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In the film, “What Women Want”, Mel Gibson’s character has the ability to read women’s minds and understand what they’re thinking. In the real world, we often need to second-guess what our existing or potential partners want. This is the case for Open Innovation (OI), when smaller companies with something to offer try to understand just exactly what large companies need, and whether there would be complementarity between the two.
The early stages of innovation are inevitably quite uncertain and poorly defined. The Front End process gradually clears the fog, you’ve done your research experiments and confirmed that you have both technical and market feasibility. There comes a point when the development target is clarified, and this is where the Trinity of product development takes over.
The members of this special group are:
Building on my recent blog post, I did an interview with Will Sherlin of 3Pillars Global, in the Innovation Engine series. The message is the same - the technological and logistic challenges of innovation are tough enough, so the management structure of innovation should be and indeed is, simple.
Hamlet’s line “To be or not to be…” is one of Shakespeare’s most famous. And he did write quite a few good ones. Hamlet’s concern is a choice between living a troubled life; and embracing death. OK, it’s a fairly deep analogy when it comes to innovation, but the choice of embracing or avoiding innovation choices can lead to corporate death – think Kodak.
Recently I was reminded of the famous scene in the film, Spartacus, where all the slaves shout “I’m Spartacus”. The prompt was another statement that innovation is everybody’s job. It’s fairly common, for example a thread on the Beyond Innovation group page on LinkedIn, running a poll on the subject “Innovation is Ev
Innovation is hard, isn’t it? That seems to be the prevailing wisdom. This was going through my mind when I read a good post from Tim Kastelle recently. Tim described how some of his innovation consultancy projects go through three phases – simplistic, complex and finally, simple. The objective is to produce an innovation that is simply communicated and easily understood; simple is the end objective of all good innovation.
Many large companies who have implemented Open Innovation use “Technology Scouts”, searching the external world for interesting opportunities. This description, whilst functional and descriptive, is missing a trick. Instead, companies should be developing Open Innovation Ambassadors.
I’m a big fan of the annual Pipeline Conference. This year it’s on June 6th, and as usual has a great mix of keynote speakers and online resources. The event is online, with registered participants having access to presentations and resources for 12 months afterwards. Not only do you not have to travel, registration is also free.
This year’s speakers include:
Open Innovation has gained a lot of traction since Henry Chesbrough’s eponymous 2003 book. Simplistically, it can be split into two. The first, the vast majority, is inbound, where a business uses the assets of other companies to develop something new and take it to market. The second is outbound, where a company licenses its assets to somebody else to take to market.
The stereotype image of a large company is one of distance, secrecy and lack of speed. Yet Shell is actively trying to change this view. This mega company with a turnover of $451bn recently invited a small group of bloggers to visit Shell Technology Centre Amsterdam (STCA) to tell them about their innovation plans. My invitation arrived out of the blue so, not being sure what I’d done to deserve it, I accepted with a growing sense of curiosity.
I spent a thoroughly enjoyable two days recently at the Open Innovation Forum in Baltimore. It had a packed agenda, including lots of opportunity to network and uncover the “state of the nation” of Open Innovation. My conclusion is that OI is in a healthy state.
I read a fascinating article last week about Google X, the X representing 10; making problems 10 times better in a timeframe of 10 years. This part of the company is challenged to produce “moonshots”. At Google, a moonshot has three criteria. First, it can potentially solve a really big problem for the world. Second, it has to have radical, almost science fiction-like technology. Finally, it has to show progress, giving it a glimmer of hope that it could actually be possible.
Here’s a proposition – a company will never succeed with innovation unless the culture is supportive. It’s best encapsulated in the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, attributed to Peter Drucker, the noted management guru. This is the last of four articles focused on creating a culture of innovation.
Here’s a proposition – a company will never succeed with innovation unless the culture is supportive. It’s best encapsulated in the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, attributed to Peter Drucker, the noted management guru.
Here’s a proposition – a company will never succeed with innovation unless the culture is supportive. It’s best encapsulated in the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, attributed to Peter Drucker, the noted management guru.
Here’s a proposition – a company will never succeed with innovation unless the culture is supportive. It’s best encapsulated in the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, attributed to Peter Drucker, the noted management guru. In this, the first of four articles focused on creating a culture of innovation, building on a previous blog, I propose that action is what changes culture, and there is a specific sequence to be followed.
Big Data is receiving a lot of attention and investment at the moment, with the combination of technology and analytics generating enormous possibility. As Greg Satell rightly points out, businesses that neglect Big Data will be left behind. Data, and smart ways of generation, can potentially identify new patterns as well as test new hypotheses and simulations. So
A lot has happened in Open Innovation since Henry Chesbrough coined the term in his 2003 book. The term appears to be well understood, many companies have implemented it and a lot has been published. And yet…….
This is the second of two articles, co-written with Ralph-Christian Ohr from Integrative Innovation.
In our previous post, we discussed how Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) ensures that the content of the portfolio is driven by innovation strategy and associated targets. We would now like to move on to Operational Portfolio Management (OPM), where the portfolio directs resource allocation, metrics and reporting on an operational and tactical level.
This is a two-part article, co-written by Innovation Fixer’s Kevin McFarthing and Ralph-Christian Ohr from Integrative Innovation.
Facing increasingly dynamic and unpredictable environments, firms are required to develop convenient innovation strategies, constantly adapt them to changing conditions and properly implement strategically-aligned initiatives throughout their organizations. Innovation portfolio management (IPM) can act as the pivotal tool to translate strategic objectives and priorities into project-based innovation activities. Furthermore, it provides a framework to convert raw ideas into real investment opportunities, based on their risk profile.
As I’ve written before, the portfolio is the pivotal tool for innovation. It provides the link to corporate strategy; ensures the desired balance across different innovation horizons; enables and communicates priorities; and with the appropriate communication it reports progress towards innovation goals. It is this final point that I would now like to explore.
A question often asked when considering the fit of innovation within corporate strategy is whether you want to be a leader or a follower. Some examples are fairly clear. Most research-driven pharmaceutical companies want to launch the first medicine in its class and to maintain leadership with ongoing clinical support. At the other end of the spectrum it would be highly unusual for a retailer to introduce the first entrant to a new category as a private label.
Tate & Lyle is a large B2B company focused on speciality food ingredients. They have placed a large emphasis on innovation as a key source of future growth, with a pivotal role for open innovation (OI) and complementary roles for OI partnerships and venture capital initiatives. I had the chance recently to interview Dr John Stewart, Director of Open Innovation, to learn more about their integrated program.
Tell me more about Tate & Lyle
Many words and expressions are clearly relative, such as “larger” or “smaller”. These are easy adjectives as they often invite the word “than” after them. Other words are more subtly relative, like innovation; not grammatically but inherently.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step, as the saying goes. The same is true for innovation. Yet much of the writing on innovation is about leaps, major technological breakthroughs that transform or disrupt markets. Isn’t it all about Apple and Edison? I would argue it isn’t. The bulk of progress and associated hard work on innovation is focused on incremental innovation, the small steps that over time take products and services to new levels. No Nobel prizes, but it’s not all about the glory.
In a previous corporate life, I was on the board of trustees of a very large pension fund. Our role was to ensure income in retirement for thousands of current and former company employees. The key lesson I learned was that the most important decision we had to make was on the mix of investments in the portfolio. The return had to link to the objectives and requirements of the fund, now and in the future. Portfolio management was the pivotal tool for success.
Each Thursday at 12pm EST (US) there is a Twitter chat using the hashtag #innochat. Recently the admirable duo of Sarah Caldicott and Drew Marshall led us through a discussion entitled “Innovation stalls without Collaboration”. You can find the framing post and tweet output
Open Innovation can take many forms, and one manifestation is open source. It’s an area that is intriguing and provides learnings for other approaches to Open Innovation. A recent article by Sarah Johnson of Seymourpowell highlighted some of the potential, and stimulated further thoughts.
A very good friend of mine works for a large, global company with multiple locations around the world, many of which are run as “hot desks”. He is in a position of responsibility, and often finds himself travelling to a different destination on the other side of the world at short notice. It’s the kind of business where looking for ways to innovate is very important, as is time management.
How can large companies regain the innovative drive that made them big in the first place? A new ebook compilation of my articles on the 6Ps of Radical Innovation for Large Companies is now available. Just follow this link to read or download.
