Open Innovation: Dying? …or Emerging?

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

Top Takeaway:

Finally! Some serious and intelligent discussion sorting out the differences between “Outsourcing” and “Open Innovation.” Why does it always seem to take a provocative article titled, “Such-and-Such is DEAD” for these insightful conversations to come to light?

At any rate, OI is not dead, China is not asleep at the wheel innovation-wise,  and as long as more “innovation consultants” continue to write more and more business books on Innovation, we’ll see more and more terms and spinoffs under the very inclusive umbrella of Open Innovation. OI is the way of the future, no matter what we’re calling it this week. 

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Background:

Take the time to read this December 9 , 2009 Business Week snippet for yourself – worth a look, since you might not believe me if I quoted excerpts from it myself:

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/next/archives/2009/12/is_open_innovat.html

The main “comment-provokers” were a few broad statements by James Todhunter to Business Week’s Todd Arendt that Open Innovation is dead because companies still need IP, China is not in fact innovative and won’t be anytime soon, and the “Hot Innovation Areas” are the basic necessities of life:  food, energy, water.

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The Story:

Short but sweet: read the comments and weigh-ins from innovators and others below the Business Week article.

When Henry Chesbrough coined the term “Open Innovation” in his 2003 book by the same name, the term intentionally covered a whole lot of ground:

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.”

I don’t see anything being ruled out, exactly.

If you look at it closely, OI means just about anything goes that might stretch the previous era’s “Closed Innovation” idea, which was more about inventing internally in a closed R&D lab and making sure IP rights were secured before disclosing the invention to anyone outside the firm.

The simple but groundbreaking idea being presented by Chesbrough is that innovation is now expanding to include entitites outside the firm’s R&D labs, so that something new with exponential promise is emerging. 

OI is still a recent area of research and practice, so my personal guess is there is probably not yet a definitive expert opinion about the “dead or alive” status or lifespan of something that appears to be in its infancy, or at best, is just learning how to walk and tie its shoes.

Below is a list of various articles and resources on the current status (and/or fate!) of Open Innovation for your holiday reading pleasure as 2009 draws to a close.

I don’t believe for one minute that the topic of Open Innovation is anywhere near to drawing to a close. Like all good things, it’s probably about time to sort out what it is and (maybe) what it isn’t, at the very least.

My hope and dream for the New Year:

That in 2010 we might be able to talk about Open Innovation with a bit more agreement on terms, a bit less debate over terminology, and renewed focus on the exciting future of the many forms of  “Open Innovation” in our collaborative future as innovators trying to change the world for greater good.

Please feel free to add your favorite OI articles, blogs, and comments to this list. Enjoy!

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 Open Innovation Blogs & Reads (no meaningful order- read ‘em all!)

Archive of [excellent] free speaker presentations from Open Innovation speaker series at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business: http://openinnovation.haas.berkeley.edu/speaker_series/index.html

Article: Open R&D and open innovation: exploring the phenomenon (Chesbrough et al.) http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122535405/HTMLSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Blog/Joel West:  http://blog.openinnovation.net/

Blog/Cesar Castro: http://openinno.wordpress.com/

 Blog/Stefan Lindegaard (several posts regarding open innovation vs outsourcing): http://stefanlindegaard.com/2009/12/06/trash/comment-page-1/

Search “Open Innovation Summit 2009″ for many direct links to presentations and commentary on the Dec 4-7 2009 summit that took place in Orlando.  http://bx.businessweek.com/business-innovation/open-innovation-summit-december-2-5-2009-in-orlando-fl/13318497448023819761-f163eb2ecf8a6641663e8603fe25aa85/

If the link is not working (it comes and goes, unfortunately), please see Andrea Meyer’s blog and Tweets for fantastic coverage and commentary on the summit and all things Innovation:

Blog/Andrea Meyer: http://workingknowledge.com/blog/

 Blog/Chris Chard: http://www.openinnovators.net/

Blog/OI Research:  http://www.open-innovation.net/

[Watch this list - it will grow. Latest addition December 20 2009. ]

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Credits:

Business Week post on the death of Open Innovation: http://www. businessweek.com/innovate/next/archives/2009/12/is_open_innovat.html

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Crowdsourcing: Longterm Value Creation or Fad?

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

Top Takeaway:

Crowdsourcing: Fun? YES!

Value creation with staying power? Not quite sure yet on that one. Reports vary;  inconclusive research.   Looking forward to some [quantitative] follow-up research on quality and/or longer-term sustainability of innovation generated from this methodology, showing that crowdsourced innovations live on well beyond the PR phase. 

Seems like there is something of great value here – as soon as Crowdsourcing becomes a more seriously managed business tool and a bit less of a free-for-all. [A start: Twitter rules!] Key point:  Smart people really don’t like working for free. Pats on the back only go so far.

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Background:

What is crowdsourcing? (from www.lawfont.com)

“The idea of crowdsourcing is a play on the well-known practice of outsourcing. Outsourcing is most commonly known as the practice of substituting cheap labor from other countries to cut costs at home. It also has a more general meaning of simply using skills from outside a company where the company does not have the required expertise internally.

“Crowdsourcing” - a term coined by Wired author Jeff Howe –  refers to the increasingly prevalent practice of using the skills and time of unpaid or low-paid amateurs to create content or solutions for established businesses. The general idea is to use the talents of the crowd, particularly people who are not necessarily employed in the industry with the problem to solve, but nonetheless have a talent that is valuable to that industry.”

Tapping into the “collective intelligence of the public at large” assumes one major factor is at hand — intelligence. Crowd behavior is a topic of endless academic and commercial research, as it has been for decades. History has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that crowds can behave very wisely or very unwisely, depending on who is giving the cues or leading the pack.

I totally agree with Jennifer Alsever’s observation that “people can and want to help your business.” 

The strong advantage that rises to the top is that loyal users and consumers of existing products can and do have great ideas for incrementally improving current products. In today’s economy, an incremental improvement on any product or service that comes from a free (or low-cost) source is worth a lot.

A parallel strong concern that rises to the top is that the whole idea behind crowdsourcing is to push problems out to the general public and hope a brillant solution bubbles up. Sometimes it does.

Depending on the nature of the problem to be solved, the outcome could be anything from an idea your R&D folks thought of 20 years ago or . . . something so fantastically low-tech  and obvious your R&D folks just could not think if it because it was too simple. Or maybe somewhere in the middle – obviously.

I don’t want to be the one to rule out the rocket-scientist-in-hiding who might be the one to pop into your public innovation discussion. Real people do win the lottery, after all. It is my personal opinion that basements and garages and top desk drawers are chock full of brilliant ideas that could change the world if independent inventors had a simpler-to-cross bridge between their ideas and commercialization.

I also don’t underestimate the intelligence of innovative thinkers, and personally I don’t think some of those brilliant basement and garage inventors actually WANT big companies to gobble up their great idea in exchange for a “windfall” of $100 and a mention on page B1 in their local paper.

I am however, a major fan of Expertsourcing [Expert Sourcing], which is defined as sourcing ideas/solutions from specialized, professional-grade, vetted experts.

Brokering and managing Expertsourcing transactions have sprung up as a brillant new business service platform. Companies in the space include:
Innocentive (Problems issued to recruited scientists)
NineSigma (Sends out RFPs to network of universities, inventors, businesses)
YourEncore (Posts projects to retired technical people)
yet2 (Matching and providing services/resources to IP buyers/sellers)

There are more now, and others will be coming. Brilliant.

With the great new wave of ideas being mined “almost for free” from the public by large corporations, we might expect to see some backlash down the road from great minds with great ideas who don’t feel like being taken for a free ride by corporations but who possess the very basic human need of being valued for their contributions to society.

No doubt the evolution of Web 2.0 and Innovation Management methodologies will provide great reading as it evolves and segments into a network of proven and sustainable solutions for using the collective intelligence.

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Credits:

Jennifer Alsever on Crowdsourcing as “a very real and important business idea”: http://www.bnet.com/2403-13241_23-52961.html

Crowdsourcing: Blog by Jeff Howe, contributing editor at Wired magazine, who coined the term in June 2006.

Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything: Book by Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams that offers a guide for mass collaboration among customers, suppliers, and producers.

Tom Powell on Expert Sourcing: http://coinnovative.com/part-6-expert-sourcing-for-problem-solving-and-innovation/

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Innovation: Metrics for the Future?

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller
 
Top Takeaway:
 
Each firm must evaluate their own innovation successes. How? Innovation is the thing we all know we need for success, yet there is no rule book or standard guide for metrics. According to a McKinsey Global Survey, “No matter what form of innovation they pursue, far fewer companies measure it than pursue it.”
 
Simple advice from Andrea Meyer via CEO/product design innovator Roberto Alessi: “Look back over the portfolio of products or services that your firm has produced. Are there patterns in which ones succeeded and which ones failed? Use these commonalities to devise your own formula.”
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Background:
 
Sam Miller summed it up in 2007: “Until now, innovation has been somewhat of a black art. Managers currently lack the requisite metrics to make informed decisions about their innovation programs.
 
Admittedly, some metrics have been developed for new product development. However, such metrics are very limited.
 
Managers have only a vague sense oftheir company’s overall innovativeness; they have little or no means to assess the effectiveness and efficacy of a particular innovation program.

They need tools with which to diagnose innovation processes and to evaluate the innovative capacity of potential acquisition targets.”

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The Story:

According to the McKinsey Global Survey on Innovation Metrics, “At companies that track the relationship between shareholder value and spending on innovation, the three most important metrics are all externally focused: revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and the percentage of sales from new products or services.

At companies where innovation is the most important strategic priority, the top three metrics are a somewhat more comprehensive mix: customer satisfaction, the number of ideas in the pipeline, and R&D spending as a percentage of sales.”

Interestingly, 49 percent of the respondents say they don’t benchmark themselves against competitors on any of the innovation metrics they use, while 43 percent say that they do.

The biggest takeway from the survey was this fascinating gap: although executives said they were satisfied with their innovation metrics and reporting, les than a third could say they were satisfied that there was any real use or application of those same innovation metrics to business strategy.

McKinsey’s research conclusion: ”Companies may be tracking more innovation metrics than they can put to good use”.

Even more sketchy in the McKinsey strudy and in other research on innovation metrics is the admittedly nonexistent correlation between internal innovaton metrics and reward systems or compensation for innovators. [Snarly! On my list for future post topics.]

One of the most interesting findings from the McKinsey study comes from the group of survey respondents termed as “high performing” innovators [full text and study summary are in Credits below}, where In general, they have a greater interest in pursuing and measuring their innovations as a portfolio: they are more likely than other respondents to pursue and measure all types of innovation, and nearly a quarter (far more than other executives) say that creating a balanced portfolio of innovations is one reason they use metrics.

In these cases, innovation is planned, integrated, and measured as part of the business framework, and not considered so much as a "department" or an entity that is separate from overall corporate strategy.

Booz Allen Hamilton proposed [2007] that the singlemost effective measure of innovation is ROI2 or Return on Innovation Investment as Percentage of Revenue, although an accompanying ”Freshness Index” is of prime importance (e.g., ROI2 for recent 3 years).

As companies and investors scramble to add innovation metrics to portray their asset portfolios, a need for more holistic and longer-term innovation metrics is indicated.

Is this something that can really be “Standardized” and make any sense? Is it possible for a company to measure return on innovation as a key metric without stifling the experimentation aspect inherent to true R&D? 

As innovation increases in importance to shareholders and to investors, this innovation metrics question will be most interesting to keep an eye on.  

So far, Alessi seems to have it right: look closely at what worked in your organization, develop metrics for success based on those proven successes, and keep doing it.

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Credits:

http://www.articlesbase.com/management-articles/analyze-innovative-capabilities-of-your-employees-with-innovation-metrics-265798.html Sam Miller on Innovation Metrics

http://workingknowledge.com/blog/?cat=12  Andrea Meyer on looking at mega-scale innovation metrics as a foundation for creating smaller-scale innovation metrics. See also ITIF Report below.

http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=226  ITIF Report on Global ‘Innovation and Competitiveness

https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Strategy/McKinsey_Global_Survey_Results_Assessing_innovation_metrics_2243?pagenum=2   McKinsey Global Survey on Innovation Metrics

 http://www.innovationmetrics.gov/comments/051107BoozAllenHamilton.pdf  Booz Allen Hamilton Public Comment submission to the DoC Advisory Committee on Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy  
 
 
Full text of Feburary 2009 McKinsey interview with Albeto Alessi

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Starting Right: Idea Management Systems

Posted on December 20, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

Top Takeaway:

Great store of resources and points of view on Dr. Lauchlan A. K. Mackinnon’s www.ideamanagementsystems.com  — well worth looking at with a fresh open mind. New software and systems bring improved efficiency and usability to idea management processes in smaller companies. 

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Background:

Formalized Idea Management Systems don’t seem to be the norm in smaller companies. Why not? Smaller companies have more to lose by draining internal resources generating, intaking, and sorting through ideas manually, and they also have (relatively) more to gain if they can catch the gem in the idea pile.  At what point does the most common reason for NOT using software for idea management – ”Budget Concerns” — end up adding cost and/or creating missed revenue through inefficiencies and lost ideas?  One more thing to sort out, but probably worth a new look as performance stakes get higher for innovators.

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The Story:

I recently facilitated a roundtable discussion in Seattle with the focus of delivering innovation – Product Realization – and generating a list of Next Practices.  The session was very intentionally structured toward forward-thinking practices in order to avoid stepping into the usual complaints and holes about execution hiccups and resource scarcity.

That said, we did touch on “obstacles” in relation to how they were overcome.

Interestingly, the most commonly mentioned obstacle to innovation success was “executing the wrong thing beautifully”.

Obviously — difficult to detect until it’s too late.  How then to make sure we’re starting off with the right idea?

The following  definition and description is from www.ideamanagementsystems.com

“What is an Idea Management System?

An Idea Management System is a structured and disciplined approach to managing innovation by putting in place systems and metrics to manage
  • Idea Generation
  • Idea Capture
  • Idea Collaboration
  • Idea Assessment
  • Idea Implementation
  • Idea Outcomes Monitoring

An Idea Management System involves 5 components:

  • A Front-End system to capture and develop ideas
  • A Back-End system to define and implement processes for filtering and assessing ideas and deciding which ones to invest in
  • An organisational architecture to define the roles and organisational structures facilitating this activity
  • IT systems to support and enable this workflow
  • Metrics and measures to monitor the flow of ideas through the ‘idea pipeline’ and to determine the business value of the idea generation and implementation process

That is, an Idea Management System puts in place systems and processes to implement a ‘stage-gate’ or idea funnel process where ideas are systematically filtered and assessed against criteria and only the most valuable ones are implemented and put into practice.

An Idea Management System manages, monitors and implements innovation in a structured way. Although it is not the only way to approach innovation, it is very appealing to management as it provides structure, discipline, clear milestones and metrics to what may otherwise be a very qualitative and unstructured process.”

Dr. Lauchlan A. K. Mackinnon’s blog on this topic has a meaty content menu from 2007 up until December 7, 2008, and many of the external links are loaded with current updates and more recent content.

As an innovator in a  product-focused SME that does not have a formal system for tracking and managing ideas, this area holds great promise.

I agree with Dr. Mackinnon’s opinion that we tend to get tangled up not in the idea collection part of this process but in our attempts to assign criteria for success and to be truly objective about what projects to NOT move forward with.

I had not considered implementing a software solution for idea management (specifically aimed at innovation — beyond general NPD) prior to investigating the information and opinions on www.ideamanagement.com . I look forward to diving more deeply into innovators’ opinions on this software category to see what your picks are for 2010 and beyond.

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Credits:
 
www.ideamanagementsystems.com by Dr. Lauchlan A. K. Mackinnon
 
http://www.imaginatik.com/webdoc_prod_idc_description Idea Central Software. Especially interesting is the read on “The Perils of Email for Idea Generation” – a common theme on the idea management software sites and an even more common practice in more companies that will admit to it, I’m sure.
 
http://www.builttothrive.com/?p=328 by Jay Van Zyl: Several articles on what great idea management software should look like. One great piece of advice from Jay (in spite of his lengthy “Wish list” on the software features:  “The simpler the approach the more effective the adoption will be.”
 

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Successful Innovation: Product Realization Next Practices

Posted on December 19, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

 

December 19, 2009  |  by Carol Schreitmueller  

Category: Innovation Success Stories

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Top Takeaway:  “Seattle Innov8″ Roundtable discussion on 11/11/09 focused on one question, “How might we best  deliver innovation / product realization to the marketplace?

Read on! Hard for me to believe that organizations who adopt some or all of our recommended “Top 23 Next Practices for Delivering Innovation” won’t find innovation popping up suddenly – and find some new energy where there previously may not have been. 

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Background: The test we face today as innovators  

Each of us knows that we have plenty of talent – within ourselves and in our highly creative colleagues. No lack of talent and ideas, or of creative processes.

WHY then is it such a difficult leap from engaging creative minds in brainstorming and gathering fantastic ideas, to actually CAPTURING tangible value from innovation by successfully delivering a real, game-changing, profitable product? 

The great puzzle of product realization.

“How might we more effectively manifest product realization in our organizations?”

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Session Participants/Innovators: for more information, follow links for LinkedIn or other profiles

Joseph Ungari  :: Vice President, Product Development, Innovation CreationCenter. T-mobile, USA  http://bit.ly/Ungari

Harry Roberts  :: Founder, The Hatchery, former CMO, Starbucks

Steve Cramer  :: VP, Advanced Concepts Team, BD&A  http://bit.ly/StCramer

Jill Bamburg   :: Core Faculty, MBA Program at Bainbridge Graduate    Institute  http://bit.ly/Bamburg

Celeste Tell  :: Founder and Partner, Fair Building Technology   http://bit.ly/CelesteTell

Daniel Hill   :: Design Manager,  PMI  http://bit.ly/DanielHill

Lane Czaplinski    ::  Artistic Director, On the Boards     http://bit.ly/Czaplinski

Carol Schreitmueller  :: Director, Advanced Innovation, PMI  http://bit.ly/Schreitmueller    (author and facilitator of this session)

Colleen Hunter-Gale   :: Vice President, Talent Development, PMI http://bit.ly/Hunter-Gale     (co-facilitator for this session)…………………………………………………………………………………………………………

The Story: This the collective output of Seattle’s roundtable group “Innov8”  11/11/09 session

 ”Our top 23 Next Practices for Successful Product Realization”

#1. STREAMLINE INNOVATION TO LOWEST COMMON DENOMINATOR:  Distill down to what the product really is for and what it needs to be: streamline innovation and design processes to get down to the essence of the solution (with the least possible elements) in order to increase likelihood of product realization  

#2. LOOK FOR HOLES: What is the ethnography model MISSING? Don’t underestimate the value of DEEP knowledge and understanding of these 3 areas: current uses/solutions/behaviors, Current social norms surrounding the use and behaviors, Traditions supporting the behavior 

#3. ENGAGE ALL STAKEHOLDERS EARLY ON - in the ideation and conceptual stages — before ideas or designs get fixed in place. Speak everyone’s language. Listen. Translate. Ask more questions than you think you need to 

#4. LEVERAGE RESISTANCE TO INNOVATION: Flip it on its back during the creation process: challenge the idea of the innovation itself. Use that resistance point to identify even more innovation 

#5. REINVENT CRITERIA for INNOVATION to create new “surprise and delight” factors — daily. Keep up! The world should never be moving forward faster than your ideas are

#6. DIG DEEPER THAN EVER BEFORE: Ask deeper questions, don’t take the first answer, look for the why behind the why, attract a new more honest and authentic level of dialogue than was acceptable yesterday

#7. CONCEPTUALIZE, INNOVATE, DESIGN, DELIVER HOLISTICALLY: Look at every angle; invent new angles; ask off-the-wall questions to find out what you’ve missed; create contextual shifts and out-of-comfort-zone innovation environments and inquiries in order to have TOTAL awareness of what is needed. Do this with collaborative cross-functional multidisciplinary diverse teams, and with diverse teams of teams

#8. INSIST ON OWNERSHIP and ACCOUNTABILITY: Successfully realized Innovation always has a clear process owner and champion, 100% of the time. Vital

#9. EMBRACE SPEED THROUGH PROTOTYPING AND MARKET TESTING: “Deliver Early and Often”: Take advantage of rapid prototyping; know that innovation is iterative and know that the beta version is not “it”. TEST, then let go of the original idea and allow the next version to rapidly replace today’s version. Try this: Market test 10K units and gather feedback before committing to anything more

#10. CREATE THE RIGHT TEAM: Challenge the Status Quo. Mix it up. Get the right people. Create teams that are diverse, cross-functional, multi-disciplinary, active, energy-filled, dedicated, passionate. Your team is really your “Extended team” of stakeholders including customers and total value chain. Leverage them all

#11.  DEEP DIVE into your market and target marketing culture: assume there is something you don’t know and that is vital for making or breaking the success of the idea. Look at your consumers’ environment more closely than ever before. Ask them about their work. LISTEN to what they are actually telling you, not to what you think you want to hear

#12. SEEK OUT DIFFERENT FORMS OF UNIQUE CREATIVE TALENT: Search out (and notice when you find) people who do something exceptionally well, especially in areas you don’t usually look in: people who craft, write, or do something else that is human-centered. Use their talent(s) to sharpen yours

#13. CREATE IT, THEN LET IT GO: Creation/Innovation experience is different than the consumer user experience — listen to the feedback and reinvent through new eyes

#14. TOUCH IT & THEN SHARE IT: Leverage the potential to share products on a social network – understand the benefits of going viral

#15. ENTICE & DELIVER: Take responsibility for the 2 lives of a product — first, entice with a great promise. Then deliver on that promise.

#16. COLLABORATE: No longer optional. Team interaction is what makes quantum results possible. (Even if it’s semi-forced to begin with, it still works

#17. SIX  KEY INNOVATION SUCCESS FILTERS: #1: Brand Enhancement #2: Disruptive #3: Revenue Generation #4: Scalable #5: Intellectual Property potential  6: “WOW” Factor

#18. GAUGE THE FUN being had in the innovation process. If it’s not fun to create, then it’s very possibly not innovative, and it also very possibly won’t resonate with consumers either

#19. ENTICE the decision-maker. It’s part of your job to get them to buy it

#21. BUILD STREET CRED however you can: Build bridges between your product and your consumers. Create venues for interactive dialogue and feedback such as online product reviews. Dialogue and transparency fosters credibility – if you’re not doing this, it’s a major miss in today’s marketplace

#22. MAKE IT REAL: Elevate emotional hooks and raise product perceived value using today’s tools. Example (Joe Ungari@T-Mobile): AD-CEPTS, which are short videos like an ad that resonate with consumers’ emotional stimuli

 #23. LOW TECH STRIKINGLY SIMPLE SOLUTIONS RESONATE!

#24. SOLVING MULTIPLE PROBLEMS exponentially increases product value and likelihood of successful product realization

How many of these very simple, positive, success-breeding practices do YOU do every day? Probably not as many as we’d all like to. Nothing on this list that can’t simply begin today.

More to come on daily innovation practices that can increase successful outcomes.……………………………………………………………………………………………

Credits:

Thank you to our Information Capture team for their work on 11/11:

Lisa Capa         :: Coach  http://attentiontochange.com/about/

Justin Fogle  ::  Program Director at Urban Green    http://www.linkedin.com/in/justinfogle

Appreciative Inquiry as a tool for problem solving:

http://www.jpconsultantsinc.com/appreciative_inquiry/appreciative-inquiry-and-problem-solving.php

 

 

 

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User-Driven Innovation 101: Taxonomy Puzzle

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

December 7, 2009  |  by Carol Schreitmueller  

Category: User-Driven Innovation

Top Takeaway:

Taxonomy clarification for user-led innovation: A subset of Open Innovation. Three major buckets of user-led/driven/fueled innovation exist: lead user innovation, firm-initiated or firm-facilitated individual user-driven innovation, and various forms of group user-driven innovation. Invitation for comments/recommendations for authoritative resource for user-led innovation taxonomy clarification.

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Background:

Strikingly simple: Just curious about how the classifications and terms of user-fueled innovation all fit together, including theories, evolution, strategy, and best practices for harnessing users as innovators in 2010 and beyond.

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Story:

User-Driven Innovation 101: Taxonomy Puzzle

User-driven innovation is exploding with the onset of easier-to-use interactive web-based tools for consumers and users.

Clear direction and opinions on best practices for “User-Driven Innovation” are overly tricky to pin down. User-Driven Innovation is tagged with a growing number of terms: Collaborative Innovation, Customer-Centricity, Customer Co-design,  Customer Innovation, Customer-Contributed Content, Customer-Led Business Strategy, Customer-Led Innovation, Community-Based Design, Crowdsourcing, Distributed Participatory Design, Open Source [Innovation], Outside Innovation, Participatory Design, Participatory Innovation, People-Centered [-Centred] Design, Social Innovation, User-Centric Innovation, User-Innovation, User-Centered [-Centred] Innovation, Virtual Customer Environment.

Just a start. A few hours of Google searching and reading did not unearth any clear way to distinguish and delineate some of these terms from one another, and also did not shed consistent light in sorting out the various meanings of a few of the individual terms.

Is there a central resource for sorting out User-related Innovation taxonomy? [Comment away, please!]

Sussex-based researcher Keith Pavitt (1981), stipulated that “most technological knowledge turns out not to be “information” that is generally applicable and easily reproducible, but specific to firms and applications, cumulative in development and varied amongst sectors in source and direction.”

According to Pavitt, “These characteristics and variations can be classified in a three part taxonomy based on firms: (1) supplier dominated; (2) production intensive; (3) science based. They can be explained by sources of technology, requirements of users, and possibilities for appropriation. This explanation has implications for our understanding of the sources and directions of technical change, firms’ diversification behaviour, the dynamic relationship between technology and industrial structure, and the formation of technological skills and advantages at the level of the firm, the region and the country.” There is one additional category —  (4) specialized supplier —  included by Pavitt for narrow situations like machinery that is for a specific purpose.

Although Pavitt’s assumptions about industry categories’ innovation methodologies accurately described the structure of technological change for a period of several decades, the game has changed. Innovation within the discipline of innovation is accelerating and shape-shifting.

One thing is certain: Firms of all sizes and types – with few exceptions — are moving toward harnessing consumers and users as sources of innovation. The explosion of social media has provided unprecedented fuel for innovation.

Identifiable are 3 main subcategories of user-driven, user-led, and/or user-fueled innovation:

  1. User-led Innovation a` la Von Hippel (@MIT): people who have a high level of interest in using a product (or service) create improvements or entirely new products to solve a problem. Ideas can be pushed by users to the firm, spun off into new inventions by users, or pulled by firm from the user or from a group of lead users.
  2. User-led Innovation that is posed as a request by a firm to a broad group of (usually targeted) users for ideas, suggestions, or improvements. Users or consumers can respond publicly and sometimes respond to another consumer’s response.
  3. User-led Innovation that is tossed out as an open call by a firm to the general pubic (unknown users) as a whole, which can sometime causes a process to take place known as Crowdsourcing, although it’s there are other possible group user innovation methods as well.

My logical next step in sorting this out more clearly is to follow 2 of the excellent tips received from Drew Boyd, whose advice was outlined in the very first post on this blog.

First: “Stop writing” … at about this many words.

Second: ”Use Delicious to find things”.   

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Credits | Resources:

Keith Pavitt: Summary [Obituary and publication list in English; compiled by http://www.inovasyon.org/] of Keith Pavitt’s life and scientific research on technological change including books and IBSN’s: http://www.inovasyon.org/pdf/Keith_Pavitt.pdf  Lots more to choose from with search terms “Pavitt’s Taxomony” if you’re interested.

Eric Von Hippel [originator of lead user theory] interview by Scott Wilson of the Deloitte Review: http://bit.ly/Deloitte_Interview_Von_Hippel

Patricia Seybold’s blog on topics relevant to her book, Outside Innovation: http://outsideinnovation.blogs.com/

Daniel Scocco’s Innovation Zen blog: categorization of methods of Outside Innovation: http://bit.ly/Scocco_Outside_Innovation

Kevin J. Boudreau and Karim R. Lakhani on How to Manage Outside Innovation (MIT Sloan Management Review article: register for free to access the full article) http://bit.ly/MIT_Article_Outside_Innovation

Filed under: User-Driven Innovation | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Drew Boyd on Innovation Blogging

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Carol Schreitmueller

November 29, 2009  |  by Carol Schreitmueller  

Category: Innovation Experts & Opinions

Top Takeaway:

 Drew’s Number One Tip: “Give ‘em Your Best Stuff!”

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Background:

Summary of my 10/30/09 interview with Drew Boyd, author of www.innovationinpractice.com. Drew’s blog was noted on December 2, 2008  by Chuck Frey @ InnovationTools as one of the top 10 innovation blogs in the world to follow — just one year from Drew’s launch.

The seeds of Drew’s launch into the blogosphere came out of a desire to stay ahead of his then 18-year old son. He credits his passion for blogging to the fact that innovation is very simply what he loves to do. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Story:

My question to Drew:

“I’m an innovation strategist just starting a blog. I’m a newbie to the professional blogosphere. What have you learned from becoming a dedicated innovation blogger, and how did you go from a brand new blogger to the Top 10 in this topic area in just one year?”

Drew’s advice to me:

- Begin here;  stay here: “What do I really believe in and think about?”

- Start by writing down 100 topics you want to write about

- Then the fun starts! Learn more; write down more: keep a rolling topic list

- Be consistent. Stay on brand, no matter what. FOCUS

- Don’t start unless you are committed to posting consistently; 1x a week minimum

 - Say it in 500-600 words

 - Become a dedicated reader of other blogs: players, academics, practitioners

- Learn to sort out the BS (90%) from the Real (10%) right away

- Use Twitter to find out what other people are reading. Then form an opinion on it

- Think long term: Tweet like ALL your Tweets for the next 10 years will be laid out

- Use Twitter –> Delicious: If people find me on Twitter, they’ll find my Delicious tags

- Use Delicious as a statement of who you are. Invite others: “Scan me! Know me!”

- Learn how to leverage keywords and tags in Delicious

- Use Delicious regularly to FIND things

- Plan. Be opportunistic: Write what you really want to write about

- For length and format, scan for inspiration. Feel free to adapt others’ great ideas.

- Be interesting. Say interesting things. Reference interesting things from others.

- There is no Secret Sauce: Give it ALL AWAY. Give ‘em your best stuff

- If you hold back (a common “expert” blogger error), they’ll know – don’t do it

- Put your whole self into it. Your readers will be back, but only if you give your best

Look for easily laid out blogs that you enjoy reading, and notice what you like (or don’t) about the formats. Check out http://www.workingknowledge.com/blog/ by Andrea Meyer as a stellar  example of a format that helps the reader actually read what she has to say with ease.

You owe it to your readers to stay on track and on brand. If readers drop you after a post, notice it. Most likely cause: Did you stray off topic?

Make sure that your blog address, LinkedIn URL, Twitter name, and Delicious name are all prominently posted. Readers should be wondering, ”What does Drew find interesting today?”.

Choose 8 topics from Twitter and follow those topics. Then start Tweeting on those same 8 topics. Stay on topic. Watch those topics evolve. Have an opinion – don’t just RT and post URL’s. Watch/Look/Listen. Use Twitter to form a “current moment view” for yourself.

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Credits:

Christopher Allen  www.lifewithalacrity.com for referring me to Drew Boyd and for pointing me to Chuck Frey’s blog at http://bit.ly/InnovationTools

Drew Boyd, for “Giving me your best!”. Thank you. www.innovationinpractice.com

Bainbridge Graduate Institute  www.bgi.edu + Christopher Allen for MBA course MGT 566: Dal LaMagna Course in Social Web.

Chuck Frey’s Top 10 Innovation Blogs: http://bit.ly/Top10InnovationBlogs

Bainbridge Graduate Institute: www.bgi.edu

Filed under: Innovation Experts and Opinions | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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