The big challenge in Open Innovation (Part II)

What’s in it for me? This is the very first question most of the participants in an open innovation initiative will ask. One of the aspects often overlooked with OI is what will the process or organization give back to the participants. It is very easy to give out cash prizes for winning ideas or participation, but is what is the formula for ensuring...

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The big challenge in Open Innovation (Part I)

I started investigating stats regarding open innovation to see what I could find regarding the idea quality ratio. In simple mathematical terms this ratio is the number of approved (or implemented) ideas divided by the total submitted ideas. Over the years, data from most idea management processes has shown that programs where this ratio is high,...

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Something Different

A new book by Youngme Moon promises to be “Different”. In this age of bigger, better, faster, it’s time for companies and people to be different. Organizations are beginning to realize that they need to instill the innovation culture in their organizations in order to stand out. Whether it’s on the shop floor continually innovating improved processes to eliminate non-value-added steps, to online communities of customers and employees brainstorming the next product breakthrough, managers in today’s business world will need to challenge their...

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Kaizen Teams = Innovation Teams

The common recommendation by TPS experts is that Kaizen teams must be cross-functional. The common rule is to form the team with 1/3 target area members, 1/3 from upstream and downstream areas, and 1/3 from external areas (i.e.: Finance, engineering, HR). This makes sense, and sounds reasonable, however I found that perhaps the best way to explain...

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Open Innovation: Corporate citizenship redefined.

One thing that I was taught when I was young was that sharing information with others and not keeping secrets could make you friends with a lot of people. In today’s market, it looks like major corporations are starting to leverage that axiom to further expand their corporate dominance. Being a good corporate citizen no longer means charitable giving to local communities, and hiring interns from local schools. The definition has been transformed by some of the top corporate citizens to include direct participation from the community in identifying...

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