Innovation Management - The online learning center for Managing Innovation.

In this in-depth article we present how Open innovation meshes with crowd sourcing, drawing on ideation, market needs and opportunities, to fuel a balanced portfolio with actionable innovation challenges, or « the right things to do », and converges these with a need driven approach to source the ways of « doing things right ». We will illustrate this innovation continuity with a number of examples and a focus onto the food and drink industry.

While the previous two methods – Netnography and Social Media Solution Scouting – outline the potential of passive methods in using the power of social media for innovation, the next two approaches enable companies to interact with consumers. Configuration Tools as well as Innovation Contests invite users outside the company’s four walls to become an active part of new product development. In part two of this article you will learn how Audi and Henkel empowered the crowd and turned them into co-producers.

Governments could be described as the largest and longest running crowd-funding schemes in existence. Sadly, whereas crowd-funding is seen as innovative, flexible, responsive, bottom up, transparent, enabling – among other things; governments would be hard pushed to receive similar accolades. However, times are changing and governments are beginning to adopt some of the characteristics of crowd-funding and crowdsourcing. But there is a long way to go.

Open innovation has found its way into companies’ innovation processes and is a widely used approach to spur collaborative innovation with consumers. A multitude of methods and tools have come into being, creating confusion about how to make the most out of users’ knowledge and creativity. This article provides innovation managers with insights into four popular open innovation practices at four German blue chips and contrasts the various approaches.

Practice makes perfect. People master collaborative innovation as they convene people on the critical conversations and as they navigate the day in a life of innovation challenges. What’s next? What possibilities do we see for further progress? What possibilities do we see for leadership? In this article, innovation architect Doug Collins shares insights for the advanced practitioner: people who have become familiar with the blueprint for collaborative innovation and seek to hone their craft further.

Philips, the global electronics company, has quietly been practicing open innovation through its ongoing ‘SimplyInnovate’ platform. To get more product-specific ideas, Philips also launched the ‘Innovation Open’ contest earlier this month, according to Crowdsourcing.org. This contest is meant to complement Philips’ own extensive R&D activities.

Open innovation crowd sourcing methods, when applied to the right problem, can effectively extend the solution provider search beyond the boundaries of an industry. This article presents the application of a targeted broadcast crowd sourcing method to identify unobvious solution providers for a German chain-drive industry consortium. The majority of solutions submitted through this method were previously unknown to the consortium. This evaluation demonstrates the power of open crowd sourcing to provide solutions from discontinuous industries and how effective crowd sourcing can be in open innovation.

Grand Challenges represent enormous potential in their power to use open innovation practices to generate worldwide awareness of — and affinity for —private and public sector organizations. As challenge prizes grow and social media bring them to the attention of the world, Grand Challenges have also become an important part of public relations exercises for Grand Challenge sponsors like Virgin, Netflix and General Electric.

Media firms such as the BBC, HBO, and Corbus, along with brand-drive organizations such as Visa and the Estee Lauder Companies, hire people to manage their digital assets. Digital assets include content such as television shows, movies, photographs, and advertisements. Viewers and consumers create their own content, too, in response to shows and brands. Co-creation introduces new challenges for digital asset managers, including deciding what content to manage. In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores possibilities for digital asset managers to apply the practice of collaborative innovation to help them do their own work more effectively.

One of the most obvious benefits of crowdsourcing is its ability to stimulate creativity and accelerate innovation on a global scale. Leading companies such as Dell, Starbucks or Frito-Lay have pioneered this trend by building platforms (respectively IdeaStorm, MyStarbucksIdea and Doritos Crash The SuperBowl) that connect them to a crowd of passionate individuals. These success-stories paint a very positive picture of crowdsourcing, but the reality is that connecting with the crowd is not as easy as it seems. In this post, we will present the advantages and drawbacks of using crowdsourcing to source creative ideas, and explain how specialized intermediaries can help companies by providing crowds, platforms and experience.

The Digital Age disrupts the practices and beliefs that gird the archetypical relationship between advertising agency and client. The Procter & Gamble Companies discarded a relic of the client-agency relationship, the creative brief. They seek more authentic engagement that leads to more compelling campaigns. What possibilities do clients open when they move from exchanging information to engaging in co-creation? What role might the practice of collaborative innovation play in redefining roles between client and agency?

There is a saying, “horses for courses”. It means that certain character types (horses or people – or others) perform in different ways depending upon the circumstances. This holds true in collaborative engagements, whether they are crowdsourcing exercises, virtual focus groups, online research communities or a growing number of other online activities. A key success factor that we found over the last number of years — and perhaps the key success factor– is understanding what the best stimulative environment is for that activity, and your participants.

To be upfront about where we stand, yes – we are great supporters of tapping into the wisdom of the crowd for many pursuits – for citizen engagement, open innovation, or crowdfunding. That said, we realize that it’s important to be aware of the fact that there are risks to consider. This article is a response to the concerns raised by people we meet along an organization’s path of considering crowdsourcing to fulfill a particular need for their organization or their constituents.

This IM Expert Panel Discussion on making innovation pay offers insights on new methods to increase the rate of innovation, reduce individual level costs per innovation and encourage fail fast methods. This session is all about unusual ways that organizations have managed to drive innovation execution to make returns on their innovation investments and the key learnings that can be applied and replicated in your organization.

Experience and research tell us five key success principles are seen across the cultures of ‘serial innovators.’ The good news: These characteristics can be adapted for any company, regardless of industry.