Open Innovation Community

From Commodities to Services

OIC Editor — Thu, 24 May 2012 00:39:30 +0000

An article on the Forbes website analyzes Allevo, a Romanian company which has decided to “open source” its core business. It is shifting its business model and competition from a pure commodity space to a more diversified services space. And they also walk the innovation talk, because innovation is needed in their market segments.

Click here to read the full article.

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OI: A Source For Strategic Intelligence

OIC Editor — Wed, 23 May 2012 22:49:55 +0000

The Intelegia website notes that competitive intelligence researchers who wish to take a proactive approach to gather strategic information on their competitors via the social web, crowdsourcing sites must be monitored frequently. Comments made by community members on these platforms can offer strategic details that can aid in adjusting respective competitive initiatives or fuel new product ideas.

Click here to read the full article.

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Moldova Open Innovation Weekend 2012

OIC Editor — Mon, 21 May 2012 16:29:01 +0000

The Mapbox blog reports a conference in Moldova which explores the innovative use of open government data to generate maps. The Moldova Open Innovation Week was kicked off to bring together local and international experts with civil society and further stimulate the work in open government and open data in Moldova. Discussions, training sessions, and a hackathon all focused on how open data and Moldova’s new data portal can be leveraged by the government and local organizations to publish and share information.

Click here to read the full article.

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Is Innovation Dead? The evolution of Open Innovation

OIC Editor — Sat, 19 May 2012 00:39:31 +0000

The Innography website notes that in the past, internal R&D was a valuable strategic asset, even a formidable barrier to entry by competitors in many markets. Large corporations like DuPont, IBM and AT&T competed by doing the most R&D in their respective industries and subsequently reaping most of the profits. Rivals who sought to unseat those powerhouses had to ante up considerable resources to create their own labs, if they were to have any chance of succeeding. Today, however, the leading industrial enterprises of the past have been encountering remarkably strong competition from many upstarts. Surprisingly, these newcomers conduct little or no basic research on their own, but instead, get new ideas to market through a different process.

Click here to read the full article.

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Henry Chesbrough: Top 10 Takeaways on OI

OIC Editor — Fri, 18 May 2012 23:41:02 +0000

The World of Business Ideas website hosted a webinar with Dr. Henry Chesbrough of the Program for Open Innovation at Berkeley Haas, as well as speaker at this year’s World Innovation Forum New York 2012. The conversation was focused on open innovation and how companies can begin to incorporate outside ideas/participation/talent, and then develop it to be put back into the market. Here are their top ten takeaways:

Click here to read the full article.

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Steps to Successful Open Innovation in China

OIC Editor — Fri, 18 May 2012 03:14:25 +0000

The innovationmanagement website notes that more and more Multinational Companies are turning to China for open innovation for several very important reasons: one is the fact that China is becoming more and more innovative as supportive government policies, an increasing number of foreign-educated returnees and a vibrant venture capital system all contribute to an ecosystem that encourages ingenious innovation; China is becoming an increasingly important market for multinational companies as Chinese consumers are increasingly more demanding of products that are tailored to their unique tastes and finally, for thousands of years Chinese people had to be quite ingenious to improve their daily lives.

Click here to read the full article.

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Open Innovation at LEGO

OIC Editor — Thu, 17 May 2012 22:36:55 +0000

The open-your-innovation blog presents an interview with Eric Hansen, Director of Open Innovation at LEGO in which he addresses the questions of how open innovation is performed at Lego; in what fields does LEGO plan to use open innovation; and what are organizational challenges related to open innovation at LEGO.

Click here to read the full article.

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GE’s innovator community

Henry Chesbrough — Tue, 15 May 2012 18:15:55 +0000

The Financial Times website posted an article by Henry Chesbrough which describes how General Electric figured out a way to be a leader in the green energy sector – making the most of its vast internal R&D expertise while integrating its existing energy efforts with those outside the company. In 2010, to tap into the start-up activity in cleantech, GE and a group of VC partners started an open innovation initiative called the Ecomagination Challenge, in which businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and students competed for funding totalling $200m with ideas on improving the world’s energy future.

Click here to read the full article. (Free registration required.)

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Re-Thinking Government Proposals through Open Innovation

OIC Editor — Tue, 15 May 2012 00:01:45 +0000

An article on the Topcoder website asks would you rather have access to more ideas or less? It’s probably not going out on a limb to say that the vast majority of people would answer, “more please”. Yet the current way in which the U.S. Government asks for ideas via proposals has a stymieing effect on the sheer volume they ultimately receive. Why? What is the obstruction to garnering amazing ideas from a citizenry ready and willing to help their government perform better? It boils down to something absolutely essential to success in Open Innovation.

Click here to read the full article.

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Grand Challenges Move the Needle

OIC Editor — Sat, 12 May 2012 06:36:56 +0000

The Marketwatch website asks what makes a Grand Challenge grand? Consider the complexities of curing breast cancer, purging greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, launching civilian spacecraft, or eradicating the devastating AIDS pandemic. These are the kinds of problems that require an amplified approach to open innovation, or “connecting with the world” to find new solutions.

Click here to read the full article.

Image via Flickr.