As I was enjoying a new activity today, baking sourdough bread, my mind turned back to the amazing Do Lectures that Roland and I went to last week. Our plan was to get some time to talk, think and graze in West Wales – a rare moment of quality time in the two years of [...]
January 24, 2012 – 7:19 pm
Businesses are increasingly turning to internal idea platforms to unite their people around innovation. I had only ever thought of this as a positive until I came across this thoughtful post called Are Your Social Business Systems Designed for Extraction or Contribution? CV Harquail’s key point is that social business systems are designed to extract [...]
December 2, 2011 – 3:39 am
I chaired an open innovation session at the British Library this week and we heard a lively exchange of views and some informative presentations from Orange, Quantum Innovation, P&G and Unilever. Nice to see the latter two competitors sharing the stage. We conducted a mini-crowd sourcing exercise to find the most common barriers and create [...]
September 18, 2011 – 3:38 am
From Buzzword to Byword There’s a new taxonomy of Crowdsourcing just been published here. Any way of helping crowdsourcing to become more than a buzzword has got to be welcomed. This taxonomy is a great step in that direction. However the practice of grouping a diverse group of web-based activities into neat boxes is not [...]
One of the uncertainties that holds back collaborative innovation is ‘who owns the resulting ideas’? In our innovation workshops or crowdsourcing sites that we set up, we’ve found it helpful to build on the well-known Chatham House Rule that protects the identity of participants so they feel free to speak their minds. In a similar [...]
Open innovation takes many forms. One of the great things about working at the coal-face of this new industry is watching it develop and mature. We are starting to see a new language develop and new methods for innovating with others. One of the under-appreciated aspects of open innovation is how flexible the business model [...]
A recent article on the Fast Company website represents an interesting anti-argument for open innovation. The thrust of it is encapsulated by the oft-quoted “If I asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” from Henry Ford. It’s interesting that 21st century designers use an early 20th century industrialist as [...]
Do Some Good – take a little time to do stuff that matters from your mobile. Orange has launched a ground-breaking volunteering initiative called Do Some Good. It’s an app that lets you do bite-sized actions on your mobile in five minutes or less. This app came out of a 100%Open facilitated project called Mobile [...]
March 17, 2011 – 12:54 am
What is open innovation? We define open innovation as innovating in partnership with those outside your company by sharing the risks and rewards of the outcome and process. Innovating with partners by sharing the risks and the rewards Risks Why share risk? Innovation is risky and typically fewer than 1 in 100 new technologies or ideas that [...]
Is crowdsourcing on the verge of a tipping point? In future years those brands that don’t open up their needs to the crowd are more likely to be viewed with mistrust. There are always two schools of thought on opening up. Some social media experts warn you against posting those ineradicable photos of a night [...]
