BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Beyond a contest for the “best idea”: A case of crowdsourcing through a brainstorming competition
• What’s All the Fuss About Engagement?
• Knowledge Sharing Tool SnapAnswers.com insures against knowledge calamities
• Owl Analysis: A Metaphor for the first round of analyzing ideas for innovation
• Training Webinar for Innovation Through Ideation
• Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D., Chief Operating Officer, BrainReactions LLC

Open innovation is valuable because it can harness the perspectives, needs, and ideas of a large amount of individuals, whether they be current consumers of a product or potential users of a website. In order to innovate based on the perspectives of many people, a shift from acquiring the best idea to acquiring idea themes derived from hundreds of ideas from many users or consumers is needed. BrainReactions.net has just launched their first significant open innovation crowdsourcing effort in the form of a brainstorming competition where awards are offered not for the single best idea but for the top brainstormers. In the first few days of the competition there are 500 ideas from 60 different brainstormers. This competition is open for just under two weeks and closes on July 3rd, 2008. This specific competition offers an emerging case of crowdsourcing for the brainstorming purpose of generating multiple new ideas on the launch of a web application, including both marketing and feature development.

This case offers an opportunity to learn about the process of crowdsourcing for brainstorming. This competition has already generated different outcomes than a traditional closed room in person brainstorming session offers or what a contest where “the best idea wins” offers. First, who is brainstorming? Notably there are more brainstormers than in your typical closed room session and they come with and a more global perspective. For this competition, brainstormers come from throughout the globe with heavy representation from the U.S. and the UK. Since most web applications have a global audience and seek the perspectives, needs, and ideas of a wide range of users, crowdsourcing through brainstorming offers unique advantages. Also, new web applications want an opportunity to generate buzz. The brainstorming competition allows this through the marketing of the idea contest while a closed room in-person brainstorm does not because it is more private in nature. The crowdsourcing offers residual benefits, not just the ideas gathered and the ability to validate the direction and decisions through the voice of the user but the marketing of the competition helps to build awareness and launch the web application.

Important consideration is given to what happens before and after the competition. Most of the time spent with preparing the competition actually involves framing the challenge, creating background information (in this instance a free web based video), and identifying questions for brainstormers to generate ideas on. This takes much thought amongst organizers and the client as well as multiple iterations to finalize the questions and background. Alerting the network of brainstormers to begin was the easiest part as BrainReactions has a large network of creative brainstormers who can be readily notified with an email. It also important to consider what the final product of the competition could look like. BrainReactions brainstorming has slightly different desired outcomes then other contests which seek to generate a best idea. Rather than a single best idea, the goal of the competition is to generate hundreds of ideas from many brainstormers so that ideas could be synthesized and analyzed. The themes that emerge amongst many ideas from multiple brainstormers are often times more valuable than a “best idea” and often marketing and product development directions move forward from these themes. After the competition a team of judges with different expertise bases will also spend time at the end to select the top brainstormers based on the quantity of good ideas they provide. Since a goal of brainstorming is to gather a large number of good ideas to synthesize and generate themes around, going beyond just selecting the best idea is needed. This is a current and emerging example of crowdsourcing meeting brainstorming on the web.

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Contributed By Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC

Most corporate managers, at least twice every year, will fall victim to knowledge calamities. Let me share some scenarios:

Has this ever happened to you? You are working on a project for the last 13 months and are 5 months away from your 18-month deadline, and suddenly, there’s a “corporate restructuring” event that completely dismantles your team. You find yourself leading a brand new team, one that will never achieve the performance or efficiency of the old team because 90% of your team’s knowledge has gone away with your ex-team members. This is a classic knowledge calamity. It can also happen to you a lot if you experience employee attrition or M&As.

I’m sure you have experienced this scenario if you work for a company with more than 100 employees. You realize 3 months after paying an expensive consultant that the answers you were looking for were already known to this one guy, Bob, who sits at the other end of the floor from you in a different team and never really talks to anyone from your team. That’s another knowledge calamity: “information silos”.

Here’s a new one: Your team is relying too much on advice they find on online forums to run your business. This advice is less than accurate, does not specifically apply to your business, or is simply outdated. However, your employees don’t bother asking around the company to look for the internal expert on the subject because it takes too long compared to searching for an answer on the almighty Google. I have not found a suitable name for this type of knowledge calamity. Perhaps we could call it “Our employees listen to Wikipedia more than our Senior-VP.”

Yet another knowledge calamity is the result of overused group emailing that starts with the benign intention of tapping into collective brainpower. However, 15 emails later… who does not hate mass-group-reply-all emails? Enough said.

If you can identify with any of the knowledge calamity scenarios above, let me assure you that not all hope is lost. We have licensed a brilliant solution from FPS Consulting’s Jaki Scarcello and transformed it into an easy-to-use software tool. Knowledge sharing tool Snap Answers insures your company against knowledge calamities, and is worth your time to review. There is also a tour to show you how it works. Plus, all readers of BrainWaves get a complimentary 30-day trial account for their company if they request a demo of Snap Answers and mention BrainWaves.

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Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D., Chief Operating Officer, BrainReactions LLC

The increasing emphasis on the need to innovate is leading organizations and individuals to collect more ideas to start down the innovation pipeline. The increase of brainstorming sessions, idea submissions, and contests to fuel ideas for innovation are leaving individuals with significant lists of ideas. Many ask us where to start and what to do next with their idea lists. This calls for a story and a metaphor.

When I was in elementary school my class took a trip to small state park in Minnesota, Forestville. When one goes to Forestville it is natural to go into a forest, so that is what this group of 30 youngsters did. I remember the park ranger telling the kids that he would give a quarter to the first one that could find a grey ball in the forest. This was unusual to us, we had never heard of such a thing. But, we were up for the challenge and a quarter was a quarter and they had hard stick candy for only 10 cents at the old Forestville country store. As luck would have it I was the first to find this grey ball. I gave it to the ranger and he gave me the quarter. He then told us something amazing. He held up the grey ball in the woods and told us that it was once a mouse. I quickly looked at my hand and was grossed out. He then said that an owl will catch a mouse and eat the whole thing. The owl will digest all of the parts of the mouse that it needs and spit out what it doesn’t need in this grey ball of fur and bones called an owl pellet. Fascinating.

I traveled to San Diego in September for a conference for innovation professionals from a wide variety of corporations. One thing that was interesting to me was that these professionals and their organizations had large amounts of ideas, could get many ideas, but what was needed was a way to quickly screen these ideas. During my presentation I told the story of the owl and I suggest doing what the owl does to the mouse. Why not quickly take all of the ideas in, and then quickly only keep and devote energy to digesting those ideas that you need, are beneficial to you, and belong in you. These are the ideas that match your criteria and are for the reason why you gathered ideas in the first place. Everything else can be spat back out in a grey ball of fur and bones.

In my world of idea generating more is better. More ideas are better than less ideas. The nice thing about ideas is that they are short and can be quickly read and judged. I regularly review, analyze, and synthesize lists of over 700 ideas and make quick decisions on them. The first stage is an important one, your quick review and selection of ideas. Many ideas just get read over because they already exist, are way too far out, or are not aligned with what the organization is about. But there are a fair amount of ideas that get digested and developed from this long list. This is valuable. The key is to not get intimidated by so many ideas and to be process focused. Process focused means understanding that generating a lot of ideas is key to discovering something new or creating something innovative. So, consolidate all those ideas and start spitting out some grey balls. It is also quite good to have at least a couple of owls analyzing ideas. What you digest may be different than what someone else digests, and you may be spitting out something that is healthy.

When we work on our idea generation projects we have at least 2 formal owl analysts who digest everything and spit accordingly back into the idea list or bank them for future consideration. So, also important is to store all of the waste, those ideas that didn’t make the cut. You never know when they could come in handy later. So, begin the work of an owl with digesting your idea list!

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As readers of BrainWaves, you are invited to attend our exclusive “Innovation through Ideation” online webinar on Thursday, July 24th, from the convenience of your own computer. Details and registration for the event are available on our training website at:

http://training.brainreactions.com

In business, you need to make decisions, find solutions, and think up new ideas every day. Do you leave idea generation up to chance or luck, or do you use systems and tools to help you generate ideas?

BrainReactions has worked with the most innovative companies in the world. We are familiar with their methods of innovation, but we have also developed our own toolset that increases brainstormer productivity by 200-300%!

Transform your company with great ideas!

Attend the Innovation through Ideation webinar online on Thursday, July 24th and you will have the tools to transform the way you work. Register now at http://training.brainreactions.com

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Contributed by Bob Carter, Vertex Transformation Director and author of The Balanced Innovator

Innovation is so vogue in business language today that it is almost a fashion. Try to Google or Yahoo the word Innovation, and you will be amazed at the number of entries you will find. Everybody is talking about Innovation. Every company claims to be innovative, and to prove the point, there are more conferences on Innovation than the average ninja can shake a black belt at. So I asked myself a simple question: What the bleep is Innovation? Is it a verb or a noun? Is it an input or an output, or is it the process? Is Innovation imagination, inspiration, ideation, invention, creation, or improvisation? It certainly takes dedication and usually lots of perspiration! I believe that Innovation is the result of all of these things. We all know that Innovation is good, as long as it adds value in some way. It can be continuous (i.e., the progressive improvement of something) or discontinuous (i.e., the introduction of something new that takes away the need or desire for the thing it replaces). This can be a product or a service, and it can happen in every walk of life.

Most people would agree that Innovation is exciting and groundbreaking (hence, the more than 120 million Internet search results). There is no doubt that Innovation is one of the keys to growth, and everybody is rightly concerned about growth, especially revenue growth.

Balanced Innovation

The Venn diagram below shows how balanced Innovation works. Notice how the intellectual, organizational, and human factors are equally important. In other words, What we do, How we do it, and Why we do it are equally important. You will also see that the factors are all interconnected, suggesting that successful Innovation is dependent on balance.

Your intellectual strength shows that you have the capabilities to deliver the product or service that your customers need. It is about your core competencies. Your organizational strength shows that you have the ability to produce what your customers need. Your human strengths show that you understand the needs, that you empathize with your customers, and that you are focused on satisfying those needs. Your behaviors prove that you can be trusted and the way you communicate proves that you are in empathy.

Each factor validates the others. The human factors validate the intellectual and organizational, the intellectual factors validate the organizational and human, and the organizational factors validate the human and intellectual. So the What validates the How and Why, and vice versa. This What, How, Why Balance, is key to success and is used throughout The Balanced Innovator. In order to achieve success in anything we do, we must reach a minimum threshold in each of the intellectual, organizational, and human factors. If one of these factors is weak, the What, How, and Why are not balanced.

BALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unfortunately, many organizations are focused more on one area at the expense of another, like those shown in figure below:

UNBALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unbalanced Innovation occurs when Innovation is focused on one factor at the expense of the others. In example A, the Innovation is highly intellectual, focused on the technical aspects but not necessarily focused on customer needs and certainly not focused on telling the story to make the right emotional connection. Think of the Betamax videotape system. Betamax was regarded by many as technically superior to the VHS system but was a comparative commercial failure. Had the Betamax tape manufacturers adopted a more balanced approach and focused on the organizational and human factors of Innovation as well as the intellectual ones, there may have been an entirely different outcome. In example B, the story may be compelling but the solution may have little substance. This type of imbalance is usually seen in organizations that have outstanding marketing and business development professionals, but their focus is all about winning new business rather than on execution. Their success is usually short lived. Contrast this again with figure (Balanced Innovation), where all three factors are equally important. Companies that exhibit out-of-this-world performance have a balanced approach to Innovation.

The ideas behind balanced and unbalanced Innovation are equally applicable to strategies, business models, and organic growth. A good strategy is one that reflects the larger external market or macro environment as well as the micro needs of the specific market segment. A good business model is one that enables the strategy. Organizations that match their business models and strategies to the needs of the external environment are more likely to grow organically—that is, they increase revenue through the acquisition of new business. Organic growth is achieved by winning new business.

About the Contributor:

Robert (Bob) Carter

Author of The Balanced Innovator, Thought Leading Innovator, 6 Sigma Black Belt and Director of Transformation at Vertex, Manchester, United Kingdom and a good friend of BrainReactions.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions

ThinkCube is a new idea generation tool from MetaMemes, a small innovative company whose mission is to bring people and ideas together. Founder and Director of Innovation, Kes Sampanthar, recently took the time to answer some of my questions.

Q: What is ThinkCube?
A: ThinkCube takes the concept of a brainstorming card deck to the next level. It provides you with a diverse selection of thought-provoking stimuli and incorporates a simple innovation process that results in high quality ideas.

Q: Tell me the basics of how I would use it.
A: ThinkCube can be used individually or in a group. In both scenarios, the basics are the same. You define your challenge as specifically as possible. To stimulate ideas, you randomly draw six cards from ThinkCube’s Idea Library. This starts you out with a collection of ideas and stimuli from diverse fields and topics. The cards are then combined to form new ideas. The ThinkCubation process takes you on a journey through phases of incubation and evaluation until one idea emerges as a winner.

Q: Why did you decide to create an innovation tool?
A: I have always been obsessed with ideas and innovation. It started with designing computer games as a child and has evolved into a career focused around innovations in technology. In my university days, I was challenged to come up with a steady stream of ideas and that’s when I first started digging into research on creativity and innovation. It led me to create my own rudimentary innovation system that involved reading widely and collecting ideas. I used these ideas as stimulus to form unique ideas and solutions in my own work. It worked so well for me that I decided to craft it into a tool that I could share with others.

Q: How did ThinkCube get its name?
A: ThinkCube is named after my ThinkCubation process which focuses on the two most important steps of the innovation process: thinking and incubation. ThinkCubation, as I’ve coined it, is a practical methodology based on creativity techniques used by mathematicians and physicists like Henri Poincare, Jacques Hadamard, and Albert Einstein. I leveraged their thoughts on invention and incubation to come up with a process that resembles techniques used in their work.

Q: What makes ThinkCube different from other creativity tools on the market?
A: Our innovation process. Other popular tools (IDEO Method Cards, Whack Pack, KnowBrainer) consist of a playing card size deck of questions and/or techniques that only focus on one aspect of innovation – mainly ideation. We have wrapped our tool with a simple business process addressing all aspects of innovation to ensure people get better results from their ideation sessions.

Q: You said ThinkCubation is based on techniques used by Einstein – can you tell me more?
A: Einstein had a highly developed mental ability to “play with ideas”. He described his technique as combinatory play: combining existing ideas to form new connections and new ideas. Einstein always explained this was at the core of his genius. I am not sure about that, but I know that his technique is powerful and as more research is done on the brain, it seems to be pointing to this ability being at the core of all creative thought. ThinkCube is based on this technique of combining ideas and provides a wealth of disparate ideas to spark the creation of unique new ideas.

Q: Where did you get all the ideas for ThinkCube’s Idea Library?
A: I’m a self-proclaimed idea addict. I am constantly reading and learning about new things. If you were to stand in from of my bookshelves you would see books on variety of subjects including artificial intelligence, marketing, evolution, game design, cognitive science, internet architecture, and archaeology. Any fascinating ideas I come across, I record in my personal idea notebooks. Oddly enough, when it came to creating ThinkCube, the most difficult task for me was trimming down the list of ideas to be included in this initial release.

Q: How would someone use your tool in an uncreative, corporate environment?
A: Innovation can start from the bottom-up. You don’t need to wait for your company to start an innovation program; you can start one yourself, grass-roots style, utilizing a tool like ThinkCube.

Q: What kinds of projects can ThinkCube help with?
A: Our customers use ThinkCube to create original plot lines for books, new product ideas, movie scripts, games, and new business processes. Basically, ThinkCube can help with any task that requires original thought.

Q: How do I know if ThinkCube will fit my style of creativity?
A: To get a better idea of what’s included in ThinkCube, our website offers a rich set of multimedia resources including print-ready examples of the idea library and a Flash version of our handbook.

Q: In your Idea Handbook, you mention building a social network around ThinkCube. Can you explain a little more?
A: Combining ideas from diverse domains to form new ideas is at the core of the ThinkCubation process. This principle builds on a phenomenon called small worlds; you are more likely to get a new job from a friend of friend then directly from a close friend. The same concept applies to ideas. Everyone has a unique set of ideas and experiences and you are more likely to come up with new ideas when interacting with people outside your immediate circle. ThinkCube provides the perfect vehicle to bring people together in the form of an innovation club to ThinkCubate new ideas and swap ideas from each others’ personal idea libraries. I am currently working on building a social network on Ning.com for the ThinkCube community.

Q: What are the next steps for ThinkCube and MetaMemes?
A: ThinkCube represents the first in a series of products and services that will help companies to develop innovative cultures. In the near future, we plan to release ThinkCube expansion packs targeting topics like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and management strategy.

Special Offer for BrainWaves readers:
We have been able to negotiate a 10% Discount for our readers wanting to buy the ThinkCube from MetaMemes. Simply use the Coupon Code BRAINREACTIONS during check-out at http://www.metamemes.com to get this discount.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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In business, you need to make decisions, find solutions, and think up new ideas every day. Do you leave idea generation up to chance or luck, or do you use systems and tools to help you generate ideas?

Take a look at this list of 10 Accidental Product Discoveries that are still in the market today. If you simply wait around for a number of years, perhaps one day, lady luck will shine on you and make you stumble upon the next greatest innovation for the world making you and your company rich and famous! Perhaps, one day! OR… you could use a proven SYSTEM of innovation. One that works consistently and has been refined and developed over the years.

BrainReactions has worked with the most innovative companies in the world. We are familiar with their methods of innovation, but we have also developed our own toolset that increases brainstormer productivity by 200-300%!

Transform your company with great ideas! Attend the Innovation through Ideation webinar online on Thursday, May 29th and you will have the tools to transform the way you work.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed By Darin J. Eich, Ph.D.

We hear from many organizations that they desire a positive culture of innovation within their organizations that relies on the collaboration, contribution, and shared leadership of all employees. At BrainReactions, we have created a program to achieve positive outcomes in this area. During the final three years I worked on my doctoral dissertation studying high quality leadership programs, I was also creating and testing an innovation program for BrainReactions. This was a leadership program designed to help participants learn and engage in ideation and innovation for real purposes.

Like many companies, we highly value creating and sustaining a positive culture of innovation in our organization. Achieving this requires an intentional approach to develop the people of your company as exemplary creators, innovators, and leaders. Our vision with our leadership training program at BrainReactions involved moving from brainstorm sessions to a front end of innovation leadership program. This moves from just generating the ideas to also including training and development of the people who innovate.

In addition to the research of high quality programs, which included interviews of 62 stakeholders across four different exemplary leadership programs, the researcher developed and tested a new innovation program and individual program sessions with BrainReactions brainstormers. During a three-year period of research and testing, approximately 100 sessions where conducted, assessed, and improved accordingly. Sessions were qualitative and consisted of 5-12 individuals per session. Sessions were recorded, transcribed, and assessed for participant engagement, idea quantity and quality. The researcher employed the constant comparative method, an analytic induction grounded theory data analysis technique, to explore the data and construct a theory.

The theory of high quality leadership programs developed in the dissertation study is grounded in those programmatic attributes that, when enacted, contribute significantly to enhancing learning and leadership development. The data analysis revealed 16 attributes of high quality leadership programs organized into three clusters: a) participants engaged in building and sustaining a learning community; b) student-centered experiential learning experiences; and c) research grounded continuous program development. Through the program attributes, participants learn about innovation, leadership and themselves in the course of engaging in the leadership process while reflecting on and applying their new learning and skills in collaborative action with others.

The results of this multi-case grounded theory study of high quality leadership programs could be applied and adapted to enhance leadership development and innovation in a wide range of organizations. This theory will allow organizations to enhance their programs and participants’ leadership development by helping participants improve themselves through self-discovery, personal development, reflective practice and collaborative leadership action with others. This leadership action and learning can be directed towards idea generating for innovation to meet changing needs and opportunities for the organization though helping individuals contribute to and share leadership in an organizational culture of innovation.

To be a high quality program involves anchoring the systems and program in research, both what has happened elsewhere and what you have discovered internally. Our high quality leadership program for innovation that has yielded numerous positive individual, organizational, and client outcomes involves three clusters of attributes for program development. Both the diverse and engaged participants cluster as well as systems learning for continuous program improvement cluster are leveraged for development in addition to the individual centered experiential brainstorming experience cluster.

In essence I recommend more organizations to implement a leadership program that allows all employees to contribute to a positive culture of innovation through participating in innovation together. Programs can be constructed and facilitating using the identified clusters of attributes that matter most for learning and development.

There is a report identifying attributes of high quality leadership programs and how BrainReactions put these attributes into practice for their own innovation program and programs they develop for clients. Email Darin Eich at darin.eich@brainreactions.com for more information or to receive the report.

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Contributed by Peter Erickson, Senior Vice President of Innovation, Technology & Quality, General Mills
(See complete bio below the article)

For an entrepreneur, the idea of taking your innovation and sharing it with someone else – let alone a large corporation – can be an intimidating, if not daunting, task. Which company would be the best partner? How do you ensure you’re protected from a legal perspective? How will you benefit? If your goals are to take your product or technology to the next level, speed its time to market and grow its distribution to have a national or even global reach, then you may find value in exploring a partnership with a larger company.

There are several variables to consider when venturing into this type of partnership. Based on General Mills’ experience in working on a wide range of projects with partners of all sizes, we have identified the following nine tips for entrepreneurs seeking to develop a successful partnership with a larger company.

Nine Tips for Entrepreneurs

1. Create a differentiated opportunity. Articulate the unique and proprietary aspects of your product. How is it different and how is it better than anything on the market? Is there an opportunity to be first to market with a breakthrough new product? Explaining the unique benefits of your innovation up front will give the company a reason to take a closer look at your proposal.

2. Test your innovation. Develop a pedigree for the product. You will be ahead of the game if you are able to get your innovation into the hands of its end user. This will allow you to speak to the in-market performance and the consumer or retailer reaction. Some of our partners, for example, came to us with insights from selling their products on the Internet, in small regional grocery chains or on college campuses. That learning can go a long way toward helping a company understand the unique consumer benefits of your product.

3. Be selective. Focus on your lead candidate and avoid courting multiple partners at once. A company wants to know you are committed and willing to work together to ensure that the opportunity will produce competitive advantages in the marketplace. And remember, most companies, including General Mills, want to create relationships for the long term. Take the time and do it right.

4. Find a contact to be your champion. Navigating the politics and processes of a large corporation can be challenging. Having a tour guide is very helpful. For example, at General Mills your key contact will be a member of the General Mills WIN (Worldwide Innovation Network) team, our company’s external innovation group. The G-WIN team is always available to answer potential partners’ questions about our organization, our processes and about partnerships in general.

5. Do your homework on the potential partner. Use available public information to educate yourself on your potential partner’s lines of business, key strategies, industry and competitors. You should also familiarize yourself with the economics of the industry so you are well-versed in the financials before getting into any conversations about important details such as licensing fees. For example, potential partners can obtain company background and information on our approach to external partnerships from a video located on our G-WIN Web site (www.generalmills.com/WIN).

6. Connect the dots. Make the connection between your proposed innovation and the company’s business model and brand. For which product platform or division do you envision it to be a good fit? How would this help the company’s bottom line?

7. Demonstrate you can deliver. Describe your team’s experience in the industry. Prove that your product is scalable to the volume demands of the partner’s business. Have any claims you make about the product validated (e.g., health claims), and be sure to speak to the company’s priorities. For General Mills, food quality and safety are important, and our company wants to know you share the same values. If you do not have the expertise in a certain area – manufacturing, safety, etc. – don’t be afraid to tap outside consultants to develop those capabilities within your operation.

8. Have a business model in mind. Communicate the type of opportunity you are looking for, but stay flexible. Oftentimes, it makes the most sense to start with a smaller opportunity and then grow that into a broader, deeper partnership.

9. Part on good terms. If either or both companies in the partnership decide to pass on an opportunity, walk away gracefully and leave the door open to future collaborations. Often it is just a matter of timing – the best opportunity for collaboration may not be the first proposal, so maintaining rapport is an important element of eventual success.

Open innovation is an emerging trend, so be on the lookout for opportunities to grow your business through this type of joint venture. Regardless of whether you are in the food industry or another trade, stay mindful of the above suggestions and you will be well-prepared to enter into a mutually beneficial partnership with another company.

If you think your innovation is a good fit for General Mills’ business, our G-WIN team would like to hear from you. Through G-WIN, we seek external partners with patented or patent-pending technologies or commercialized products that would be complementary to our brands and businesses. Prospective partners may submit patented or patent-pending innovations to the G-WIN team through a Web portal at www.generalmills.com/WIN, or may contact the team with other inquiries by calling 763-764-4946 (GWIN).

About the author

Peter Erickson

Peter Erickson is senior vice president of innovation, technology and quality for General Mills.
As the head of General Mills’ innovation and technology organization, Mr. Erickson is responsible for the invention and commercialization of new food products and technologies that can help in nourishing the lives of its consumers by providing increasingly higher levels of health, taste and convenience. Mr. Erickson’s responsibility for the General Mills quality organization is focused on delivering brands that its consumers can trust and value through its global leadership in consumer and product safety.

Mr. Erickson has been employed by General Mills for the past 19 years. Prior to that, he worked in product development as a senior food scientist at General Foods Corporation in White Plains, N.Y. Mr. Erickson received both B.S. and M.S. degrees in food science at the University of Massachusetts, where he continues to serve as a member of the university’s food science external advisory board.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods products with significant operations located around the world. Its global brand portfolio includes Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Häagen-Dazs, Cheerios and more. In the United States, General Mills consumer brands are sold in every section of the retail grocery store, with a No. 1 or No. 2 leading share position in nearly every food category in which it competes. General Mills also is a leading supplier of baking and other food products to the foodservice and commercial baking industries.

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