ideaken blog - collaborate to innovate

Breakthrough ideas could be on the way, but from where?

2017-01-02T12:50:00.002+05:30

If you are a person who has a habit of coming up with great ideas then this article is not for you.
For everyone else, here are pointers which have worked in past and present of the history of mankind.

From where breakthrough idea come from..

3) It comes later from simple notes you took down today: on your notepad or on a mobile, of something which got your attention momentarily but with a deep wow within. It could be about a problem, solution or just a picture of someone doing something.

2) It comes from chatting with new people coffee or a bar: but usually at a place which is not too upscale, a place where you are yourself.

4) It comes from spending lots of time in articulating a known challenge or a problem: and revising the problem statement many times around.

7) It comes from following your fascination.

5) It comes from purposely disconnecting from the “How will that be done but..” mindset.

6) It comes from talking to someone from the different domain, industry, education, geography, social status, gender.

10) It comes from visiting a new place; it could be just around the corner of your usual place.

8) It comes from switching off the gadgets.

9) It comes from listening in.

1) Lastly, and importantly, it comes from a belief that you can get a breakthrough idea!

It may not come by jumbling up the sequence numbering, or well it might!

You possibly cannot crowdsource breakthrough ideas, but you can get lot of help by running an idea competition.

Once you have a breakthrough idea, ideaken can help in getting the technologies you need to make your idea come to life.

How to reduce cost of Open Innovation

2016-12-06T16:46:00.002+05:30

One of the assumptions when firms start open innovation is that it will cost less compare to innovating in-house, and this assumption is mostly true. The subsequent question however is can Open Innovation itself be cheaper than what it costs today?

The primary cost of Open innovation can be divided into two main buckets.

Cost bucket One – In-house team which takes care of coordination with intermediaries and internal technology team.

Cost bucket Two – Intermediary costs.

For the cost bucket One, 3 key pointers to reduce cost

1) Avoid too many dedicated persons handling Open Innovation, instead time share, say 10% of the time of highly motivated people, who love innovation and would happily give that extra time and energy.

2) Have central budget for Open Innovation; this will offer prioritization decision in the hands of Open innovation team who will take decisions after hearing the ROI pitch from the technology requester team. This is a big cost saver.

3) Define Goals, it is tough to define Goals in innovation, so define goals for processes, for number of interactions, even number of failures. (Must fail 2 more time, nice!)

For the cost bucket Two, 3 key pointers to reduce cost

1) Avoid consulting cost, trust me consulting is overrated and overpriced. You might need consulting in some cases but when you need and how much you need must be scrutinized.

2) Shop around, you might be comfortable with the vendor you are used to work with, but don’t forget open innovation is all about trying out new avenues, apply this logic to vendor selection also. You might be able to see cost reduced to half, while outcome remain comparable. Try ideaken !

3) Make some of your fees to Intermediary linked to shortlisting of the solutions.
Where there any other points which worked for you in reducing the cost of Open Innovation. Do share.

TED Presentation on Open Innovation by our associate Lucia

2016-06-08T11:50:00.000+05:30

Open Innovation - A chance to transform your organisation

2015-03-23T12:00:00.000+05:30

1. Every organisation wants to do Open Innovation. But few succeed in doing it in the right spirit. Issues are more related to culture rather than lack of external solutions.

2. Best way to start is to start on projects which are new and just starting. Get both the internal and external teams working together - exchanging ideas/solutions and knowledge. It's amazing how everything seems to fall in place once you open your mind and start working together with common objectives.

3. Never expect that an outside solution will fit your entire problem as it is. It rarely happens. Typically the Open Innovation solution needs to be integrated with custom solutions before it can be presented. Hence budget in time and money for this crucial integration piece.

4. Success of all open innovation initiatives should be measured only by one simple question - Would we have thought of this if we have not gone the open innovation route? Most companies would continue their open innovation initiatives if it was truly measured on this parameter. Real successes will come further down the line when the entire engine is well oiled but that will take time and you got to keep the faith.

5. The real strength of open innovation solutions are generally hidden. Most leaders in organizations only view the solution as it is and see if it meets their criteria. However they generally miss the thought process behind the solution. Mature organizations evaluate the thought process more than the actual solution. The beauty of open innovation is that it exposes different angles to the problem at hand usually in unrestricted ways.

In summary - companies should view open innovation as an opportunity - to get diverse thought processes and ideas from experts all over the world. In today's globalized world, it is not just a lost opportunity if companies are not doing it but could also be the reason why they need to play catch up with their competitors tomorrow.

Congratulations! to the winners (Recent contest at ideaken)

2014-09-23T10:49:00.000+05:30

Crowdsourcing for Competitive Intelligence

2014-08-18T12:08:00.000+05:30

Most companies keep track of competitors, – be it new product launches or their strategic initiatives. They also hire external consultants who are knowledgeable to prepare Strength / Weaknesses / Opportunities / Threats (SWOT) for all of their competitors.

Given this background, let’s ask a question – can crowdsourcing be used to achieve this activity? I was exploring this thought over the last few days. Let us examine this in more detail:

Crowdsourcing relies on distributed expertise and experts.

The inputs that you are seeking are of high level and of a strategic nature, this is good as experts are able to contribute their opinions freely.

The reward for these challenges needs some experimentation before we get it right. Since these questions are strategic by nature and experts are typically industry veterans, we need to have a model of paying for expertise by the hour to begin with.

It is important to ensure that any confidential agreements are not breached while engaging with us. So for example - experts who are currently in the roll of our competitors should not be approached or invited. We are mainly looking for ex-employees or retired folks who have expertise to share based on their past experience.

So let us look at how this will translate in practice with an example:

Let us assume you are in charge of the Automobile Manufacturing business for cars. You are interested in knowing how supply chain issues or best practices are implemented in your factory environment which results in efficient operations.

You could put up a challenge clearing inviting experts from supply chain domain who have expertise in running car operations. They can be either independent consultants or retired folks but should not be employed currently by your reputed competitors (Can mention names if particular).

Once the challenge is ready and communicated to the outside world, you should have a mechanism of screening and selecting experts. Since it is the internet and given the nature of the challenges, we should be prepared with a process to identify relevant profiles and eliminate the rest. The standard way of achieving this is through the use of screening questions which are designed to weed out the non-relevant experts. (Preferably with a thank you note).

Once you find the relevant expert, engage with them to understand their standard consulting rates per hour and ideally agree on the number of hours this consulting engagement would need to meet the requirements. Also have a clear understanding on what you are expecting out of this transaction.

These two considerations will lead you to a smooth transaction on both sides. You can also have a standard set of terms and conditions which you both sign upfront before you start the engagement defining the scope of the engagement and any other terms of reference. It is best to review the first set of terms and conditions with the legal team to avoid any surprises but over a period of time, it will be standard.

Once the assignment is completed and signed off, it is important to document the findings and more importantly review the new knowledge gained with an open mind and see how you can tweak (if required) and incorporate in your company environment.

ideaken helps companies set up continuous competitive intelligence cell at your company using a crowdsourcing model.

New kind of Competitive Advantage for a RFP response.

2014-07-23T09:58:00.000+05:30

You already know about Product, Support, Cost or a Geographic proximity related Competitive Advantages. You will most probably use the right advantages and value propositions while responding to a typical RFP. But there is a new kind of Competitive Advantage used by the large to medium organizations, and it is about Crowdsourcing the expert or niche inputs from outside of your company, just in time, and make your proposal stand out. Let’s elaborate using a walk through example.

You head the presales unit for a company, your primary source of new business is via responding to the RFPs from the clients around the world, who belong to diverse industries and domains & Geographies.

You receive one such RFP. The team does the initial analysis and comes up with the list of expertise needed to prepare winning proposal, along with the list of questions to be ask the RFP submitter.

Best way to have a competitive advantage is to be really good in the Industry and the domain this RFP belongs and also understand the requirement well. But there are two issues, one is the availability of right resources at your end, two you still might have only the high level understanding of the problem, industry and domain of this RFP.

The route most of the presales people follow in such a scenario is talk GENERIC, talk at HIGH LEVEL, talk what can be neither right nor wrong! Or still worst, just Copy/Paste from previous proposal. Only issue with such approach is there are too many vendors who will take this approach.

Instead, imagine, you have a vendor who can Securely and anonymously crowd source just in time expert inputs (Telephonic, Web, Email). With this newly acquired knowledge your proposal response or consulting deliverable would stand apart in terms of..

a) Localized industry & environmental know-how.
b) Knowledge of real issues and hence possible proposed solutions approaches.
c) Your confidence that you are on the same page with your client

We at ideaken help your company implement this approach and bring in noticeable increase in the quality of your RFP responses.

We have finished working on more than 120 projects, and have delivered increased success in consulting assignments and improved RFP win ratio by 5-25%.

Contact us to discuss our “Competitive Advantage” service for your company today.

Planning an Innovation Competition?

2013-11-14T10:51:00.000+05:30

So, you have decided to hold an innovation competition and get some creative ideas from experts all over the world, or from specific communities of interest; or you might be using it as an indirect marketing tool to create awareness of your product.

The biggest issue I see with some of the innovation competitions, is the expectation the companies have from participants in terms of understanding long and complex jargon, so much that what they want participants to do almost gets lost in the long description. So, having a clear ask is a key, but that does not mean you cannot spice it up. Titles like “Your chance to design for your Olympic hero” or “Ever thought you would have a green idea?” can do the trick.

I believe whoever runs the innovation competition does not have an expectation to really get to a breakthrough innovation using the entries they get; but if they do, then they most probably, will not succeed. However; if they have expectations to find the ingredients, ideas, starting point of the thoughts which eventually result in some sort of innovation then they are on a right track.

Have you used innovation competition for marketing? If not, then you must. Companies are using it to cover many aspects of marketing. When someone is running an innovation competition, the first impression it sends out to the market is that the company believes in innovation. This subtle but very powerful message, then can take on a role of engaging the curious population; on the way it creates the awareness of the product or a service and then in the last it can also end up getting some good ideas, problems, improvement suggestions; which can then be taken forward by the company to make measurable difference to the bottom line.

Open innovation competition is far more suitable for fetching real innovations into the company and has a slightly different tone, in terms of formulating the brief. It also has different ways of reaching out and engaging the participants. While innovation competition would ideally have a cash reward, open innovation would also have a mechanism to license, buy or co-develop the solutions. Pointing out this little difference; that it is good to know what your goals are and accordingly make the right selection, organize and execute.

ideaken can help in running an innovation competition for your organisation.

What does collaboration mean to you?

2013-09-30T11:03:00.000+05:30

Collaboration is a term no organisation is ignoring in today's hyper connected and globalised world. But the word means different things to enterprises depending on their priorities. For some - it could mean as simple as enabling employees to work together to break silos. For some others - it could mean breaking boundaries and enabling partners, customers and even general public to work together for a common cause. It could be a mixture of all of this or some of this depending on the confidentiality requirements of the project.

It takes time and energy - We live in a hyper connected and a world built on instant gratification. We expect immediate results and want to know the results of our initiatives immediately. Unfortunately collaboration projects are more complicated than that and takes time to show results. While it is possible for results to show immediately in small controlled groups (for example collaborating with a group of employees), collaboration with a larger set especially those based outside your organisation takes time before it yield results. So keep the faith!

Trust is paramount - Reflect on this. When was the last time you revealed details to an outsider on your first meeting in an enterprise setting? Collaboration calls for exchange of ideas and some knowledge about your corporate environment. Due to this, it flourishes fully only when trust in either parties is established. Though you can help build trust by creating a conducive and transparent environment, it does take time. So do define the rules and be consistent.

Feedback is important - Since campaigns take time to show results and building trust is important, how do you keep the collaborators engaged? One of the best ways of doing it is through continuous and regular feedback. You need to spend your time and energy giving feedback to your collaborators and motivate them to help you. It also conveys a message to them that you care and are serious about this. It is also a great way to build connections and understand the pulse of your collaborators.

However small you must celebrate successes - Collaboration needs to be treated like an investment or a plant that needs to be nurtured. You need to treat collaborators as your extended employee team and work on encouraging and celebrating even their small successes initially. It is equally important to think from the collaborator's perspective rather than only your own. Remember true collaboration happens only when there are win-win equations created. One-sided relationships don't last long and will never realise the true potential of collaboration.

Involve senior management - Collaboration is a strategic initiative. There is only so much that middle or lower managers can achieve. Hence it pays to involve senior management and get direction from them on your future collaboration initiatives. Ideally collaboration projects are best driven top down to ensure that the message is driven throughout the organisation. In some cases, it also helps to show some initial success starting small to convince the top management which then helps to build the business case.

Why Collaborative Research gaining momentum?

2013-08-22T17:28:00.001+05:30

Innovation might be the ultimate aim of R&D activities in general, at academia however focus is on education, research and ultimately the placements for their students.

R&D is a very logical one step just before one systematically innovate something; of course lot many innovations happen without any R&D at all. After visiting approximately ten prestigious academia in last six months, I have come to a conclusion that for Asian academia innovation is a good to have thing and not must have, now, that may not sound that good a news, but I don’t see anything wrong about it, especially post I put it through a perspective, perspective of if innovation is the need of hour to make things go around. Now I am not stating that innovation is not happening, I am only pointing out that it is yet to cover some distance! Which it will when non Asian countries stops innovating enough.

Collaborative research is a derivation of traditional research where the activity of research is more open for the inputs from diverse entities. It also allows a research topic to be arrived at collaboratively.

Collaborative research is gaining momentum because it aligns well with the core goals of academia viz. Education, Research and Placements. Here is how.

People are the real source of education, and when you supplement your research with diverse experiences from around the geography; you are able to relate what you read in the books far better than you would do without such interactions.

It is usually the skills like creativity, social interactions and management which makes education of any use, when you collaborate, you learn these skills.

Our education system is broad based, meaning we study bit of many things and do not go really deep into one thing. Collaborative research provides opportunity for someone not doing a full time research to slice it up and go deep into a specific topic.

Hence Collaborative research makes better education.

In today’s fast pace world, a proven technology is a outdated one, similarly if research takes too long then by the time it finishes it probably is outdated. Key is to join forces and bring it out fast.

Anything beyond a basic research needs more talent than an individual can bring in, though he or she can learn all of them but there is hardly a possibility to do so in a given time and constraints.

Ultimate aim of any research is to unearth something which is yet to be unearthed. And not every piece of knowledge is documented nor will it in the future. Collaborative research provides better changes of tabling something which is yet not tabled.

Hence Collaborative research makes better research.

Industry know how and networking are better options to get placed then another aptitude test at the campus placements. Who does not want be free from limited options placement provides?

Your rank must not be the only measure to get placed, participating in collaborative research provides additional credential which has tangible benefits during studies. For placements and beyond.

Collaborative research provide students take the guess work out and present more realistic findings, socialise and network, but more importantly this experience prepares them to come out of the theoretical world early and fish for themselves.

Hence Collaborative research makes better placements.

Be it Basic research, Applied research, Product research or Market research, be it a long duration or short, be it for a topic of your interest or kind of, be it with monetary benefits or not so much – look out for a collaborative research opportunity.

ideaken provides opportunities for collaborative research for academia, professors, students, industry players and research institutes, please get in contact with us at contact@ideaken.com

Crowdsourcing Pitfalls and possible Remedies

2013-07-24T12:10:00.000+05:30

Crowdsourcing has received a fair amount of coverage in the local business circle that any business leader may be tempted to believe that he can throw most of his business challenges or creative needs to the crowd and he will get the optimum results in no time. Frankly this is far from true, and unless one is treading with cautious and right knowledge Crowdsourcing might disappoint and results in scepticism.

To sum it up – Just the way how outsourcing began few decades ago and reached current so called mature state, Crowdsourcing needs to be developed by companies with a long term vision in mind and the focus should be to identify, experiment, adapt and fine-tune strategies to derive the maximum benefit from this initiative.

Let us look at common pitfalls and their possible remedies.

Pitfall 1: Just like the dotcom snag ‘if you build it they will come’, Crowdsourcing faces a challenge in believing ‘if you ask, they will tell’

Remedy: Today the information inflow for an individual is reaching alarming high, I delete most of the things pushed to me, and try to ignore everything around what I am perusing. So, to get a slice of that attention span, you must select your target crowd. And you can do that by carefully creating a list of attributes which you think some of which an individual must have before you ask for participation. This preparation does not mean that you would have means to actually pinpoint those characteristics, but this will greatly help in rejecting avenues not to go after.

Pitfall 2: Now that I have an opportunity to ask, why settle for anything less than the sky!

Remedy: You must not make it too easy or too difficult for someone to contribute, challenge them but don't overwhelm them. Keep it too simple, but not so much that you get bombarded with so many solutions that you will struggle to separate the gems from the others. Make it too complicated and you are bound to miss your target crowd because of their low attention spans or even overawe them.

Pitfall 3: If I am getting a revolutionary solution then I might decide to pay something for it.

Remedy: Easiest way to get over this issue is to simulate and put yourself on other side of the equation, would you bother to spend time on something which does not promise clear evaluation and reward criteria?
Pitfall 4: We are always open for collaboration and receive great ideas, check our website there is a section for submitting an idea.

Remedy: Yes, it is nice that you have a open call open always, but barring few companies which you can count on fingers, how many of them have any ideas coming their way? Fix for this is to have a very specific challenge statement, which has clear end date, sufficient rewards, and clear promotional plan to the right crowd.

Pitfall 5: How many ideas or solutions will I get?

Remedy: Though how many ideas or solutions you get might be a immediate need to show in the status report but see how quickly you can get on to bottom like and ask – will it be better than my current plan of getting ideas and solution, will it be less time consuming and will it cost me less.

So, there you are, do tell me if you have another interesting Crowdsourcing pitfall you have come across.

Industry academia collaboration – will Asia’s turn see it through Crowdsourcing lens?

2013-06-26T09:03:00.001+05:30

Can there be a Crowdsourcing between Industry and Academia which is beneficial to both sides? Crowdsourcing industry - for simplicity sake can be classified into two buckets – a) Creative, and b) Innovative. Examples of creative Crowdsourcing are Voice, Picture, Video, Logo, Ads. These creative’s usually are represented by artefacts and these artefacts when protected are protected by copyrights. On the other hand innovation Crowdsourcing is mostly about ideas and solutions, which in turn if need to be protected are protectable by intellectual property rights.

As it seems, Crowdsourcing for ideas and innovation is more suitable between Industry and Academia.

However, Academia and industry are different at the core, to the extent that you can say - academia is from Venus (Calm and collected), and Industry is from Mars (Restless and under pressure.). So most but few collaborations end up being too complex to have a mature relationship.

Just to put the term “Academia Industry Collaboration” in perspective, there are many ways academia and industry collaborates, top 3 being 1. Employment (Core reason why academia exists in this era) 2. Industrial Education (So that the point 1 above keep meeting its goal) 3. And 3rd is ideas, innovation and R&D, we will primarily talk around 3rd point and argue why it is now Asia’s turn, so in this context we had defined academia industry collaboration as "A common ground, where academia lends the conceptualization & generalization skills, and the industry provides the practical reality in which the conceptualization can be rooted."

So why say ‘Asia’s turn’ - is because US and Europe has done considerably well in this area so far, I see following three as what really is different around academia industry tangle among US and Asia.

1) In US, majority of the academia funding comes from the Industry, which is on decline now as per my partner in the US. It is slightly reverse in Asia, where most of the funding comes from Government, and as per the data available - funding from Industry is increasing in Asia. Funding from industry brings in far more focus on being relevant to the real needs of people and therefore the better innovation outcome.

2) In US, primary mission of Academia since pre war era till now is to develop skill for local industry. While in Asia academia is geared to provide skill for the best possible market in the world (which is USA! for now). You see Asian local industry would be reluctant to fund something which is not going to be of their area of interest.

3) In US, the origin and basis of education system is relatively new, not more than 200 years or so. While in Asia, education has ancient roots and was tightly linked to religion & spirituality, which usually is kept delinked and independent from the business world. In Asia lot of people still think that a professor cannot have a business of his own. I am still not sure how much of a commercial angle to an education is right and where it starts hurting!

These being differences, the real big reason why US still leading the academia industry collaboration is because the ecosystem now already in place, it is no longer dependent of above differences. It is an accepted protocol and kind of a norm to have association with academia.

Few years back, when my cousin was looking for a place to open his garment showroom, he took me around to see few places. Agent showed us 5-6 places that afternoon, and I could see that all the places my cousin seem to have liked where around already existing garment showrooms. So being in a business of ideas, I asked him why don’t you look for a place, where there are no garment showroom at all. On which, he replied, garment buyers look for a place where they can get a choice, where they can park the vehicle once and walk into 3-4 or even more places, so getting a place where there is already similar business works better. Since then whenever I am in a marketplace in any city in India, I do not fail to notice the cluster of similar businesses be it garment, furniture or niche commodity like Marble for home construction all located in same area.

For the same reason, in US and in Europe (Especially in Silicon Valley), you would find starts ups in and around the academia. And if you are the one who yet do not have an academia linkage then during your next coffee conversation at the local coffee shop, you most probably will end up having one.

So when we talk about Asia’s turn, it is not about increasing industry academia collaboration, it is also not about being more innovative, but is about making sure if we have enough ingredient for a ecosystem to thrive, most importantly remove obvious roadblocks. While we do this needful, we them must sit back, if industry academia collaboration is beneficial to both (which usually is) then it will take place without anyone doing anything about it!

Crowdsourcing week Singapore 3-7 Jun 2013

2013-05-21T11:47:00.000+05:30

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)

2013-04-23T09:45:00.000+05:30

(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!

2013-03-19T15:40:00.000+05:30

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

2013-02-20T12:06:00.003+05:30

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

2013-02-20T11:28:00.003+05:30

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.

2013-01-17T08:03:00.000+05:30

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?

2012-12-18T22:04:00.000+05:30

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.

2012-11-15T12:59:00.001+05:30

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?

2012-10-17T12:31:00.002+05:30

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?

2012-09-21T09:57:00.001+05:30

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

2012-08-15T16:02:00.001+05:30

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

2012-07-18T14:12:00.000+05:30

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.

2012-06-18T20:34:00.003+05:30

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.