Perspectives on Innovation

I wanted to get a quick blog out today to share some big news: we have been working tirelessly for several months on redesigning our website – I’m pleased and excited to let you know our launch date is in sight, planned for later this summer!

The new site features improved flows, better and more content, and a complete new look & feel we think you’re going to love!

Solver Input: A couple weeks ago I sent an email to a large portion of our Solvers asking for help reviewing and testing aspects of the redesigned website and its content. We received more than two hundred responses within the first twenty-four hours.

Thank you to everyone who responded to the call!

With your input, we’re more excited than ever about the launch.

We’ll provide a more detailed summary of the changes as well as the launch date in a couple weeks.

Best,
JD

Last week our CEO Dwayne Spradlin issued a challenge on Twitter (he’s InnoCentiveCEO) asking everyone for their “best ever innovation one liners/quotes.” So today, I thought I’d ask all our blog friends for their “real world pearls of wisdom” on innovation.

Tell us in the comments!

The results of the International Design Excellence contest have just been announced.  Co-sponsored by BusinessWeek magazine and the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA), the awards are “dedicated to fostering business and public understanding of the importance of industrial design excellence to the quality of life and economy”, according to the IDSA.

There are some very cool ideas represented among the winners – a cheese grater that actually collects the cheese instead of letting it spill over the countertop.  A cookbook that contains tastable pages that let you taste a recipe before making it, and even suggest edits (ok, that one is kind of frightening).  There’s even a bicycle attachment that uses a laser to project a virtual bike lane onto the pavement, giving bikers an instant bike lane when riding congested roads at night.

Some of the ideas are revolutionary, some are just better designs of current products.  Check them out – which are your favorites?

Imagine that you invited a contractor to your house and asked him to paint a wall in your dining room blue.  The contractor arrives, looks at the wall and says: “No way, you should paint it pink.”  He thinks for a moment and adds: “Actually, you don’t need this wall at all.  Tear it down!”  He then looks around and suggests: “Better yet, sell this house and buy a new one.”

Sounds strange, doesn’t it?  Well…a couple of months ago, I posted a Challenge for a Seeker who was making a product from Material A.  In order to improve the quality of this product, the Seeker wanted to replace Material A with another material.  A good number of proposals had been submitted in response.  Some Solvers argued that Material B could do the job; some Solvers pointed to Material C; some Solvers suggested taking a careful look at Material D.

But there was one Solver who claimed that there was no need to replace Material A in the first place, because the Seeker would be better off with throwing away his product and replacing it with the product that the Solver had proposed.  When I tried to argue that the Challenge was about a new material and not a new product, the Solver insisted that his solution was of “out-of-the-box” type.  The Solver has also politely intimated that, perhaps, the Seeker simply didn’t know “what he needs.”

I have to admit that this wasn’t the first time in my practice that Solvers implied that a Seeker didn’t know “what he needs.”  So, let me speak a few words in defense of our Seekers.    (more…)

With people and companies tightening their belts in tough economic times, charities are often the first to suffer.  An article in today’s Washington Times highlights one charity’s innovative solution to declining traffic on their donation site.  Heather Paul, president of the DC-based SOS Children’s Villages, which runs villages for orphaned and abandoned children in the United States and 169 other countries, and her staff devised a plan.  They announced a contest to see who could produce the best video advertisement for their cause. The result: traffic on their Web site tripled and donations doubled in just a few short weeks. SOS even increased the number of subscribers to its electronic newsletter by 10 percent.  Can you think of other ways for organizations like this to sustain or even increase donations in times like these?  Let us know in the comments.

You can watch the winning video and the finalists here.