Changes to Drive More Value from Your Innovation / Ideation Platform

In our previous article we focused on some of the serious issues being faced by clients and vendors who are working with innovation / ideation platforms.

What the Ideation Platform Marketplace is Getting Wrong – the 7-Year Itch?

The ideation platform marketplace hasn’t really changed that much in the past 7 years or so. There was an early burst of innovative design and alignment with user needs, but at this point the sector seems to have stagnated in terms of how they add value. Call it reaching middle age, or perhaps they are having a 7-year itch?

The Dynamism in Chinese Ecosystems and Platforms

Today we have to “think China” when it comes to looking for the dynamism within Ecosystems and Platforms. They are leading, exploring and extending the thinking beyond our more limited ambitions in the West. It is the environmental conditions coming together or being explored and exploited that make China stand out in its dynamism in this area.

The New Normal: From Product to Platforms and Processes

Platforms and processes, rather than products, will become the focus of new business creation as we move forward. The main characteristic of a handful of new trends in business – Collaborative consumption, Sharing, the Maker movement and the Circular economy – is that the value creation is less about adding some new feature to a product. Instead, the appeal of these models is that they can deliver more value for less by involving a number of stakeholders, including the users, in co-creating solutions.

Corporate Open Innovation Portals: An Active Part of an Open Innovation Strategy

As part of the Open Innovation movement, many companies now actively solicit technical solutions, products and business ideas from innovators, customers, suppliers, and the broader marketplace of technology providers. Some companies have begun utilizing structured innovation submission programs, typically implemented through their corporate websites. This article, the first in a two-part series, helps companies understand Collaborative vs. Direct Portals, and the importance of IP-anti-contamination and efficient filtering in choosing the best innovation portals for their unique situations.

Seven Steps to Creating a Successful Innovation Framework

Heidi Hattendorf, director of Innovation Development, Motorola Solutions takes a deep dive into how you can create an innovation framework at your company that will positively impact your business results and culture. The article describes seven steps that will help you implement an “inside out” approach to innovation at your company.

10 Prospects and Trends for Open and Collaborative Innovation

Over the last 5 years, Open Innovation has been evolving quite a lot in the ways it can be defined and implemented. Rather than proposing one more definition or describe one specific way to approach it, here is a set of trends I foresee based on the numbers of projects I have been involved in and the evolution of needs from organizations, would they be major corporations, SMEs or Public Services.

Trimming the Web Portal Kudzu

Organizations introduce web portals to help people share information and ideas. Time passes. Sites proliferate like kudzu strangling a pin oak. Their numbers keep people from finding the information they need and from engaging in the conversations that matter. Collaboration slows. What is the web gardener to do? In this article innovation architect Doug Collins explores how the practice of collaborative innovation can help organizations trim their proliferating portals.

How do Specialized Intermediaries Facilitate Creative Crowdsourcing?

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 Missing Ingredient of Crowd-based Idea Generation

With the growing popularity of open innovation, crowdsourcing and web-based suggestion schemes where the best ideas are decided by popular votes, many of us tend to forget a very simply truism: creative people do not follow the crowd. At minimum, they do their own thing. At best, they lead the crowd.

The New Dutch Economy: Innovative, International and Involving

The Dutch Innovation Platform, a think-tank established by the Dutch Government, recently released a report Nederland 2020, Back in the top 5 outlining the steps the Netherlands needs to take to regain its former position in the top 5 of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index (GCI). In this article Rob Blaaboer, contributing editor from the Netherlands, suggests a way to reach the New Dutch economy, i.e. innovative, international and involving, and how to get back in the top 5.

Ecosystems and the formal process of ad hoc innovation

Look at an example like Nokia and you can see the mobile device and services giant rapidly evolving different types of ecosystems around its devices, services and solutions – these are all ad hoc innovation platforms or ways to introduce the unplanned into corporate strategy. Ad hoc innovation is extremely important but a poorly understood element of change. Yet companies have been evolving complex ad hoc innovation systems for perhaps the past three years.