Open Innovation

Focused on working across industries, companies, departments, etc. – opposite of siloing. Crowdsourcing can fall under this goal as well, sourcing ideas from across industries, across companies, from the public, etc.

Communicate to Innovate: Tips from the World of Improvisation

Effective communication is at the heart of innovation: harnessing insights from customers, partners and co-workers, sharing ideas, building upon points of view, advocating and gaining support for one’s innovations all require razor sharp communication. Interestingly enough, communicating effectively is a two-way street. The sender and receiver of information are both responsible for landing it appropriately, and both sides need to actively participate. Two simple, but powerful behaviors that can help increase the efficiency of communication are listening and declaring.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:36:53-08:00December 17th, 2015|Categories: Leadership, Organization & Culture|Tags: Communication, customer engagement, Employee Engagement, innovation, soft skills|

Applying Collaborative Innovation in Advanced Manufacturing: an Example of Lean

Achieving authentic transformation across the manufacturing enterprise can seem as challenging as playing a competitive game of Jenga® in woolen mittens. In this article the innovation architect Doug Collins explores the role that collaborative innovation can play in realizing meaningful change. He grounds the exploration with an example from lean.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:24-07:00December 8th, 2015|Categories: Life Cycle Processes|Tags: collaborative innovation, Crowdsourcing, customer engagement, lean, manufacturing, muda, nordic manufacturing, Problem Solving, Product Development, time-to-market|

Diversity and Innovation – A Perfect Team

Please, not another business imperative! Every time I open a journal or glance at a blog it seems as though the panacea to all business ills has just been discovered and is waiting for me to embrace it! One minute I’m being told to hire for cultural fit, the next to increase diversity. It’s no wonder that employee engagement is falling because if I’m being pushed from pillar to post then it’s not surprising that my people are confused……

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:26-07:00November 30th, 2015|Categories: Leadership, Organization & Culture, Strategies|Tags: Agile, Collaboration, collaborative innovation, diversity, Employee Engagement, idea management, Innovation Culture, innovation team, team diversity|

Collaborative Innovation in Advanced Manufacturing: Just Getting Started

Advanced manufacturers—people who make “things”—face the same challenges in the Digital Age as their counterparts that traffic wholly in bits and bytes. Relentless immediacy. Increased transparency. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins reflects on the results from a survey that the analyst firm Frost & Sullivan conducted as part of the Manufacturing Leadership Council. What are the more advanced of the advanced manufacturing thinking these days about the practice of collaborative innovation? Are they on track?

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:27-07:00November 24th, 2015|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Enabling Factors|Tags: co-creation, collaborative innovation, Crowdsourcing, customer engagement, Innovation Management, innovation process, manufacturing, nordic manufacturing, Problem Solving, Product Development|

Where Do Good Ideas Go to Die?: The Problem with Your Old Idea Program

Our team found an example of one of the earliest workplace suggestion boxes the other day from 1721 when a shogun, Yoshimuni Tokugawa, wrote to his citizens “Make your idea known . . . Rewards are given for ideas that are accepted.’” This means that the concept of crowdsourcing ideas that can improve a city, workplace, or world has been around for quite some time.

Rob Hoehn2019-10-15T15:22:28-07:00November 16th, 2015|Categories: Idea Management, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: Collaboration, Crowdsourcing, Employee Engagement, idea development, idea tracking, metrics, scaling, transparency|

Going Once, Going Twice, Going Three Times: Selling Your Idea

People cannot appreciate the value your idea offers if you fail to convey its relative advantage. In this article, the innovation architect Doug Collins shares a simple, good example of telling the right story at the right time to the right audience. Save this one for your clip file.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:28-07:00November 12th, 2015|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Idea Management, Life Cycle Processes|Tags: collaborative innovation, Communication, idea presentation, Ideation, innovation process, pitch|

Innovation Decimation: Refined Sugar and the iPhone

I see no value in waiting until New Year’s Day to resolve to improve myself. “Now is as good as time as any,” makes more sense to me. Last month I resolved to make two changes which, if I succeed in maintaining the alterations, promise to benefit me. In this article, I share my view on these changes, the immediate effect they have had on me, and their relation to the practice of collaborative innovation.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:22:30-07:00October 27th, 2015|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: collaborative innovation, incremental improvements, Innovation Culture, Innovation Management, innovation process, mindfulness, personal development, sugar|

10 Best Board Practices on Innovation Governance – How Proactive is your Board?

All global business and technology trends point in the same direction: there is a need for more proactive and far-sighted management of innovation. Innovation for business reinforcement and growth – and for transformation in particular – are, of course, the prime responsibility of top management. Innovation governance – a holistic approach to steering, promoting and sustaining innovation – is thus becoming a new management imperative.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:26:37-08:00October 19th, 2015|Categories: Leadership, Strategies|Tags: Best Practices, company-wide innovation, decision making, goal setting, in-depth article, innovation champion, Innovation Culture, innovation governance, Innovation Leadership, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, Jean-Philippe Deschamps, Organization|

5 Advantages to Crowdsourced Innovation Management

At the beginning of the twentieth century, research and development was a highly guarded and elite practice. Imagine laboratories peopled by white-coated scientists who had passwords to protect the doors to their office. This kind of research and innovation was highly successful for a long time – it gave us electrocardiography, DNA fingerprinting, and many Apple products.

Rob Hoehn2019-10-15T15:22:33-07:00September 28th, 2015|Categories: Collaborative Innovation, Open Innovation, Strategies|Tags: Collaboration, collaborative innovation, Crowdsourcing, customer engagement, Employee Engagement, globalization, IdeaScale, Innovation Management, millennial, Open Innovation|

3 Reasons Crowdsourced Innovation Is Difficult

David Alan Grier wrote in Crowdsourcing for Dummies “the hardest part of crowdsourcing is raising the right crowd.” It is one of the realities of crowd ideation that continues to hold true – that if you can’t draw a crowd to help you generate innovative ideas, then you’re not evolving beyond the traditional closed approach to innovation.

Rob Hoehn2019-10-15T15:20:56-07:00August 24th, 2015|Categories: Idea Management, Strategies|Tags: Crowdsourcing, engagement, idea management, IdeaScale, Ideation, incentives, innovation value, internal communications, value|

How Far Can Crowdsourcing Go?

The origins of ‘crowdsourcing’ lie very much in the business world. The term is widely accepted to have been coined by Wired magazine in 2006, in an article analysing how businesses were beginning to outsource tasks, usually handled by an individual to a larger number of people, in the expectation it would gain faster results for a cheaper price. Since then, business use of crowdsourcing techniques has become more established. Crowdfunding, for example, has become a common way of raising funds, while Spigit Engage customers provide a great example of how businesses are applying crowdsourcing to the innovation process.

Ideascale2020-03-30T11:58:34-07:00June 22nd, 2015|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: Collaboration, crowdfunding, Crowdsourcing, Innovation Culture, innovation program processes, wisdom of the crowd|

4 Tricks to Building a Successful Open Innovation Program

One of the most critical professional challenges that employees face today is being able to successfully manage positive change within their organization. Innovation has become a watch word, with so many divisions not being able to find enough valuable ideas and then successfully manage those ideas into a commercial offering that sometimes companies even respond to customer tickets and bugs and simply label those results as “innovation.”

Rob Hoehn2021-12-07T15:14:46-08:00May 20th, 2015|Categories: Idea Management, Open Innovation, Organization & Culture|Tags: brainstorming, Crowdsourcing, Failure, Ideation, incremental innovation, Innovation Management, Innovation Strategy, Open Innovation, scaling|

Innovation: Force Fields for Change

This article relates selected multidirectional patterns of change—“force fields”—in the business environment to innovation strategy within the context of Zen philosophical principles. Three force fields are selected for brief evaluation: 1) domestic vs. global markets, 2) economic growth vs. environmental quality, and 3) entrepreneurs vs. customer base. Given the omnipresence of force fields in the 21st century, businesses should maintain flexible structures for innovating both incrementally and radically. They also need to engage in collaboration at all institutional levels. Collaboration can facilitate the Zen objective of integrating conflicting ideas, a key feature of innovation over the long run.

Ideascale2021-12-07T15:09:09-08:00March 31st, 2015|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: asia, business model, business philosophy, Change Management, Collaboration, collaborative innovation, economy, entrepreneurship, environment, global market, globalization, green innovations, Innovation Culture, innovation philosophy, Innovation Strategy, jugaad, strategy, sustainability, Zen, Zen philosophy|

Emergence: The Next Efficient Evolution of Crowd-Sourced Innovation

Surfing the crowd has hit the mainstream…Young, agile firms have always been known for their disruptive ideas. Increasingly, enterprises are keen to foster a similar innovation culture so that great concepts can surface even in a company with thousands of employees. The challenge comes when there are many layers of management and frontline workers are struggling to navigate the corporate hierarchy so their ideas are heard by the leadership team. In a bid to transform its business, Microsoft recently announced it would cut thousands of middle management jobs to ease the flow of information and decision making, ‘no longer respecting tradition but only innovation’.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:21:18-07:00March 30th, 2015|Categories: Organization & Culture|Tags: Crowdsourcing, emergence, Employee Engagement, enabling factors, Innovation Culture, innovation program processes|

Be Ready for the Next Major Technology Shifts in Your Industry

Technological and industry shifts are important drivers of innovation. Look no further than the advent of the mobile broadband Internet and the shift to the era of intelligent, connected devices. Even though shifts are difficult to anticipate, they often lead to fundamental business changes. Staying up to date with these changes is vital.

Ideascale2019-10-15T15:21:20-07:00March 11th, 2015|Categories: Strategies|Tags: Change Management, collective intelligence, Crowdsourcing, customer engagement, experimentation, innovation, Open Innovation, strategic partnership, technological advancement, Technology|