Perspectives on Innovation

HP recently released a news advisory highlighting the results of a fascinating innovation survey that the company commissioned. (The global survey included interviews with 312 executives in both commercial enterprises and the public sector during February and March 2011).

Some of the report highlights include:

1. Ninety-eight (98) percent of the executives surveyed believe that innovation will be critical to the success of their organizations over the next five years.
2. The most important reason to innovate is to facilitate future organizational growth (79% of respondents). For commercial enterprises, the second most important reason to innovate is to support profitability (74% of respondents); for the public sector, reputation is the second most important reason to innovate (59% of respondents). InnoCentive’s work with public sector organizations (e.g., Air Force Research Labs, NASA, In-Q-Tel and the intelligence community) in particular reveals that they are serious about finding solutions to problems that matter most to their missions, advocating public-private partnerships, and promoting transparency, openness, and collaboration across agencies.
3. Thirty-five (35) percent of organizations do not appear capable of measuring the success of their innovation efforts. This number is somewhat troubling and is probably low. Establishing a measurement framework with feedback loops and regular milestone checks should be a key deliverable for all open innovation programs and projects.
4. The majority of executives interviewed believe that they are innovation leaders in their respective industries, with 74% of CEOs indicating said leadership. Since the majority of respondents also indicated that CEOs are most responsible for guiding innovation efforts, it’s not surprising that the majority of CEOs self-report leadership.
5. Inadequate funding and technology were recognized as significant barriers to innovation. I’ll go ahead and add a few one more: A lack of methodology, process, discipline, and expertise. InnoCentive’s unique methodology, Challenge Driven Innovation, is an innovation framework that accelerates traditional innovation outcomes by leveraging open innovation and crowdsourcing along with defined methodology, process, and tools to help organizations develop and implement actionable solutions to their key problems, opportunities, and challenges. The key point is: Methodology matters.

Overall, some thought-provoking data courtesy of HP.

There is a very interesting exhibition that recently took place in Geneva, Switzerland, that I believe would be of high interest to our Solvers. The 39th International Exhibition of Inventions, New Techniques and Products (aka “the world’s largest marketplace for inventions”), devoted to inventions – devices and products that range from useful to the bizarre – just took place from April 6-10th.

Inventors & innovators from around the world gathered in Geneva every year to highlight their “brainchild” products in the hopes of attracting buyers or investors. These inventors were either groups representing companies and universities, some were independent researchers and some were individuals, like our Solver “tinkerers,” who simply had good ideas that they took the time and effort to translate into prototypes and products. (more…)

InnoCentive and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently announced a partnership aimed at accelerating environmental innovation in business. The article below was written by Gwen Ruta, Vice President of Corporate Partnerships for EDF.  This article originally appeared as part of FastCompany’s Expert Bloggers series.

Imagine if you could tap the brainpower of proven innovators from around the globe to help your company create its next business breakthrough and enhance its environmental record. Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) announced today that it is teaming up with InnoCentive, a global leader in crowdsourced innovation, to help companies do just that through a new Eco-Challenge Series to accelerate green innovation in business.

Breakthrough ideas can–and often do–emerge from bringing a new and diverse perspective to a familiar problem. Having that “fresh set of eyes” is one way that EDF has been able to catalyze and spread environmental innovations like redesigned packaging with McDonald’s, hybrid trucks with FedEx, and next-generation solar technology with Walmart.

The folks at InnoCentive have taken this idea–that diversity of thought yields better outcomes–into the 21st century. Recognized as a global pioneer in Challenge Driven Innovation, InnoCentive’s web-based platform and methodology help organizations formulate their most intractable problems, and gives over 200,000 entrepreneurs, inventors and scientists around the world the chance to solve them. With the likes of Eli Lilly, NASA, Procter & Gamble, and The Rockefeller Foundation using the platform, it’s redefining the innovation process.

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In light of The Economist-InnoCentive Carbon-Capture Challenge, it is interesting to see the various ways sustainable infrastructure can be incorporated into everyday lives. And if ideas for green living occur through crowdsourcing, then the world must surely be heading toward a more self-sustaining way of life. I came across this the article about a crowdsourced contest (for a prize of $70,000) where the participants were asked to design the layout of a “mere” 420 square foot apartment in New York City. The photographs seem to be out of a science fiction movie set in 2323, where everything converts into something else. (more…)

As we’ve discussed before, we at InnoCentive believe that Challenges and Challenge Driven Innovation (CDI) are transformative, representing a fundamentally better way to manage and distribute work and innovation to achieve unprecedented results. This approach takes maximum advantage of diverse, passionate, creative, and inventive problem solvers from all over the world available “on demand”. Sometimes referred to as Crowdsourcing, Open Innovation, or Prizes, this approach is already being used broadly in the commercial and not for profit (NFP) spaces. And InnoCentive has been working with organizations like NASA to prove out its effectiveness in government.

We partnered with Rockefeller in 2006 and delivered novel approaches to lighting, internet capabilities and malaria control to remote villages. We partnered with the  Global Alliance for Tuberculosis in 2009 and improved the manufacturing processes for pending new therapies. We partnered with NASA in 2010 and provided enhanced abilities to predict and model solar particle storms after 30 years of ongoing efforts. We put forward a Challenge to address the BP oil spill and an InnoCentive Solver who submitted her ideas to both InnoCentive and x-Prize was awarded $1M. (more…)