsourcing ideas for your business - which could open up new opportunities for you to contribute and benefit via open innovation initiatives by bigger players in your domain.

In summary, SME have much to benefit from Crowdsourcing, and knowing these techniques might help.

ideaken can help you Crowdsource for ideas, solution and innovation, get in touch for a special SME package.

Crowdsourcing for Branding.

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:00:58 PST

I was reading a rather disturbing survey report, conducted by YouGov, which concluded that nearly half the customers (43%) don't think it is worth complaining after a bad experience and move to rival products, as they think that companies simply don't care. This is a worrying trend from a brand engagement perspective. Just think of it. Products and brands are the lifeline of any organisation. A lot of effort goes into coming up with a product with multiple teams within the organisation who work together. No organisation can afford to lose customers in this manner.

The same survey revealed that customers would be more likely to give feedback if they receive a response (81%). Also majority of customers (78%) were open to give feedback if there were rewards or some incentive offered for it. Another interesting fact is that involving customers in innovation is found to fuel performance.

While most brand managers are slowly adopting social media tools to listen and engage the customer in their product development process, we observed following trends of using Crowdsourcing for branding.

1. Customer feedback surveys giving way to crowdsourcing engagements - While customer feedback through surveys/interviews are established way of getting inputs, they tend to ‘lead’ the customer and thus you don't always get unbiased inputs. Surveys are also increasingly considered boring and you see most people try and avoid them. Crowdsourcing engagement, on the other hand, is an open ended way of getting inputs and so tends to be more realistic in engaging users and capturing inputs which can be of real value for your company and eventually to end customers.

2. Social Media tracking no longer only for responding to customer complaints - but also for provoking responses which may not necessarily be complaints. Customers are much more vocal today and that has opened up the opportunity to involve them in building your products, service and eventually your brand.

3. Improve Brand Perception at much lower cost – In today's cluttered world, brand marketeers are finding it difficult to stand out. There is always a high possibility of someone else who spends more on advertising and steal focus from your campaign. Consumers have learned how to close their eyes and ears from constant bombardment of your ads. Crowdsourcing campaigns offer an ideal platform for marketeers to improve their brand perception and stand out as a company which values customer inputs and preferences at a much lower cost.

4. Develop customer base and lead users - Anybody who participates in a brand engagement initiative is very likely to develop into a customer for life, if the brand/company engages the user and values their inputs. There are many cross-sell/upsell opportunities if this group of participants are engaged and nurtured.

Are you planning online Crowdsourcing for ideas & Solutions?

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 00:03:00 PDT

Here are some important aspects you must consider before you begin online Crowdsourcing for ideas & solutions?

What is your purpose to do online Crowdsourcing?

Check if your purpose indicates one or more of the following

a) The response you get is not as much important as the purpose of engaging with the users.
b) You have had this problem and you already tried all possible ways but are not able to solve it.
c) You don’t have any problem; you need ideas to do what you do still much better.

Note that you may have more than one purpose from above list, but typically you will have one of these as primary purpose. If your primary purpose is a) in above list, then this indicates that you want to use Crowdsourcing for marketing or branding purpose. If b) then it reflects that you would like to use Crowdsourcing for doing open innovation. Finally if c) sounds like your true purpose, it might indicate that you would like to co-create with either employees or customers.

If you struggle to fit your purpose in one or more of the above pointers then I suggest you have a second look at your plan, it might not be worth Crowdsourcing.

How would you enable online Crowdsourcing?

One sure way is to develop a website or pages within your website. It takes anything between 60 to 180 days to design a good system which can enable your basic Crowdsourcing. If you plan to have a workflow, approval, wiki or any fancy stuff then the time could be even more. Or in Crowdsourcing spirit you can outsource this to a company who is specialising in doing just the sites for Crowdsourcing. This will also help you save time and effort and also benefit from the experience of previous campaigns.

a) I suggest you create a new URL for the campaign and promote it with minimum of your branding or marketing material.
b) Avoid same look and feel for subsequent campaigns.
c) Make sure your online avenue for Crowdsourcing campaign has excellent up time and the URL works even after the campaign is over.

How would you take care of IP and confidentiality?

There is lot to learn from the processes your organisation has put up to deal with contract work, partnership or the outsourcing. The main point is the ability to segregate what cannot get out of the building and what can. Apply the same principles for Crowdsourcing.

a) Break down your purpose into smaller chunks. Crowdsource for one or more of these chunks which has biggest potential to benefit as per discussion around first point on “Purpose” above.
b) Think if your competition puts up such a Crowdsourcing challenge, will you benefit from it?. If the answer is “No” then most probably it is safe to make it public. Don’t forget that we are only taking about the challenge to be in public domain, the responses are anyway protected and only authorised persons can see it.
c) If responses could have IP involved then clearly state in your challenge how the IP will be handled.

How would you get the desired results?

Yes the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If you are a fairly big company then starting with your employees could be a good option. Requesting them to share it with their personal network is a big no no. If they do it on their own then consider you have put up a pretty interesting campaign.

a) Test on a sample user base to see if participants understand what you are after?
b) Decide on reward which is proportionate to your organization stature, purpose you are trying to accomplish, effort someone would put in to response and above all benefit you would receive because of a good response.
c) Use social networking enablers and professional Crowdsourcing vendors like ideaken to get desired results.

Finally remember - It takes patience and a little bit of experimentation to achieve consistent results in Crowdsourcing. Try out different campaigns and develop metrics to measure the benefits from your crowdsourcing initiative.

Happy Crowdsourcing!

Why talk about Implicit Crowdsourcing?

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 21:27:29 PDT

Basically to showcase that seemingly unsuspected things have Crowdsourcing involved, and if you can develop an eye for it then you might be able to come up with better usage of Crowdsourcing for your business.

The Crowdsourcing based business or a project is comparatively easy to detect, but it is amazing that there exist many trivial but interesting examples all around us which has Crowdsourcing embedded. The influence might vary for each case; however they might open your minds to rather interesting possibilities.

Scene 01:

You decide to learn a new language. You searched on Google and zeroed in on one website. You had a great experience in learning a new language. At the end of it, to your surprise you might as well have contributed in translating
digital text for businesses.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

The language learners also help to translate digital text for businesses for other clients. For example – if say 50 people guess that the word “pelota” in Spanish means “ball” in English then Duolingo assumes that it is correct. Duolingo has more than 250,000 active language learners – so you can guess the “intelligence” it has acquired through Crowdsourcing.

Scene 02:

A leading news daily posted an article online on their website with a title “Vivekananda balls to boost Modi campaign “. I glanced over it and said to myself, they need better editors and I moved on. It could have been some journalist’s way to sensationalize the article or just a genuine oversight.
When the article went in press for a print edition the next day, the news title did not have the obvious issue and was changed to “Vivekananda volleyballs to spike up Modi campaign”. I checked back the online version and it was changed there as well.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

Within hours of publishing the article online, unlike me, many readers objected and commented on the online article. The news daily took a note of it. The news business is typically one way traffic, and reader’s feedback is usually on general public or parties covered in the article. Here you see a business case for media to formalise incorporation of such feedback before they reaches wider audience.

Scene 03:

There was this interesting page doing rounds in a South American city. Simply compare randomly selected two faces and tell if they match or not, and get paid for it.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

This case is an attempt to locate the offenders in the mob video captured by an amateur. Authorities asked several citizens to assert if the individual pictures match with randomly selected images of their citizens, but they did it without telling the background story. Such Implicit Crowdsourcing with undisclosed agenda, however has to face moral questions (and for the right reason) if it is right to get work done w/o revealing the end purpose.
In another similar example, authorities at UK uploaded 2000+ images of rioters from London in 2011 and asked people to identify them.

Scene 04:

You are surfing the web and at one of the sites, you entered a captcha validation (where you need to see the picture and key in the letters to prove you are human and not a machine). And you went on with your surfing life.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

Well, you just made a valuable contribution to digitizing an old precious book. One of the two words in the captcha image was scanned from the heritage book that they want digitized. And in case you are wondering how the website knows if the words you typed is correct or not, and if they already know then why they need digitise again. The trick is they always use a set of two words, one of them is known to them, and that is the only one used for validation. The second word you typed in is your contribution to digitise a book. You can see how a entire book can get digitised one word at a time.

This list can go on and we will share more examples like these in the coming months. And you too can send us instances you spotted.

These examples might trigger ideas on how you can utilize Crowdsourcing for your own business.

ideaken can help you Crowdsourcing challenge based problems or a scenario where wisdom of crowds can make a difference for your business.

FRUGAL Open Innovation

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 03:32:58 PDT

Frugal Innovation is the art and science of taking out non-essentials from a product manufacturing process, from product feature list and from product maintenance lifecycle, in turn drastically reducing cost to the extent which didn’t hold much importance in pre globalised world.

Frugal Innovation for Product Innovation is what “Lean” is for production practice – which considers dedicating resources for a goal other than the one which creates value to the end customer as waste and a target for elimination.

Why is Asia at the forefront of it? The primary reason is scarcity of resources, (which has nothing to do with anything else but the fact that this part of the world was inhabited first!), and the necessity to get around the problem of scarcity. For example the inexpensive ECG machine developed by GE, which addresses the key scarcity of continuous electricity and can even runs on a car battery.

Case for FRUGAL Open Innovation

I am using this term ‘FRUGAL Open Innovation’ while I think aloud and eventually made this a title of this blog!

1) The thought I am working backwards from is ‘Open innovation’ and ‘Frugal Innovation’ both have shown its merits and their share of challenges in the recent past. What happens when you combine these? Does it make sense? And if it does make sense then what are we talking about?

We are talking about a conscious effort and hence adding ‘must meet’ or ‘good to have’ FRUGAL EXPECTATION in open innovation challenge definition.

2) Though frugal innovation is happening and will keep on happening, with an assumption that you would like to derive some benefits and check out the frugal possibilities for your products and services, let us continue working backwards from the thoughts we discussed so far.

Arbitrarily putting stretch goals won’t make something Frugal. The expectations and hence the objectives of frugal innovation need to come from a root of it – ‘The Need’. So the open innovation aspect of it starts even before we talk about the solution. Unless you already have a hang of what is the need, your first step should be to reach out to diverse audience of that geography and solidify the need.

It is very important to note that even if you are trying to create a product for developed world eventually, it cannot skip the step at a geography where application of that frugal product makes more sense. In fact, most probably the frugal idea won’t take birth if this step is omitted. And if it is born anyways then it still might leave some unanswered questions about its real frugalness!

For innovators from developed world, one of the challenges would be to embrace frugal thinking, but it’s just a matter of time.

3) Note that we are still talking “The need” and haven’t moved towards the invention part of it. One last reason I feel like mentioning here is, origin of most of the successful frugal innovations were the need (or pain) felt by an individual. So as an organization you should not skip this step and there is no better way to simulate it than co-creation.

4) From here on you have two enablers to take you forward.

a) One, you can tap into the inventions which match your need. The small issue with this (and even the previous step of formulating the challenge with the help of need owners) is many of the frugal innovation authors won’t be reachable on internet. But many might. One of the good things in Asia is when you omit many, many still might remain! Nevertheless partnering with the local partners like ideaken will help.

b) Once you have got the need formulated and the frugal aspect incorporated. (Which you will need to be really sure about), you can ignore from where the solution come from. In other worlds you are back to pure open innovation and still have a frugal strain incorporated as one of the expectations.

So here is the definition of Frugal open innovation

Frugal Open Innovation

Frugal Open Innovation is a conscious effort to incorporate the expectation of taking out non-essentials in a perceived localized need, followed by an innovative solution with the help of external know how, to delight the customers with perceived but mostly with non perceived need of same or different geography.

Trends for Open Innovation, Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 01:53:36 PDT

We, at ideaken, have been keeping a watch on the new trends in open innovation and Crowdsourcing, while the clear definitions and the trends are still far from arrived, following is our take on what they should convey and stand for.

Open innovation is a systematic inflow of external know how to accelerate enterprise innovation, resulting in a new or improved products, services, or processes, and therefore increase in market share. (Derived from and with due acknowledgement to Dr. Henry Chesbrough)

Co-creation with Co-workers is an act of innovating with the help of employees who are officially not designated as ‘Innovator’ in your enterprise.

Innovation Competition is a simplest form of Open Innovation, executed as one off or at yearly interval for an intellectual connect, market advancement and diverse innovative ideas.

We find following as philosophy and trends being acknowledged in general.

1. “Can't ignore open innovation” - Most companies agree that open innovation is a definite plus to their R&D efforts and they can't simply afford to ignore it anymore. Type in “open innovation” and company name of your choice in Google to see for yourself. Though confidentiality and IP related questions still remain the primary concerns, we also see that some of these concerns dilute substantially after processes and best practices followed by companies using open innovation successfully are discussed.

2. “Collaboration, not Competition, is the way forward” – We believe this statement misrepresents the underlying thoughts more often than not. The world is too big and too complex to put ‘collaboration’ against ‘competition’. The real future is in right sequencing and benefit from both. For example you might decide to identify opportunities using a consortium based approach, followed by close collaboration with a select few as it is not possible to collaborate with infinite number of individuals or organizations and do justice to all parties. True technology advancement can happen at the intersection of competition as a reason and collaboration as an enabler.

3. “Innovation as a branding strategy” – We believe we are going to see more of this going forward. It helps in two ways - first it communicates to potential customers that the company is committed and serious about improving its products and services. Secondly it pushes the company to deliver on the innovativeness image they have been portraying for themselves!

4. “Innovation for engagement” - This is yet to be tried more widely but has been used quite successfully in Information Technology industry, where candidates are given puzzles or tough challenges as a means to shortlist for recruitment. There's an opportunity to drive innovation by this means. We foresee a future where companies would pose their tough open innovation challenges to students and recruit based on responses. Employees recruited via this route can then drive those projects to completion.

Check out ideaken.com for your Open Innovation, Co-Creation and Crowdsourcing needs.

Open Innovation in China.

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 08:08:07 PDT

What are some important aspects to consider while thinking about open innovation and co-creation in China? Does it need to be looked at differently?

Asia continues to rise and fit better into the global economy every passing year. And China is an essential and a large contributor in making this happen.

Responsibility of doing innovation goes in hand with such transition, but often takes far longer than to pass the language and culture barriers. In other words, for Asia and China to continue their ascent, they must also invent at par with the west. That said, how does open innovation and co-creation as accelerator of innovation fair in China and what are the opportunities?

Why Chinese customers could be bit different than you expect: While countries like India has been hugely influenced and has accepted western norms, same is not true for China. If your business really wants to enter China, then you will need to understand the customers more than you will need to do in rest of the world. So co-creation with customers is not just good to have but almost an essential strategy.

Business model of customized services, products and experiences: One of the business model innovations happening around the world is with respect to customized services, products and experiences. Though there are clear customer delight factors, it is usually not possible to build machines to automate the delivery of such experiences. Think of a personalized women’s designer footwear for a lady in Spain. China with its huge capability in manufacturing excellence, combined with huge skilled manpower, could have a big advantage over rest of the world and rest of Asia to perform exceptionally well in businesses which are based on personalization or customization of product delivery.

Frugal or Reverse Innovation: China primarily due to the sheer size, over last 1000 or so years has almost lived in its own universe. And that has made them immensely indigenously innovative. Every aspect of products, process and application of things has their own flavor in China. This opens up a huge opportunity for rest of the world to look at the so called universally accepted way of doing things in completely new light, and in turn spur innovation of a different kind.

Academia connection: With more than 2500 universities and 20 million students, China boasts of the biggest source of intellectual talent no one would like to miss out. The new generation in China wants to experience the world, more open than ever to jump onto opportunities which connects them to outside of China. If you have Academia collaboration in your list then China will figure in it sooner or later.

So what’s on the other side? What could be the one big hurdle?: Unlike the west, Asia is not good at marketing their innovations; not for the purpose of selling; but to reach out, receive diverse opinions, and improve it with outside help. Most of the Asian countries lack this attribute.

From where the ideas might come from AND from where it may NOT.

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Mon, 21 May 2012 07:14:12 PDT

Ever wondered where you should put in your effort to increase the chances of getting positive innovation outcome, or where you should not? We attempt to answer this question below, where we prioritize many positive and negative origins of innovations. If you find something missing or have a different opinion then we surely would like to hear from you.

Situation 1:
You are looking at sustaining innovation, you know the problem which is not easy to solve, and you need an innovative solution.

- ideas most probably come from … someone who has already partially or fully, in same or different domain - solved it.
- ideas most probably come from … from a analysing a conflict between two or more expectations of your overall objective.
- ideas most probably come from … how emerging countries getting around it or from a person from different industry all together.

- may NOT come … From someone you were expecting it to come from.
- may NOT come … from your city of operations.
- may NOT come … from a problem statement which has not evolved from its original state during last few months.

Situation 2:
You are looking at creating a disruption in how user consumes the product or a service, even changing the mindset and create completely new need.

- ideas most probably come from … a serious trouble, and not routine goals and objectives.
- ideas most probably come from … Confidence from your previous success.
- ideas most probably come from … Individual Genius, followed up with knowledge based collaboration.

- ideas may NOT come … from meeting rooms and conferences.
- ideas may NOT come … From a situation where top management is waiting for the team to deliver.
- ideas may NOT come … when you are in a hurry to counter the competitor’s recent launch.

Situation 3:
You are convinced that little drops can add up, and you are keen to innovate at a lowest denominator on a continuous basis.

- ideas most probably come from … Diversity of idea providers, Diversity in opportunities you make avilable.
- ideas most probably come from … Genuine ego to be better than the rest in the market.
- ideas most probably come from … an irrelevant inspiration or derivation of bad or not so good ideas.

- ideas may NOT come … When you are trying to think of an idea!
- ideas may NOT come … From the provider of previous great idea.
- ideas may NOT come … When you receive many ideas and goal is reduced to selecting one great sounding idea.

Announcing winner of DSM e-nnovation challenge hosted on ideaken platform.

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Fri, 18 May 2012 07:32:17 PDT

Geoff McCue from US who submitted a detailed idea of exercise suit with multi-functional resistance patches is the winner of DSM e-nnovation challenge hosted on ideaken platform. Geoff wins a VIP trip for 2 to the Olympic Games in London this summer. Congratulations Geoff!

The jury's main verdict was that Geoff McCue had submitted a solution that was elegant in its simplicity.

Geoff said "My design was triggered by the variable elasticity of Arnitel Eco, as well as its ability to be shaped into different forms and colours, making it possible to give every resistance level a different colour."

Runners up in the competition were Alexander Xydas with shin pads; Alberto Villareal with a soccer ball; Sebastian Wolzak, Millie Clive-Smith & Seitaro Taniguchi with a prosthetic leg; and Daniel Hernly, who was selected by the popular vote, with a golf glove.

Jury Chairman Francis Aussems, Innovation Manager at DSM Engineering Plastics says: "The quality of the ideas that contestants submitted was very high. The 5 finalists delivered absolutely top professional designs and ideas.” Francis Aussems concludes: "No single entry was the same, and most designs were valid applications of Arnitel Eco”.

The DSM e-nnovation contest, which was launched in 2011 on ideaken platform, invited creative thinkers and designers interested in sports to submit ideas for equipment innovations that could make a difference in any sport. The specified material for the designs was Arnitel Eco, a bio-based thermoplastic copolyester. Karen Scholz, Project Manager Open Innovation at DSM says: "As a company that is strongly committed to open innovation, DSM is always ready to talk to the designer community. We want to create valuable applications with our materials and a competition such as this gives us the insights into people's needs and expectations. This competition enabled us to start such a dialogue about design and sport– we are keen to make it an ongoing conversation”.

Jayesh Badani, CEO of ideaken.com said “We loved hosting DSM Arnitel innovation challenge; it was an exciting experience to reach out to a unique mix of innovators from material science, design and sports domains. This example showcases how open innovation is not only for technology advancement, but also for market advancement.”

Crowdsourcing for not only Technology Advancement, but also for Market Advancement

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:15:58 PDT

So you have spent a lot of time, effort and money to come up with that very niche and breakthrough product. Thankfully you have also achieved remarkable success with it and have found various applications for your product. But have you explored all avenues? Are you missing out on other opportunities of using your product in diverse areas? How can you be sure that you have explored enough if not all?

This problem is not new. Traditionally companies rely on hiring consultants who are experts in their field to give them suggestions or in some cases, actually leave it to their customers to further develop it. But now with the advancement of crowdsourcing, it is possible to use the crowd to further develop new application ideas. The advantage is the diversity of ideas. Also research has shown that experts and customers will only help in getting incremental innovations or application ideas, in related areas. For truly blue sky thinking and disruptive application ideas, we need to reach out to unrelated audience. Breakthrough and disruptive ideas are more likely to come from the freaks and geeks, more diverse the audience, the better the probability of finding something really out of the box.

So how do you go about it and what are some of the success factors when using crowd to get application ideas for your product?

1. First and foremost, ensure that all jargons and standard information are eliminated when describing your product. This is important to keep a sharp focus on the key aspects otherwise the reader might lose interest quickly or end up looking at what is not important for the purpose at hand (e.g. Avoid putting standard information about your company at the beginning)

2. Ensure that the key strengths and limitations of the product are highlighted. Don’t use your marketing material; instead use internal technical specifications to arrive at the product boundaries. Specifically – don’t try to steer the reader towards any specific area of applications.

3. Avoid temptation to go to people you know – take a chance with unknowns, especially across domains and expertise.

4. Beware of the fatigue which sets once you get the ideas. It is like, now you got the ideas, you can look at it anytime. Chances are you won’t, and even if you do, the rigour might give it a miss. Key is to finish the evaluation soon after the ideas are received.

5. Keep an eye out for the invisible potential in the ideas received. As a rule of thumb, spend at the least, as much as you spent on preparation, on executing the process of receiving ideas.

So is this applicable to any kind of product? While the concept is applicable to any kind of product, niche products, probably, are the best place to begin with.

ideaken helps organizations and SMEs to leverage crowdsourcing for product application ideas, identifying partners and market expansion.

Diversity - hard to define, but has pretty good impact on business & innovation.

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 20:13:52 PDT

When you come across someone very innovative or creative, most probably you would be looking at an intersection of abilities and the breadth of knowledge. If you zoom out a bit, the communities which are rich in diversity are also fun to be in. Take it to another level and you will find companies which are most innovative are also the ones who support diversity – not by chance but pretty much by design.

However diversity is not an overnight change which you can bring into your community or a company.

Let’s examine ‘Why’ diversity has such positive impact and ‘How’ you can make sure you are not leaving this important aspect unaddressed and how you can benefit from it in your quest for the business growth and innovation.

WHY (diversity has positive impact)

a) It all starts from a very unique environment and culture we as individuals are brought up in . The world is so big that no single community can survive with the same outlook, practices and tools. This localized and trapped knowledge is pretty much accessible via the people who move around the world.

b) Heard of bio-mimicry, the science of looking at nature and solving problems not related to nature or taking an inspiration and innovate. Diversity is a tool using which one can think from different perspectives, which as we all know can result in inventions.

c) Most probably your company strategy is somewhere trying to capture the long tail of a market, you probably need a similar strategy for your research and development activities, where you can reach out to the long tail of talent, the just in time, and the right match and just for the period you really need it.

HOW (you can promote diversity)

a) Companies do not have a bias in their hiring policies, but the person in control could pretty much influence the not so diverse hiring, best place to retrospect. Though one way to bring in diversity is to bring in people from diverse background, another important way is to reach out to them and engage with them in a mutually beneficial way for a short duration of time.

b) Apply tools which bring in diversity, talk to the wrong people (assuming you have already spoken to the right people!), pick the odd country and imagine your product and services there, may not be for your expansion but just to get away from stereotype market you see around you. You may not be able to build a machine which flies like a bee, but you will surely find an idea for improvement, get inspired, and possibly get close to where you want to be.

c) Long tail of a talent match is all about spreading it wide and letting the receiver decide if he or she would like to engage. Diversify from your conventional methods of engagements; the good news is it does not cost the earth in this connected world.

ideaken enables your engagement with individuals from diverse geographies, connect to the perceived wrong set of people and engage with someone who could be at the long tail you are after!

Thinking about how to use social media for your innovation needs?

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 00:19:29 PST

Social Media is slowly maturing and companies are now beginning to explore the potential of using social media for their business. While its use has been proven in customer service, providing post sales support and managing reputation - most customers are still not clear on how to use it for their innovation needs.

Here’s some food for thought. We believe there are primarily 2 methods of using social media channels to fuel innovation.

1. Social media as a Listening in medium to identify trends - This is easy to get started, listening to customers is an old method but traditionally this has always been attempted with a small selected "focus" group of users. With tools like Twitter and Facebook, it is now possible to listen to many users. But of course, by listening to a larger group, it becomes a challenge to identify and work on true trends and separate it from general chatter which is usually present when you have large groups of people talking. Good news is there are also tools available to filter out this noise and make some analytical sense from out of it, though at a early stage of their evolution, we believe the trend is promising.

2. Social Media as an engagement channel - This is a much more strategic way of looking to involve your customers systematically in your innovation exercise and get some targeted responses from your customers. While the benefits of this can be far-reaching, it does call for patience, constant customer engagement, incentives to motivate customers to innovate for you. On your side it needs openness to receive feedback and be responsive.

The method you choose to use is also dependent on the goals of your innovation initiative.

For example – if your business is wide spread and your products or services are household name from a long time (e.g. windows operating system) then 1. Social media as a Listening in medium to identify trends would help. Also when you want to monitor what your competition or the customers of your competitions are saying then again the method of listening is quite helpful.

On the contrary, if you are running a innovation project where you need a specific innovation or a specific solution to a specific problem then 2. Social Media as an engagement channel is more suitable. This method is also helpful in showcasing that you care about your customers and are keen to engage yourself rather than just listening in anonymously.

In summary - the old days of closed R&D and "focus groups" are getting over. Today more and more companies are opening their doors to interested users, suppliers and working out mutually beneficial relationships. The benefits of such approach is not only in better customer co-created products but also the enhanced brand reputation.

ideaken offers systematic and complimentary ways to use social media with your collaborative innovation initiatives. Contact us now to initiate a dialogue.

Innovation spend Vs. Innovation results – Have you recently given a thought to this?

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 03:42:20 PST

Is it time you looked at how much you are spending on innovation and what you are getting out of it.

There is a possibility that you are doing great, and there is also a possibility that you are feeding a black hole, or you could be somewhere in between.
Nevertheless, you would benefit from the following thought process.

Spread: How is your innovation spending spread? Try bucketing them as Capital cost of R&D infrastructure, Full time R&D people, Maintenance of R&D infrastructure, Outsourced services cost, Cost of promoting innovation culture, and the likes.

Means: What are you means of achieving innovation? Try bucketing them as Market research led, Perceived customer needs, Customer complaints based, Innovation team driven, Driven by employees who are not part of innovation team, Co-creation using external talent, Open innovation, and the likes.

Types: What types of innovations are you focused on? Try bucketing them as Disruptive or Break though innovations, Significant improvement of product or a service, Small but iterative improvements, and the likes. Additionally irrespective of what you offer, you could surely have service innovation as one bucket. You should try to map your innovation objectives of just being in the game to penetrating the new markets to the type of innovations underway at your organization.

For above 3 categories and the respective buckets, arrive at individual targets for your organization. You metrics could then become to not deviate too much for an extended period from the set targets. Setting the right targets would play very important role, however this would primarily be driven by DNA of your organization.

Tracking sheet could look something like below.

Note: The numbers in the table above are for example purpose only.

The most important thing is you are now thinking your innovation spend Vs. Innovation results, that, by far could be the most important take away from this post.

Be method agnostic - for your innovation goals.

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:21:35 PST

Every organization develops certain liking for methods to innovate over a time. I am using ‘Methods” as a broad term – starting from how the R&D division is structured, what are their goals & objectives, who they are answerable to, processes in place, further extending to the tools and techniques the organization has been using till date.

By being methodical, the organization is trying to bring in some sort of certainty; however there is also a danger of settling in, and getting satisfied with what you come up with. Remember the whole purpose is to innovate, which by all purpose means to come up with something which is new and beneficial - then why not apply the same philosophy for the ecosystem around getting the innovation done?

How about structuring R&D division where every employee, irrespective of his job profile - has to spend say x months in every y years at R&D / Innovation division of the organization. Let’s assume this makes it 20% of your R&D staff is always a rotated staff from other non R&D divisions. While on rotation, you may not produce great results, but just the feel and experience of being in the middle of R&D will continue to add value to your productivity and also to the Organizational Research even after you are back at your usual job profile.

How about making an R&D division have P&L of its own?

How about giving the freedom to use any tool or technique? I know a company where they can’t use 6 thinking hats because they have their own in house methods to brainstorm, no harm in using own methods but why ban other methods.

Collaborative innovation is one of the ways to become method agnostic, because you won’t know what methods the innovator has used, or will not use, most importantly you won’t care about the methods. Other way around is also true, if you truly try to become method agnostic, you are actually becoming more collaborative, more open, because now an accountant also has a chance to be in the research lab, you are more open because you no longer hide your real revenue truly from new research and innovations, you are more open because now an employee is allowed to install a freeware and try out new things in her free time.

Trying different things and being method agnostic will breed diversity, which has been shown to be the best way to get innovative results.

Not to forget that being method agnostic does not mean getting rid of methods, it mostly means that you are open, collaborative and flexible – basically you are innovative in doing innovation.

How co-creation initiative benefits when these 2 teams talk to each other.

noreply@blogger.com (Madhu Mani) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:59:26 PST

Team 1 – The marketing team, who often arranges customer connect campaigns or competitions, for innovation or otherwise, primarily focused towards brand awareness and to create some buzz.

Team 2 - The innovation team, who is focused internally or at the most with extended network of vendors and consultants working towards finding the next big idea for the company.

There is a tremendous opportunity when these two teams talk to each other.

Let’s explore WHY and HOW you can take some action.

WHY this is an opportunity

The people who opted in or showed some interest for any of your customer connect campaigns or competitions are your low hanging opportunity for co-creation. These are the people who are more likely to know about your products and are already volunteering to be part of your initiatives at some level. These participants are your potential co-creators and you must find a way to nurture this relationship on an ongoing basis.

Also when it comes to a competition, we usually tend to focus on the winners, quite ok, but never forget that everyone who participated has potential which you can explore. These participants in any innovation competition, even if they are not selected - have shown interest in the subject and have some relevant expertise. Your cost of engaging them will be far less than doing it afresh and the results you would get would also be better than finding new set of collaborators often.

HOW you can leverage this

Logical first step is to identify the possible internal collaborations and initiate a dialogue. That is - which company initiatives have a potential to be your team 1, 2 … n for this cross leverage.
Link up your one off or annual events; - not from a campaign, message, or cause point of view but from an infrastructure point of view. In other words find a better way to leverage all your previous participants without creating too much hassle for them.
Give and take – Acknowledge all contributions and feedback. Do everything to make sure that you have compensated fairly to all deserving contributors and you are investing in a future participation possibility. Nothing works like participants promoting you on their own.

ideaken provides consulting solution to identify this opportunity in your company and an exclusive technology platform to bring all your external stakeholders together for co-creation engagement. To initiate a conversation with us, contact us here.

WHEN IT IS BEST NOT TO TALK ABOUT the most innovative feature of your product

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 22:17:11 PDT

When Tata Nano was being conceptualized and talked about in the media, all of us thought that this is a revolution. It was indeed a revolution in technology, and entire world acknowledged it, however the buyer in the market is not impressed, here is why …

For most of the middle class Indians, owning a car is a status symbol, Tata nano does not help in creating a status symbol. The car itself has no issues, it has everything to become a proud owner of, but the Tatas and the media have ruined the image by calling it a car for the poor. It’s a no brainer that the middle class do not want to be categorized as poor or middle class, even if they are one.

At the other extreme are Apple products, where the technology being sold is a bit over hyped, and the price for them in some cases cannot be justified, but I know many who buy an apple product as a status symbol.

The core of Tata Nano’s innovation was in having a vision for a unique car, partnering with SMEs, pushing its engineering staff to “do more with less” and in making the engine more efficient. All these also contributed in achieving a significantly less manufacturing cost – a first of its kind cost innovation, however sometimes, the most innovative feature of your solution is best kept hidden from your customers.

Imagine one of following three scenarios …

1)    If Tata had never used the word ‘Cheap car’ in any of their communications. If they had simply put this car at par with all other entry level cars, and provide incredible free goodies or discount or best of all - free petrol for years! They could as well afford to replace the whole car after 5 years!
2)    If they would have used their technology advancements to provide C class/ sedan features at hatchback/ entry level prices. You might argue that the purpose of making a car affordable won’t be achieved, I agree.
3)    If their PR was based on a concept of - finally a nano (small) car has arrived, or having a message “why spend more” instead of “spend less coz your are poor”

So how did the low cost airlines pull it off? Low cost airlines worked because the flights didn’t taxi into your garage. No one really had to exhibit their boarding passes.

In the already crowded tablet market in India, the Government of India is talking about launching a tablet for $35 for students and maybe $50 for others. Question is – how are they going to position it? Hope they don’t launch it as a tablet for the poor man!

The message for corporate innovation leaders is - Technology Innovation must go in hand with Design, Business and Marketing innovation. Market research is not the best way to feel the pulse of your customers, and innovation also needs a cultural touch.

In addition to a) Product & Technology challenges, ideaken will soon launch collaborative innovation for b) Process, service & business, and c) Design, brand & usability category of innovation challenges.

From ‘First to invent’ to ‘First to patent’ – How does this affect open innovation?

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:38:38 PDT

It will be interesting to explore what this change from ‘First to invent’ to ‘First to patent’ means for collaborative innovation / open innovation.

The America Invents Act, is a bill passed by both houses of the U.S. Congress and expected to become law soon, whereby America will move from ‘First to invent’ to ‘First to patent’ system. Most of the world has ‘First to patent’ as a law.

Below we try to look at the consequences to what it means for collaborative innovation (not just innovation), and we invite you to share your thoughts.

“US patent laws synchronizing with the rest of the world”

1) Reduced wasted efforts will help improve innovator’s focus: In the ‘first to invent’ scenario, inventor delays the filing of patent as much as possible, but continues to invest time and money, in turn, risking re-inventing something which is already invented. This issue gets addressed to some extent in the ‘First to Patent’ scenario.
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > Less time will be spent on fighting disputes because innovator validates the IP before spending too much time on it and hence will have less probability of heart burn for the effort spent . Additionally ‘First to patent’ will provide more IP confidence to the inventor than a guesswork that he probably is the first to invent.

2) Bigger market place, better innovation ecosystem: A typical inventor will have similar shortage of money to spend on filing for a patent, like he had earlier, but now he also needs to be the ‘First to patent’. The news that the filing of provisional patent is now made simpler, and the fact that innovator is still needed to shell out money for it, in my opinion, will increase genuine patent applications.
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > Once inventors invest money, he would like to benefit from it, either by staring up a business, by approaching VCs or putting it up in a marketplace for licensing it, all of these will benefit open innovation.

3) Leveled playfield will increase innovation affordability: If “First to invent” law has played any role in American innovation dominance, which we think it has, with this change might see some decline, primarily because it affects the investors – an innovation support system. It may not be good for America, but we see that as paving a way for levelled ground, and this levelled ground will benefit the world as a whole. World is currently used to being at the receiving end of innovations happening in America, it’s not that the world cannot invent, but mostly they did not invent as fast as America did.
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > Currently innovations are cost heavy as it primarily comes from a developed country, in near further you will see revolution in terms of cost and affordability of innovations.

“Race to patent office or race to invent”

1) Hoarding of Patents by big companies will increase bullying: Biggies would afford to file at will and in volumes. Yes, but can they really afford to file all they invent, we don’t think so, they might rush to file at the beginning, but we feel that they will go back to the same numbers and pace once the fatigue sets in, in a year or so?
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > Big companies can misuse their muscle power in specific scenarios by running to the patent office faster than a genuine inventor. This is a bad news for collaborative innovation. Big companies might gain in short term, but they might end up killing SME innovators in medium term, which are one of the channels for corporate innovations. The US corporations which support open innovation ideally should not support this bill. Their international open innovation experience will come handy in aligning themselves to the new laws at home front.

2) Anti - SMEs, Innovators & Start ups: They will constantly feel insecure about their inventions until they apply for the patent, which is extremely counterproductive. You would rather spend time, effort and money on making your idea big, now you have something else to worry about. VCs and Angeles would move away from early stage ventures in short term, America pioneered and became world leader in start up industry because of the superior protection for start up innovation. So far investors invested in the IP even if it is not patented; now they won’t have that option and have to look for far more established companies to reduce their risk.
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > A new industry around collaborative patenting might emerge.

3) Too big a change, done too fast: We need to wait and see if someone questions the new law in light of the US constitution. The current patent law refers to the ‘inventor’ which as per the US constitution means the person who invented it first and not the person who filed it first.
Effects on Collaborative innovation / Open innovation > You might think that if we can’t protect the inventor, then there is no reason to look forward to collaborative innovation. For collaboration, first thing the inventor expects is protection. Collaborative innovation will also need to evolve to accommodate this change, and most probably it will soon.

What do you think ?

ideaken featured in Entrepreneur magazine

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 00:26:07 PDT

ideaken featured in Indian edition of Entrepreneur magazine’s September 2011 issue.

Entrepreneur magazine is one of the biggest selling business magazines on US newsstands, published in 6 countries with 3 million readers worldwide.

In India Entrepreneur is published by the fastest growing media company Network 18

To read a full article - pick up a copy of Entrepreneur! or contact us here.

From ‘Ego’ to ‘Pride’ – The change in Innovation mindset?

noreply@blogger.com (Jayesh Badani) — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:13:50 PDT

‘Ego’ occupies its place inside every individual from early childhood, be it a self respect or a self esteem, or even arrogance. And as enterprises are made of people, enterprises too have their ego.

Traditionally ‘Ego’ has been one of the driving forces behind companies doing innovation. I say - one of the factors, because there are many other factors which drive innovation, but here I am trying to explore just the ego angle.

This ‘Ego’ is usually two fold, one in terms of being superior to the competition and second being superior to your own self. Both types are healthy!

Over the time, however the cost of keeping this ‘Ego’ has gone up. It’s neither the individual’s fault nor the enterprise’s – ‘Globalization’ is the culprit, and unfortunately you or your enterprise cannot stop this guy!

So should one forget about the ‘Ego’? Some decided just that, some are ok to pay the cost of it, but some of them decided to reinvent it.

Let’s talk about the people and enterprises that are reinventing it, in other words innovating the innovation itself. What I feel they did is – they (e.g. P&G) worked backwards. Backwards from the final goal of wanting to be innovative. Instead of looking down and cut cost they looked up, they replaced the ‘Ego’ with the ‘Pride’. Even in this lot, not everyone worked backwards, others who saw this work, just followed the trend setters.

With ‘Ego’ being out of sight, these enterprises became far more open, they started collaborating with employees, customers, vendors and even someone completely stranger for their innovation needs. The real test though was if they really can get innovation done this way, it turns out that they did!

Obviously now instead of cost of ‘Ego’, they dealt with cost of ‘Pride’.

They soon realized that they no longer need to increase their innovation budget in direct proportionate to the increased innovation expectations.

The cost of pride turned out to be far less than the cost of ego, in turn resolving their initial challenge around cost.

Additionally, ‘Pride’ felt far more positive a feeling than the ‘Ego’.

Unless you are like Steve Jobs, who would rather keep his ego, albeit for the right reasons, and innovate yourself at the cost and speed you can afford, for rest of us, I feel switch from ‘Ego’ centric innovation to ‘Pride’ centric innovation is on its way to become mainstream.