Perspectives on Innovation

In this segment of his Big Think interview, Dwayne discusses the InnoCentive style of innovation, which allows companies to change the question from “how do I manage a global workforce?” to “how can I get everyone in the world who is capable, ready, willing and able to work on my problem, to actually work on it?” and only pay for success.

In this segment of his Big Think interview, Dwayne tells the story of the Oil Spill Recovery Institute (OSRI), which faced the challenge of removing viscous oil from the bottom of Prince William Sound after the the Exxon Valdez oil spill. After 20 years of trying to solve this problem, they turned to InnoCentive and received a solution from an InnoCentive Solver who had no background in the oil and gas industry.  This story illustrates the power of diversity and the effectiveness of tapping into a pool outside of your own experts.

In this segment of his Big Think interview, Dwayne talks about how smart companies are taking advantage of the economic crisis.  Smart CEOs are using the crisis to fundamentally rethink their businesses, capture more market share when the economy returns, and change the way their businesses operate to make them more competitive in the future.

InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin was recently interviewed by Big Think about building a sustainable business in an economic downturn.  The interview was broken into several shorter video segments, each dealing with a different aspect of innovation and sustainability.  In the first segment, “Internal Talent is Not Enough”, Dwayne introduces the concept of open innovation as the paradigm smasher for the “not invented here” company, and discusses how sustainable companies are able to move from the model of “the laboratory is my world” to “the world is my laboratory”.  Dwayne proposes that a truly open organization should innovate internally only if they absolutely have to, which requires a completely new mindset and structure.