February 10, 2012 – 10:54 pm
In 2010, we ran a pilot project, Power to the People, that engaged with over 1,000 E.ON customers. Last summer, we opened a new challenge focused on a particular business area, electric vehicles. Over 6 weeks, we worked with 1,600 customers who shared, developed and voted on over 700 ideas. The winning idea is now [...]
January 30, 2012 – 2:52 am
Having recently spent a few days in Cornwall – which positions itself as a small business economy with some of the highly innovative companies – it prompted me to rethink what big businesses are actually for? Does anybody know? I’d love to find out. Most of our clients tend to be large companies and whilst [...]
November 29, 2011 – 3:41 pm
Open innovation is growing up fast. We are noticing a trend from running below-the-radar pilot projects, to rapidly scaling open innovation to become a much more mainstream business practice. In particular, we’ve been asked to do some work recently for a number of clients on how to build global innovation ecosystems and how open innovation [...]
November 17, 2011 – 8:01 pm
For the past few months, we’ve been working with E.ON and their customers on a creative collaboration to design the next generation of energy saving products and services. We’re running a series of challenges on different themes. Members of the collaboration community can submit and discuss ideas, and vote on those they think are best. [...]
October 31, 2011 – 5:19 pm
We are pleased to announce the return of the Open Innovation Accelerator on February 1st 2012 in London. We have now run dozens of these for various organisations but it’s always really good fun to run a public session with a mix of participants from large and small companies, public and private sectors, and creative [...]
October 25, 2011 – 7:15 pm
Innovation isn’t just a ‘thing’ that can be manufactured, rather, to quote Verna Allee, it is an emergent property of networks. Therefore it makes perfect sense for any individual or organization that wants ‘more innovation’ to seek to engage or build a productive and profitable external network. Some people refer to this ‘open innovation’. The [...]
October 19, 2011 – 2:43 pm
I’m doing a research project for O’Reilly UK. O’Reilly are the publishers of Make magazine and the Makezine.com website; they’re the people behind Maker Faire and Maker Shed; and they publish great books on Arduino, circuit-bending, amateur robotics, creative hacking and related topics. They want to understand how they can better support the UK maker [...]
October 11, 2011 – 3:00 pm
When buying into in a company any investor worth their salt will undertake some investigation into the quality of the opportunity before them. They do their homework. But are they being as diligent as they could be? Stages in the due diligence process includes detailed investigation of the key areas of a business: its management [...]
October 8, 2011 – 11:33 pm
I’ve been drawn to the many tributes and obituaries of Steve Jobs in recent days, and particularly enjoyed this excellent piece from Stephen Fry, and also this interesting article which makes the case that his greatest contribution was changing Capitalism, through defying a customer-led approach: “Take the old adage that the consumer is king. In [...]
September 11, 2011 – 7:05 pm
What drives innovation? A personal vision? Of course. A new technology? Sometimes (though solutions don’t always need new technology). Recognition of a need can and should also drive it. Without a need for the innovation to address, success in the market place will be limited. In his book ‘Patent Nonsense’, Clive Anderson suggests a common [...]
