My colleagues work closely with innovation champions who are the backbone of their companies' open innovation programs. They hear stories of frustration, elation and the day-to-day effort that is poured into their work to make open innovation a success. These champions are part change agents, motivational speakers, visionaries, and also the 'work horses' that get the job done.

There was an interesting article on Harvard Business Review's blog yesterday that addressed the unique challenges faced by innovation champions. The author, Rita McGrath, argues that success in open innovation "depends on middle managers, scientists, and intra corporate entrepreneurs scavenging for resources in an informal way". We see this in some cases but we also see a general recognition among our clients that this is clearly not sustainable and the proper processes, organizational design, technologies and yes, budget need to be established to maintain a successful program. We like it when 'serendipity' happens and we find a highly unexpected solution and solution provider for our client, but we don't think serendipity belongs anywhere within the foundation of the open innovation program.

As Anne Morrow Lindbergh was quoted as saying, “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

We are seeing just this type of communication on Open Innovation. Our clients typically have formal internal communication processes that include company newsletters, websites, cross-business meetings and the like. Open Innovation is fast becoming a topic of choice as companies strive to educate and inform their employees on the impact and potential of Open Innovation. Companies are more openly talking about successes they’ve experienced and the challenges they’ve faced as they work at embedding Open Innovation across the enterprise.  

A long-time client, 3M, recently used Open Innovation in its ‘cover story’ for the company’s internal newspaper. The article discussed 3M’s pursuit of a new platform technology:  “The incubator lab team collaborated with [Robert] Finocchiaro to initiate a global technology search. Together, they enlisted NineSigma, an open innovation service provider, to solicit solutions from researchers worldwide. ‘We got more than 40 responses,” [Rick] Neby noted, and one was from a company based in Switzerland that was coating 1.15 refractive index materials for improving ink reception on inkjet paper. Their material had some very desirable optical properties that could ultimately affect products in several divisions.’” The article went on to describe how the company’s incubator lab was sparking new innovation in ways they didn’t think possible.

Siemens recently referenced their Open Innovation work in the company’s magazine, Pictures of the Future. “Siemens is making use of OI methods in research as well. When faced with particularly tricky problems, Siemens researchers sometimes turn to “e-brokers,” who team up with external problem-solvers. In such cases, developers publicly describe their problem on an e-broker website, such as NineSigma or yet2com, and offer a cash reward for the best solution. And that solution can come from a large IT company in India or from an amateur developer in Germany. Approximately half of the problems are successfully solved in this way. So it’s not surprising that large companies like BASF, Novartis, and Nestlé are likewise using this method of finding solutions.”

Open Innovation will continue to be a hot topic within our client organizations, particularly as OI leaders are able to share big wins and lessons learned through the process.  This will further stimulate creativity among employees and help to get them thinking about the infinite possibilities Open Innovation can create for even the most sophisticated companies.

I admit, I have had some lingering questions in the past year or so about the role of Twitter in a comprehensive B2B marketing strategy. I've even questioned what Twitter can do for me personally - is it information? is it entertainment? And then I had a sort of social media epiphany as colleagues were gearing up for the Front End of Innovation US conference yesterday in Boston. I was really wishing I was there as I had worked with our President, Matthew Heim, and our panelists from clients Hallmark, Philips Consumer Lifestyle and Sealed Air over the past couple months to prepare for the event. I knew that FEI had invited people to live blog and Tweet from the event, but when I finally tuned in I was impressed. This was real content that made me feel (almost) like I was there. Here are some of the key takeaways I learned through the Twitter coverage:

• Hallmark's Esselman: once "open innovation" mindset was formalized, existing suppliers became extremely competitive

• Philips' Graham Mott: continuous innovation must be driven from top down, but the challenge is keeping champions' enthusiasm up

• Hallmark wants to create an emotionally-connected world and they see consumers defining emotional connections

• Blaine Childress [Sealed Air] talking about how IP personnel inside AND outside the organization have fears - lose my job versus lose my idea

• Tom Esselman [Hallmark]- Crisp definition of needs to commercialize open innovations makes open innovation more likely to be faster

• Graham Mott talking about how stating challenge too broadly will make it hard to sort through the submissions and evaluate them

And at the end of the day there was a great FEI blog post capturing the key learnings from the NineSigma panel session. Now, I know that live blogging and Tweeting is not unique to FEI and that plenty of other events do this. However, the quality of reporting and integration between the different media helped me see the light; that when executed properly, social media can involve you in a physical event in a way that traditional media cannot. I am a believer (well...I am getting there).

Edmunds.com recently announced a contest to source ideas to answer the question of the much-publicized unintended acceleration issue. Seemingly Edmunds is as tired of all the rhetoric and ongoing investigations as is the general public and is looking for real answers to move closer to a solution. The underlying premise of the contest is that someone somewhere can shed light on the issue in a way that is not currently being employed. And did I mention the prize? An aggregate of $1 million will be awarded to the winning respondent(s) who can “demonstrate a novel and plausible cause of unintended acceleration in a consumer vehicle in accordance with the terms of the contest.” The contest opens May 3, 2010 and runs through October 29, 2010, with an anticipated announcement of winners in March 2011.

NineSigma has extensive background in the automotive industry given our longstanding work with OEMs and suppliers who utilize our network to find new solutions and capabilities to address a full range of technical issues.  We have run countless projects on everything from bio-inspired sensing systems to expert driver systems to extracting heat from parked cars. We were pleased that Edmunds invited our own senior engagement manager, Dr. Kevin Stark, to be an advisor for the contest. Dr. Stark will join other industry experts to help provide guidance on the review process and ultimately the selection of the right solutions. No doubt given the size of the bounty, the contest will attract global attention and prompt an array of viable responses. Wouldn’t it be great if next March Edmunds was able to provide the world and the automotive industry with new answers to this problem that has generated so much media scrutiny and public concern? We, at NineSigma, firmly believe in the power of the crowd and the immense expertise that is out there to solve the most elusive technical mysteries. We will keep our BLOINC readers posted as the contest gets underway.  

If you're like me, you are still catching up on your professional reading from a month back. My colleagues and I are always looking for good, instructive articles on open innovation whether they are theoretical or practical in nature. We try to share these with our clients and industry colleagues as often as possible. Below are a few noteworthy references in case you missed them as you were wrapping up 2009. If you have any other recent references you'd like to share with the OI community, please post a comment.

• Harvard Business Review, December 2009: How Open Innovation Can Help You Cope in Lean Times (excerpt of article)
• The Market for Open Innovation: Increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the innovation process, December 2009 (excerpt from report by Kathleen Diener and Frank Piller)
• Wall Street Journal, November 30, 2009: Outsourcing Innovation 
• New York Times, October 31, 2009: Everybody in the Pool of Green Innovation
• University of Cambridge Centre for Technology Management, Institute for Manufacturing, 2009: How to Implement Open Innovation