Author Archives: Stefan Lindegaard
A journalist recently asked me how companies should get started with open innovation. I replied as below:First ask this question: Why do we want open innovation? Many people believe open innovation is the Holy Grail and they just jump aboard without asking why open innovation is relevant to them.An answer to the why question should show an understanding of how open innovation can be an important part of the general innovation strategy which in turn needs to be highly aligned with the overall corporate strategy. Many companies mess up here. They simply do not have an innovation strategy.The benefit of having an innovation strategy is that it sets a direction for your efforts. This also allows you to better define open innovation in the terms of the company. Innovation – and even more so – open innovation can be defined in so many different ways. Companies need to find their … Continue reading
At a first glance, the G-WIN initiative by General Mills looks just like the many other open innovation portals that are popping up right now.So rather than just giving my two cents on this, I did an interview with Jeff Bellairs, who is director of General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network, to get a better understanding of the whys and hows of this initiative.This turned into a great learning experience that I would like to share with others. I kicked off the interview by telling Jeff that I was kind of neutral on their project. Some things looked good and others not so good. I also mentioned that a press release they’d recently sent out on the project and the portal itself raised several questions.I asked quite direct and candid questions and I did not really expect much from his answers. So the open and informative feedback given by Jeff Bellairs … Continue reading
Denmark has its share of world-leading companies on user-driven innovation. Lego, the toy company, is a great example of this through their Adult Fan Of Lego groups and many other initiatives.Another example is Coloplast which develops products and services that make life easier for people with very personal and private medical conditions. Their business includes ostomy care, urology and continence care, and wound and skin care. They are considered by many as a global pioneer of user-driven innovation due to their work with doctors, nurses and users of their products.Last week, I read an article on how Coloplast has set-up communities for their users to share experiences and ideas. You can use Google to translate the Danish article and you can check out one of their communities here: International Stoma Innovation Community. In the article, Coloplast claims that they have halved their development time over the last couple of years … Continue reading
I recently discovered reasons to take my innovation perspective to a national rather than a corporate level. The questions that went through my mind were like this:What if the behaviours of the citizens in a country determine the corporate ability to innovate?What if such behaviours directly hurt the corporate ability to innovate?A capability that is so important for the future of companies as well as countries.Or what if the behaviours hinder the chances of taking innovation to the next level?The country I have in mind is my own, Denmark. I have long argued that Denmark does very well on innovation. Danes believe in flat hierarchies and that authorities and common beliefs should be challenged.This is a good outset for innovation and we have always been pretty good at taking existing technologies or ideas, give them a little twist and then come up with new ways of using this.This has worked … Continue reading
I recently made another trip to China. My purpose was to meet with innovation leaders in order to build further on my understanding of the Chinese innovation community and thus on my global perspectives on innovation.I had a couple of meetings and I did an improvised session at a company. Having met about 15 people and having spent 5 days in Beijing, I have to say that my expectations of what will happen in China grew even higher. The reason for this is the innovation people of China.They are hungry, bright and very eager to learn. Yes, they still have a lot to learn. And many of them do not seem to have the creative mindset and the ability to think in a more holistic way which I believe is necessary in order to make innovation happen. These are tough things to learn and many Chinese people will never get … Continue reading
Having been involved in several efforts on developing the innovation culture within companies, I have learned that you need to work with three organizational approaches.I call this the TBX approach:T (Top Down)Get the executives onboard and make them personally committed to the innovation activities. Without executive support, no change occurs.B (Bottom Up)Value creation begins with people, one by one, team by team. Nothing happens unless you get the employees engaged and involved. Take ideas, feedback and other input from employees seriously. If ideas just seem to run down a sinkhole and never to re-emerge or if leaders are not able to commit resources to any ideas, you will lose the trust of the employees.X (Across)The biggest challenges will come from the middle managers placed across the organization. A key reason is that middle managers have a narrow focus on their own profit and loss responsibility. They do not see the … Continue reading
A few weeks back someone told me an interesting story about Procter & Gamble and their competitors. It is well-known that P&G is the open innovation champion and their long focus on open innovation has given them an important advantage.They get to see interesting proposals within their business areas before their competitors. In the story I heard, one of P&G competitors complained they only saw ideas and proposals that P&G already had rejected. Ouch, talk about being a second-tier choice…This leads to a very important point on open innovation for market leading companies and those aspiring to be. The key game is to become the preferred partner of choice.A preferred partner of choice simply gets to see the best ideas first and such a position can help a company out-innovate their competitors and develop substantial long term overall business advantages.As each industry only has one – or perhaps two – … Continue reading
