Co-working.  In a world of collaboration and co-creating, we now have co-working.  According to the New York Times July 17, 2011 article “Working Separately, Working Together”, freelancers and telecommuters are finding that being unshackled from the office environment is not nirvana.  Instead, it is a lonely place.   The work-at-home crowd is abandoning their corner Starbucks for membership in co-working spaces called IndyHall and Hive.  These 5000 square ft., open floor plan office spaces offer the community and collaboration that comes from a shared, non-virtual work space.  You can “rent” a cubicle (isn’t that what they were fleeing?!?) and soak in the collaborative energy of tapping keyboards and human contact.

At NineSigma, we witness this collaborative energy in our Linked Innovation programs.  Clients come together to address some of the thorniest problems, recognizing that their combined efforts can accelerate the outcome that they each seek.  One group has been working together for 6 months to address a key sustainability issue that impacts their entire industry.  Merging the perspective of nearly a dozen powerhouse corporations into a shared vision statement and action plan is no small task.  As they toiled to blend the nuances of each company’s viewpoint, I secretly admired their passion and commitment.

These companies recognize that they cannot solve the big, global challenges by “freelancing”.  Whether they are seeking new technologies to achieve their long-term sustainability goals, or finding efficient ways to meet regulatory standards that ensure consumer safety, collaboration is the accelerator.  NineSigma’s Linked Innovation program provides the “co-working” environment for them to bring together their collaborative energy into a virtual and physical place.

And like Hive and IndyHall, we even provide the coffee.

According to the International Aids Vaccine Initiative’s website “IAVI is a global not-for-profit, public-private partnership whose mission is to ensure the development of a preventive HIV vaccine for use throughout the world”.  In addition to funding IAVI’s own scientific team, they offer grants to support selected HIV research projects.

IAVI has been working to develop vaccines that produce neutralizing antibodies (NAbs) against HIV to prevent infections and the development of AIDS.  Currently, there are no vaccines that produce NAbs against HIV but naturally occurring Nabs were discovered in an HIV infected patient who did not develop AIDS.  Although the target of these HIV NAbs was identified as a protein on the surface of the virus, the protein is too unstable to use in a vaccine and strategies to stabilize it have been unsuccessful. 

IAVI contacted NineSigma to help identify a population of scientists who specialize in protein stabilization but who may not have considered working on AIDS related research problems in the past.   This type of project is directly suited to NineSigma’s ability to find solutions from areas outside our client’s primary focus.  We worked with Dr. Hansi Dean at IAVI to draft an RFP entitled “Engineering Stable Proteins”, which focused on protein modification rather than HIV to attract the attention of a new group of protein scientists. More than 30 proposals were submitted from an international group of protein researchers, and IAVI assembled a committee to review and rank the proposals.  Preliminary funding decisions have been made, and we are looking forward to making a full announcement of the results shortly.

NineSigma’s 2011 OI Leadership Summit: Driving the Future of Open Innovation
May 2-4, 2011 · Arlington, Virginia USA

Think provocative and inspiring thought leaders. Think interactive and engaging presentations. Think new competencies and cutting edge approaches to open innovation. You are going to leave this conference inspired and wired and ready to integrate new innovative concepts into your company's innovation program.

The successful open innovation model continues to evolve at warp speed. This conference is a unique opportunity for innovation’s best and brightest to examine best approaches, share ideas and understand future directions as well as the perennial challenges in an intimate, interactive environment. You’ll need every ounce of innovative spirit and idea power you’ve got!

We’ve designed our conference to showcase how NineSigma views the innovation marketplace and what we are doing to drive the future of open innovation. If you want an infusion of bright ideas, innovative approaches and ingenious solutions, this conference is where it’s at.

And make no mistake: This isn’t your typical innovation conference. You’ll learn how to apply your fresh insights and learning’s directly to your innovation efforts! Expect to come out of this with new competencies in crowdsourcing, collaborative innovation, and accelerated product development, as well as answers to OI’s toughest challenges, and an expanded network of innovation Champions within industry-leading companies.

Register today ­— right now ­— for the innovation event of the year!

At some point in each of our careers we have learned Michael Porter’s Value Chain approach to understanding the movement of materials and information from early stages of inbound logistics to customer-facing services.  While the Value Chain model served us well over the years by providing an understanding of the various functions within a company, it has done little to represent the flow of ideas and information that lead to new innovations.  In fact, I would go as far to say that a company’s complete buy-in to the Value Chain model to represent organizational design and process flows can actually stand in the way of collaborative innovation.  Allow me to explain.

The Value Chain model portrays an organization as a segmented, linear flow of business functionality.  Many companies have designed their various departments to enable this flow, believing that they were conforming to best business practices – and the flow works fine within a typical operational cycle.  But this is only a part of what companies do.  When it comes time to innovate (i.e., stretch beyond the current bounds of the organization), people have a tendency to generate isolated solutions that are relevant only to their department, and not thought through or tested in a systemic manner.  Ever wonder why most organizations today suffer under the silo effect that inhibits the transparency of ideas and information?  A case in point is the proverbial gap between Marketing and R&D.  While ERP systems can help to alleviate some transparency issues, this does not address the core issue, and has little to no effect on innovation. 

If we were simply to take the linear Value Chain model, and bend it around the edges to create a circle (or cycle), it would have an entirely different effect within the company.  In the center of the new “Value Cycle” could be cross-functional teams, processes and social media systems that enable the introduction of new ideas from anywhere within the company, while allowing people from other departments to contribute their perspectives, thus building on and improving the original idea.  Around the outside of the new Value Cycle are the company’s suppliers, business partners, and even regulatory bodies who, if plugged into the process (i.e., the inner circle), can bring yet another perspective to what is now emerging as a new innovation that has been tested and vetted from within.  This merging of internal and external sources into a central innovation process, or cycle, must not be thought of as temporary – it has to become the norm.

If a company is still faced with what appears to be an insurmountable innovation challenge, it can reach out to yet another tier of innovation resources – the global innovation community.  Companies typically do this by instituting a technology scouting function, or simply by engaging an open innovation intermediary like NineSigma, that maintains a global network of solution providers representing virtually every technology category.  This next tier of innovation reach provides yet another perspective that comes from individual inventors, companies and universities from around the world, and often outside the company’s industry.  When new technologies and partnerships are forged from this tier, they too can become part of the inner circle of the company’s Value Cycle.  It is at this point that the company experiences the true essence and value of collaborative innovation.

One of the challenges I still see in open innovation is when it is tried in a highly conservative environment, typically an ‘old school’ engineering company.  By ‘old school’  I mean a company  that is used to doing everything the same way they have for years and years. They use external development partners such as universities and suppliers but they always first try to solve problems internally and then only if that fails will they go to a network of external partners. But typically this external network is the same groups they have relied on in the past which results in the same answers they’ve already received.

We recently wrapped up an open innovation pilot at a client who readily admits they are conservative. They were very impressed with the breadth of the potential partners we presented to them on the different projects we ran. They talked about how we “opened their eyes” on one particular project and uncovered work on the topic they were not aware of. They talked about how open innovation is an excellent way to connect with thought leaders from around the world. Another researcher talked about how the process of creating the NineSigma RFP really made them sharpen their thinking around the problem definition.

However, when the discussion turned to whether they saw open innovation as a fit to their current innovation strategy, they felt that it would be quite a while before they could adopt open innovation beyond the few projects in the pilot.

The challenge was culture. Even though they clearly saw the benefits of open innovation, they could not see how to change the culture. It is interesting that some seven years after the book “Open Innovation” was published that companies will still revert back to their old ways.

I would be interested in your thoughts and observations on the cultural aspect of open innovation adoption?

Following our highly successful Open Innovation Leadership Summit in October 2008, NineSigma will again convene a summit of our clients and other leading practitioners of open innovation from the U.S., Europe, South America, and Asia. 

The conference will take place May 2nd-4th, 2011 in Arlington, VA and will bring together proponents of open innovation from diverse industries, including consumer packaged goods, chemical, automotive, manufacturing, apparel, energy, biopharma, agricultural, food and beverage, medical device, and many others to discuss the best practices of 2010 and topics related to the future of open innovation. Topics include:

Innovating Open Innovation: What’s next?
Using crowd-sourcing to ignite the innovation process
Creating leaders and high-performing teams in Collaborative Innovation
Global Perspectives on OI: A view from every continent
Stakeholders of Innovation: What you haven’t considered
Accelerating your path to commercialization: Learn new game-changing approaches
Sustainability Case Studies
How Government entities are leveraging OI for maximum value
 

The format will be highly interactive with a focus on working with visionary thought leaders from industry and academia. Headlining our keynote speakers is Prof. Frank Piller, co-director of the Smart Customization Group at M.I.T. and a professor of innovation management at RWTH Aachen University, Germany.

Our previous Summit was widely ranked by participants as "the most inspiring innovation leadership event of the year."  The conference is small, limited to 125 participants, so that OI practitioners have the opportunity to build relationships and share actionable knowledge, new approaches, and proven best practices for driving value through open innovation, in an intimate setting.

To receive more information, visit our 2011 OI Leadership Summit webpage.

Watch what happens when you ask for volunteers to lead an innovation project.  Some individuals will wish that they were invisible while others will jump out of their seats with the enthusiasm of a first grader being offered an extra recess.  What is it that motivates people to respond in such different ways?

That is the question that NineSigma set out to answer in our partnership with Caliper.  We had often observed that a client would succeed when they had a motivated innovation champion, but they would then struggle in duplicating that success organization-wide.  After working with hundreds of clients over the past ten years, we could describe the characteristics of an innovation champion, but we did not have the organizational development expertise to answer our clients’ question “how do we create a team of people who have a passion for innovation?”

Caliper, a human resources consulting firm with 50 years of experience advising over 25,000 companies in team building, and employee and organizational development, was a perfect partner.  We found that Caliper shares many of NineSigma’s core values, like a respect for scientific methodology and an insatiable curiosity.  By combining Caliper’s expertise in human resources and personality assessment with NineSigma’s expertise in innovation, we collaborated to create the world’s first Collaborative Innovation Profile.

Caliper’s rigorous methodology started with a validation study, which included a customized innovation job analysis and development of a competency model for innovation leaders and project managers.  Caliper incorporated interview and assessment results from a sample group of Innovation professionals and implementers.  Caliper’s research team then analyzed the data to determine which traits are most associated with success within the competency model.  The result is a specialized tool that helps management and innovation professionals select and develop successful innovation teams.

Of course, the NineSigma team was eager to learn the results of our Collaborative Innovation team assessment.  No surprise to us, the results confirmed that we are a highly innovative and collaborative group.  Our partnership with Caliper is a shining example of how an open innovation company can grow through open innovation. 

I often see people struggling to understand the difference between Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation (OI).  Are they the same or completely different?  Is one a sub-set of the other?  Well, the unpopular, yet correct answer is “it depends.”  While Crowdsourcing is, by definition, different than OI, the two disciplines can, in fact, overlap.  Let me try to explain.  Crowdsourcing is a process by which an organization leverages the power of crowds (either a captive community or the general public) to help identify trends, or to source new concepts, ideas or designs for the marketing and development of new products and services.  Open Innovation, on the other hand, is the process of going outside an organization’s physical boundaries to identify and/or acquire new innovations, which can be in the form of a concept, expertise, intellectual property (i.e., technology), or a new supply source. 

Using the fishing metaphor, think of Crowdsourcing as a broad net, where the net (or challenge) is cast out to a larger population of loyal customers, targeted communities or the general public.  The person casting the net is interested in identifying trends and ideas coming directly from a large population (at least much larger than can be achieved by a typical consumer insight study).  OI, on the other hand, uses a fishing pole approach to target a very specific community that can solve an existing innovation problem – one that cannot necessarily be resolved by the organization seeking the solution.  For innovation needs that are more conceptual, Crowdsourcing can be used to find a solution.  However, as the seeker’s needs become more specific, other techniques, such as NineSigma’s RFP (request for proposal) method have proven time and again to be much more effective – especially when the seeker has access to a broad network of potential solution providers to whom the RFP or challenge can be sent.

It is important to know which approach to use and when to use it.   As companies begin to rely more heavily on OI and Crowdsourcing to resolve innovation issues and to support broad-reaching marketing efforts, picking the right approach can make a world of difference in terms of efficiency and overall success. 

Want to learn more about crowdsourcing? Contact us today to find out how our open innovation experts can help you.

I became aware of an interesting trend while traveling through Europe this past week.  During one of my stops in Perugia, Italy, I spoke with a group of senior level managers of small and medium sized organizations (SME’s).  I was discussing the process and value proposition of open innovation, and while most everyone was interested, they all realized that the cost of doing open innovation is still a bit higher than the price that these companies are willing to pay.  In other words, cost is a direct barrier to SME participation in open innovation.  Many of the participants spoke about what they would do if they could participate in the Open Innovation (OI) marketplace using an OI platform to help them find new ideas and resolve problems that have long haunted them, and how such access to a broad range of external knowledge would benefit their companies.  Clearly, they get it.  And, this is not a unique response from others that I received from SME’s in other countries around the world.  They all need it, but don’t know how to realize it with their streamlined budgets.

Now, let’s rewind to recent discussions I had with local governments in Africa, Europe, the Americas and the Middle East earlier this year.  Each of the government officials with whom I spoke made it clear that they had funds available to stimulate the economy through programs that would support local entrepreneurs and businesses in their respective regions.  In fact, many international institutions, such as the World Bank, the IMF and the EU are providing funds to spark regional economic development.  However, when I speak of open innovation with local governments, many of them claim that it hasn’t been proven yet in their regions.  The conservative “wait and see” response seems to be prevalent most everywhere.  However, do their current programs yield tangible benefits?  Have prior efforts worked for them in terms of spawning economic growth?  The answer to these questions is often a resounding “no,” according to the local SME’s.  The funny thing is, when I ask these local governments who helped them come up with the ideas for their existing programs, there always seems to be some internal guru who convinces the government agency that their new idea should work.  It rarely involves the constituency of SME’s in their region who are in dire need of help.  I think you see where I am going with this.

One brave little region in Northern Italy (Piedmont) had the guts to listen to their constituency and try open innovation as a means of sparking the local economy, and efforts for a new regional OI program are just now getting underway.  If more local government officials would listen to their constituency and realize the potential benefits an OI program would have in their regions, such as increasing revenue opportunities, job growth, and providing the foundation for a thriving local economy, they could possibly innovate themselves out of their current economic slump.  All eyes are now on the Piedmont region, and once they are able to demonstrate success, it is just a matter of time before universal adoption begins to take place.  For this to happen, local governments must be prepared to fund both the establishment of local resources for OI participation for their resident SME’s, and be prepared to offer funding for the various acquisitions that will likely take place once the program is underway.  These simple steps will remove barriers to SME participation in OI, and open the flood gates of innovation potential within their regions.  We are at the threshold of a new horizon, but some governments must be willing to work with their constituent SME’s to demonstrate what many large enterprises have known for years – OI works. 

Contact us today to find out how our open innovation experts can help you.

One of my US colleagues said that the refreshing thing about Europe is that it has 20 or so very different systems which all, in some way or another, seem to be working. Multiple solutions for the same need, that seems like the essence of Open Innovation. Was OI invented in Europe?

Reading the article ´Connect and Develop´ by the very American Harvard Business Review inspired me in 2006 to start a company in open innovation providing expert services. The idea was simple enough:  disclose the enormous innovation potential for companies in Europe by engaging the people who actually invented all the technology and developed all the great products of the last 20 years. They were going to retire anyway and it seemed like a great idea to intelligently use this wealth of wisdom.

There was one small challenge to overcome: getting the companies to engage with these top experts.

One of my lessons learned from working in open innovation in the past four years was that corporations lack the interface for actually sourcing and engaging with external partners in innovation. One of the CTO´s in a more philosophic mode remarked that it was related to the unbalance between “Yes” and “No” inside corporations. If someone says “Yes”  to something from the outside they are required to explain and defend their choice for working with an outside party. Saying  “No” obviously does not require explanation, even if it would be discarding the million dollar idea…

It goes to show that we should applaud the heroes that actually say yes to collaborative innovation, willing to explain themselves to their superiors, colleagues and existing partners. Within NineSigma Europe we are very aware and grateful for the champions that we have at the clients in Open Innovation. That is why we want to organize a way to recognize these champions and create some visibility for those people and organizations that lead OI.

More on this in my next Blog.

Contact us today to find out how our open innovation experts can help you.