Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions LLC http://www.brainreactions.com

I have been an entrepreneur as long as I can remember. I started my first company, Pyxoft Infotech Pvt Ltd. at age 17 in India. I went to college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in my second year in the US, was involved in my second start-up, OZ Innovations and we went on to sell the product internationally in a retail chain of over 72 stores. I was also fortunate to have been named as one of the “Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 25″ by BusinessWeek and also featured on CNBC TV’s “Young Turks.” Now is as good a time as any I have seen to become an entrepreneur.

This is a great time in life for you to start a new business, especially if you do not have the responsibilities of a family or the pressures of a house mortgage payment. Starting a new business has become much cheaper today because office rent, cost of advertising and cost of employees has gone down. You probably also have a group of friends who would like to work with you and all of you can pool your startup money together. Some of you have ideas, but are hesitant to act due to the fear of making mistakes. Let me assure you that everyone makes mistakes when starting a new business. What is needed to succeed is the will to recognize your mistakes and to fix them quickly. As I learned from my mentors during my internship, “Fail fast to succeed sooner!”

Some of you may not yet have thought about any ideas for a business you can start. My company, BrainReactions http://brainreactions.com, is in the business of identifying new opportunities for entrepreneurs and companies by generating creative new ideas. We not only generate ideas professionally for clients, but we also teach people methods of being more innovative systematically so they can create useful new ideas for their unique situation. Perhaps we can share some business ideas with you here. Although the general sentiment today is quite negative, this is in fact, a great time to use the recession to your advantage.

Not all businesses are suffering in the recession. According to Barry Moltz’s recent survey, about a fifth of all businesses are such that they actually do better in a recession. Such businesses, called “countercyclical businesses”, present great startup opportunities right now. Businesses that help people save money generally tend to be in this category. For example, in a recession, people prefer to buy more groceries or eat cheaper food than eat at a fine dining restaurant. Insurance agents that can save people money on their car insurance premiums also do well in a recession. Funnily enough, in India, astrologers tend to have an increase in clients during a recession. Could you, perhaps, create a new product or service that helps people save money or reduce wastage in their homes and offices?

For new entrepreneurs, it is easier to set up service-based businesses that have a low startup cost. Businesses like web design, tutoring, delivery, event planning service, and a travel booking service are some examples.

Since you are reading this article on a computer, I would assume that you enjoy the Internet and are open to ideas for online entrepreneurship. Sites like eLance.com and odesk.com provide opportunities for freelance writing, graphic or web design, programming, and even simple tasks like data entry and virtual assistance. Similarly, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk at mturk.com pays people for completing simple tasks online as well. If you are good at photography, you can upload good quality photos to iStockPhoto.com and get paid royalties. Metacafe pays users to upload videos that are popular. Sites like ReviewMe.com and PayPerPost.com pay you to write reviews of websites on your free blog. Speaking of blogs, Squidoo.com and eHow.com pay a revenue share to people who contribute articles to their site. SpringWise.com has a database of unique business ideas from around the world that you could spend hours reviewing. The web is a huge resource of business ideas and for reaching out to other entrepreneurs who are available for providing guidance and help for your new business.

To get more new business ideas, I would recommend traveling to a new place that you have not been before, perhaps to a different country if you can. Experiencing a new place and culture can give you tremendous amount of fresh inspiration for new ideas. Also, check out the book called “Successfully launching new ventures” by Dr. Bruce Barringer which features BrainReactions as a success case study in its second chapter. Furthermore, you can double your chances of success by learning the fundamentals of systematic innovation through a four-week online course we deliver via webinars at http://www.innovationtraining.org or get recordings of the training sessions. You can walk through activity by activity the steps to create a solid business concept or new product idea.

I hope that after reading this article you will rethink your career and normal daily job-hunting and actually use some of the ideas and resources that I have shared in order to create your own successful business and create new jobs for our country and our world.

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About the Author: Anand is the CEO of BrainReactions LLC, a company that helps companies and entrepreneurs with innovation. Anand has a degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in Computer Engineering. He holds 8 issued U.S. utility patents.

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

David Dalka has been a friend and strong supporter of BrainReactions dating back to our inception. After exiting a small startup last year, David is currently a Marketing Strategy Innovation Management Consultant to senior executives. Darin Eich had the pleasure of talking with David about the exciting and abundant opportunities to utilize social media and user generated content as strategic management team tools!

Darin Eich: What kind of activity takes place on social media and user generated content sites that could become insights for innovation?

David Dalka: People are discussing the products and services you provide everyday on blogs, social media sites like Twitter and user generated content sites like Youtube. The types of people can provide falls into several categories: evangelist about an industry, evangelist about a product or service, people who are passionate about a particular brand (no matter what!), people expressing frustration or dissatisfaction and people who are making constructive criticism.

Darin Eich: That is certainly true, what does this mean for better innovation?

David Dalka: Everything! It has potential not only for innovation, but also the entire way you do business! In the era of Web 2.0 a lot of people have focused on the public relations aspects of social media to promote their products. It is my opinion that the largest opportunities actually are in listening to people expressing frustration or dissatisfaction and people who are making constructive criticism and then acting on that information. The focus should be on how to solve these pain points in the marketplace, improving offerings and creating an elite, innovative brand experience!

In the late 1990’s, I worked at BlackRock (BLK) during its’ growth phase from 80 to 800 employees. At BlackRock we provided daily reports via the Internet for our institutional clients back in 1996 when other firms were still sending out paper reports only 45 days after the end of the month. This created offline conversations and/or emails from these clients for data adjustments and tons of suggestions for adding fields to these reports, changing the reports and innovation that created new reports! The increased cycle time of communication with our customers brought us closer to them and increased our pace of innovation – more importantly it focused that innovation outward towards the customer instead of inward. Our responsiveness to their feedback encouraged even more feedback! This feedback loop was critical in creating the incremental improvements that BlackRock made every day. These improvements over time created substantial competitive advantages that were a direct result of user and customer generated innovation!

Darin Eich: That’s amazing! So you are suggesting that pre-social media era experience is a strong indicator of what can and should be done to create innovation today using these tools?

David Dalka: Absolutely! The opportunities to create a process where you listen, then engage and reform your customer acquisition, marketing positioning and customer service is where the future of competitive advantage has the largest area of opportunity. Is your organization seizing the opportunity? Or are entrenched silos beholden to rigid budgets more suited for 1990 than 2009 over analyzing and delayed decisions? Have a bias for action.

Darin Eich: Who is starting to adapt to this change well? What actions are they taking?

David Dalka: Comcast is certainly making incremental steps in the right direction. A few short years ago a contract installer told Comcast that he completed an installation at my mother’s house when he actually did not. This was highly upsetting. My Mom responded with a guest blog post which made the Digg home page and they promptly removed the charges. Then there was the well known sleeping Comcast employee Youtube video incident.

Several months later a support employee named Frank Eliason approached VP of Communications Jennifer Khoury and asked if he could create a Twitter account and start to proactively respond to the complaints and problems of customers voicing concerns on blogs and/or Twitter. His @comcastcares account has now solved thousands of problems for Comcast customers and Frank now leads a team that is solely dedicated to this. I talked with Jennifer about this at ad:tech Chicago in 2008 to learn more about how this came about and she said she granted him the authority to do that immediately. The decision to allow a bottom up idea to be rapidly implemented is critical. Is Comcast the best customer service organization in the world? Not even close. Is Comcast realizing the mistakes of the past and making incremental strides towards improvement everyday now? Absolutely! And that is what matters, making incremental improvements in the customer experience. They also came back onto that original blog post and left a lengthy comment replying to all the other comments. There hasn’t been another comment on that post since then. Comcast is building credibility. Ultimately a portion of social media is a revolution about a return to good old fashioned customer service, which I’d highly welcome over the only way to get service is to request to close my account option.

Darin Eich: If an organization is looking to strategically innovate with utilizing social media and user generated content, what can they do to start in the right direction?

David Dalka: Why is Twitter working for Comcast? It works because Comcast is listening to and solving customer needs instead of seeing social media as purely a public relations or promotional tool! Strategy without execution is nothing, effective implementation is everything. Empowering your employees towards rapid action instead of 18 months of meetings to make a decision is critical to making incremental progress. Using user generated content, social media and search engine marketing effectively is an incremental process that transforms your entire culture and the way you do business across your organization not something that you have one person do and keep doing everything else the same way! You can’t write a check to a consultant and be done, you have to be committed to change. This means changing customer interaction processes and procedures across the organization. The big one hit solution doesn’t exist. Stop looking for it. You need to get down and roll in the dirt to find the details that can lead to innovation.

Darin Eich: Can you point to an opportunity for a company to utilize customer feedback in this manner to make products or services that improve the customer experience and create competitive advantage?

David Dalka: Sure. I bought a new Acura Integra in 1991 and am I am driving it into the ground – it has 154,000 miles on it. It’s been one of the greatest and highest return on investment purchases I’ve ever made! It’s time for me to buy a new car and I’m an Acura loyal customer for life right? Sadly no, I’m not likely to be. Why? During the 1990’s the engineers at Honda and Acura have forgotten that a significant number of their customers are 6′3″ or taller and the “improvements” that have led to marginal increases in miles per gallon changed the headroom in their sedans to the point where I don’t fit comfortably in one and the current pillar and rear view mirror placements cause dangerous obstructed views. If I don’t buy an SUV from them I don’t fit. To be honest, I am surprised the auto insurance industry hasn’t been more proactive in regards to this emerging issue. Starting way back in the year 2000 I started calling Acura’s customer service number periodically to give this feedback – to date I have yet to see any change in the design. I mean look at this photo showing a 5′6″ reporter in the backseat of a 2010 Honda Insight. I really wanted to consider the new Honda Insight, but myself and tons of other consumers will reject this car outright due to its inferior headroom characteristics. I’ve Tweeted the issue again just now. Will some car company listen to this, design cars that once again serve the comfort, visibility and safety needs of tall people and increase their market share? The opportunity is right there in the tweet waiting for any auto manufacturer to build a great sedan with great headroom and visibility for tall people!

Darin Eich: Other than innovation blogs and e-magazines like this one, where else can you find the thought leaders and resources on this subject?

David Dalka: Your own well thought out search queries on a search engine like Google is the best place to start. If people understand the true strategic nature of the emerging content and search engine optimization opportunities you’ll find them when searching about subjects that you care about! Another great place is slideshare.com, the world’s emerging thought leaders are creating content for lectures, small group meetings and Conferences (UGCX) and put the deck on slideshare.com.

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this conversation with Marketing Strategy Innovation Management Consultant David Dalka. Stay tuned for future conversations with David and other innovators in future issues of BrainWaves. Drop us a line to let us know any specific issues you’d like us to discuss in future interviews.

1 Comment | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Managing Ideas, Gen-Y ideas, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

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

• How to innovate and brainstorm a better idea to change the world for a share of $10 Million from Project 10^100
• Utilizing the Labyrinth for innovation and convergent thinking in the Conceptual Age
• The Labyrinth: An ancient and emerging tool for idea development
• Review: Frost & Sullivan conference on Growth, Innovation and Leadership

Announcement:

BrainReactions’ most popular webinar, Fundamentals of Idea Generation for Innovation, which has been attended by over 100 companies already, is now available to watch as a video so you can watch and learn from the webinar video at your own convenience. To download this webinar and the related materials, please visit http://training.brainreactions.com

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, Marketing to college students, Marketing to young women, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, Managing Generation Y, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

Contributed by Darin Eich, Ph. D.

Google has committed $10 million to fund ideas from individuals that can improve our world. This article will help you to use best practices for idea generating and innovation so that you may submit a better and more well developed idea to increase your chances for a share of the $10 million and better improve the world. We will pull out key parts of the Google application for topics you can generate ideas around and criteria to use to select and develop your ideas. We will also share with you what we have learned from experience not only crowdsourcing ideas but developing a simple idea generating for innovation process you can use to develop and communicate your big idea in a more meaningful way. We have developed and used this process with similar projects that were geared at improving our world, be it eradicating extreme global poverty with the UN, fundraising for the United Way, helping children’s shelters in developing nations, or bettering our environment. These projects all started with a problem, led to questions, continued with ideas, and led to selection and development of the best ideas…just like you can do with the Google Project 10^100.

In a Google news release they described this project in these terms: “Google is announcing as part of its tenth birthday celebration Project 10^100 (pronounced Project 10 to the 100th), a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible. For this challenge we are asking our users to send us exciting ideas for ways to improve people’s lives and have committed $10 million to turn up to five of the best ideas into reality. These ideas can be big or small, technology-driven or brilliantly simple – but they need to have impact. We will identify the 100 best ideas and then ask our users to vote on which ideas we should fund. Their votes select the 20 finalists, and then a panel of judges will choose up to five ideas for final funding.” For more information, visit: http://www.project10tothe100.com

If you want to submit an innovative idea for this project where do you start? First, practice innovation best practices. You will have to go about this purposefully with a process or system you use to develop a fine concept. This means generate multiple ideas and then synthesize relevant multiple ideas logically together in the form of a well-developed concept. It is important to capture and store all of these ideas in one place. Also, great innovations are not solitary work. They are the result of collaborations. Involve others to help you generate ideas, develop the concept, validate the concept, and communicate the concept so that is meaningful and memorable. In a free brainreactions.net private brainstorming room you can pose your question, provide background, visuals in the form of a photo or video, and generate ideas. With the free room you can include up to five brainstormers and these brainstormers can not only generate ideas but also vote, select, and sort the best ideas to move forward and develop.

So, how do we come up with a large number of ideas so you can develop a strong concept? First of all, we do it deliberately and purposefully. If you expect a bunch of brilliant ideas to come to you by chance, you are not going to get very far. You have to set out to come up with these ideas; schedule time to do it; plan to do it. Schedule a brainstorm or innovation session time, invite your collaborators, and execute.

An important start to an idea generating for innovation project is to pose important questions that are grounded in a problem or opportunity for innovation. Google’s Project 10^100 offers seven suggested categories and questions:

1. Community: How can we help connect people, build communities and protect unique cultures?
2. Opportunity: How can we help people better provide for themselves and their families?
3. Energy: How can we help move the world toward safe, clean, inexpensive energy?
4. Environment: How can we help promote a cleaner and more sustainable global ecosystem?
5. Health: How can we help individuals lead longer, healthier lives?
6 Education: How can we help more people get more access to better education?
7. Shelter: How can we help ensure that everyone has a safe place to live?

Start by selecting a category that you are passionate about, value, and have knowledge or experience in. Brainstorm many specific problems or opportunities within that category. For instance, on a similar project we picked the “environment” category and then brainstormed solutions to the plastic bag problem as something to dig deeper into with ideas. You can view an example of this plastic bag brainstorm at: http://www.brainreactions.net/brainstorms/1815

This process example that you can see includes a question stimulated from a problem, hundreds generated ideas, collaborated ideas from multiple people, selection and voting of good ideas, and sorting most popular ideas. This simple process is valuable for creating better and more innovative ideas.

When generating ideas it is good to create with criteria in mind. This will help you to create ideas that have a better chance of success because they are grounded in the criteria that have been established. Project 10^100 has suggested five criteria:

1. Reach: How many people would this idea affect?
2. Depth: How deeply are people impacted? How urgent is the need?
3. Attainability: Can this idea be implemented within a year or two?
4. Efficiency: How simple and cost-effective is your idea?
5. Longevity: How long will the idea’s impact last?

You can select your top ideas from the brainstorm (by hitting the “good idea” button” on brainreactions.net) based on not only your passion for that idea but by how well it fits with the criteria. If it has reach, depth, attainability, efficiency, and longevity then it is a tremendous idea! The criteria will also help you to compare ideas to determine which to develop further.

You also need to do more than just develop a great concept. What is often times missing in success is being able to communicate your concept so that it is understandable, valuable and memorable. The Project 10^100 application is simple. They do though ask you to provide more about your idea or concept on key questions. Many of these questions are deserving of their own brainstorm to converge on the best ideas or answers. These questions from this Google Project are:

What one sentence best describes your idea?
Describe your idea in more depth.
What problem or issue does your idea address?
If your idea were to become a reality, who would benefit the most and how?
What are the initial steps required to get this idea off the ground?
Describe the optimal outcome should your idea be selected and successfully implemented. How would you measure it?

You can also create a short video to explain your big idea. The more visual the better to help others’ minds connect with and understand your concept. Use metaphors, evidence, stories, and examples. You can also use the brainstorming process to create a video, generating ideas for both top-level video themes and the supporting details to reinforce the theme.

So why is it so important to have a process that yields a lot of ideas instead of just one that you get by chance? Generating many ideas is a process-oriented feature of very successful innovation systems in lots of successful organizations. When they develop new products they get many, many ideas in the pipeline. From there, they qualify the ideas and whittle them down into a handful of concepts. After that, they test the concepts while developing them more and may only end up with 1 new product from 100 product ideas. This is how ideation for innovation works. More importantly, when you come up with a large number of ideas it is easier to do good analysis. You can identify some themes that a lot of the ideas shared. Some ideas will lead to new and different ideas. You will learn a lot from looking at all of the ideas from above. You will see the forest from the trees. An innovation process is necessary to develop a better big idea.

Why not carry the Google idea competition inspiration forward? With brainreactions.net you can also run your own version of the competition. Why not do the same thing at a smaller scale and provide funding for ideas to help your organization or your local community? With crowdsourcing the connections can now be made between individuals and organizations. The technology and time is ripe to open up idea submissions and competitions from normal people with great ideas.

About the Author: Darin Eich, Ph.D. helps organizations to develop and facilitate idea generating & front end of innovation systems and programs. He also speaks and trains individuals in innovation, brainstorming, creativity, and leadership. You can email Darin at darin.eich@brainreactions.com.

No Comments | Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Generation-Y wants, Gen-Y ideas, 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

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.

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

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

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

By Darin Eich, Ph.D., COO of BrainReactions

I attended this conference as a media partner from BrainReactions and OpenInnovators.net and set out to identify some overarching themes about the current state of open innovation for large organizations. “Advance innovative ideas through partner collaboration and co-development” was the theme of this 2008 Marcus Evans conference. The workshop tracks were labeled “dismantling the ‘not invented here’ mentality” and “establishing a culture that values open innovation at every level’. Some themes that emerged from the conference presentations from innovators like P&G, IBM, Clorox, Pepsico, Kraft, and others include:

1. Open innovation is a very new concept and most companies are just adopting it and learning it. This means there are a lot of failures and process improvements right now and the success stories are just starting. Even P&G which is recognized as a top open innovator is still on the journey and learning.

2. P&G is a leader. Other companies that want to be better at open innovation appear to recruit P&G innovation professionals to work for them thus gaining that knowledge and experience to apply within their own organization. I heard multiple instances of this during the conference. P&G really has an excellent reputation for open innovation with their “connect and develop” philosophy and mandate from the top to get half of their ideas from the outside.

3. Collaboration is critical. Most organizations are shifting to become more collaborative as this is key for open innovation. This also requires a culture shift and new skills to learn for innovators.

4. Suppliers and partners are key. Since much of the open innovation relies on the work of partners and suppliers, finding and assessing them is important to innovation success. Suppliers and partners can not only provide the idea but they can also help to develop the idea, provide the technology or knowledge to make it work, package it, or virtually anything else needed to create and launch a new product.

5. Searching is a key open innovation practice. Many of the organizations that presented today have a focus on searching for technologies and intellectual property that they can acquire to bring their ideas to market faster. This is much more efficient than creating the technology internally. Many examples in particular were given of product packaging that was found in Japan and licensed for use in the United States.

6. Open innovation is transformational and not transactional. Though you are relying on partners and suppliers to help you develop the idea you still must do much work to connect the supplier’s insights in and strengthen the relationship for the future. Open innovation should not be a transaction but rather a transformational experience that helps everyone learn how to innovate better and in new ways.

7. Open innovation is a result of desperation or challenges. Many of the organizations adopted open innovation because they had to. Their business was declining or they had to react to urgent challenges. For many this impetus for change ended up being positive because they launched an innovative new product (like Clorox Wipes) or gained a more efficient development process.

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

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

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

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 Shahira Raineri, GE Global Imagination Breakthrough Leader
(See complete bio below the article)

Throughout it’s 115-year history, GE has introduced world-changing technologies and processes. As the company continued to grow into one of the world’s largest companies, GE needed a powerful mechanism to transform potentially market-changing ideas into a portfolio of products to meet the needs of an ever-expanding global market.

In September 2003, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt introduced a new process to build innovative solutions addressing global-scale challenges. These innovations, called “Imagination Breakthroughs”, receive special nurturing and investment to drive the solutions to maturity. To qualify as an Imagination Breakthrough (IB), each product idea must be directed at market transformation and must have the potential to achieve more than $100 million in incremental revenue.

IBs are delivering for GE. The current IB portfolio contains more than 45 IB projects in development around the globe. Since its inception, the IB program has consistently delivered $2-3B of incremental revenue annually.

Imagination Breakthroughs take two forms:

• Commercial products: designed to provide customers with products and processes that create new ways of conducting business, while maintaining GE efficiency and quality.
• Technology products: designed to provide customers with new technologies and solutions that help transform their marketplace.

IB Development: The Creative Process
In the early development phase, GE business units surface key ideas and innovations to the CEO in a formal IB review meeting. Once approved, the sponsoring business follows a regimented process to ensure development and delivery of a successful product to market.

CECOR: Turning Creative Ideas into Business Applications
Throughout their life, IBs follow the CECOR (Calibrate, Explore, Create, Organize, Realize) model, a GE-developed strategic framework that helps convert innovative thinking into tangible and practical business solutions.

A disciplined process that guides all GE business through shared marketing practices, CECOR is a series of 5 analyses designed to push an Imagination Breakthrough to achieve it’s greatest potential.

Calibrate … Business Performance
What is our business?
Who are our customers?
What do they need/want/prefer?

Explore … Avenues for Growth
What are our avenues for growth?
How do customers make money?

Create … New Ideas
What are our best ideas?
What is the customer value?

Organize … For Execution
Have we aligned resources?
Are we collaborating with customers?

Realize … Value
What is our revenue and income plan?
How will we measure customer and GE impact?

Throughout this series of reviews, the customer’s needs and requirements are kept squarely at the center of the IB development to ensure that not only is an IB innovative, but, that it also accomplishes the goals of the customer. Once an IB evolves through the full process, it is ready to be launched.

The IB portfolio is dynamic – it is not only one of the ways that GE achieves growth, but it is in line with the company’s strategic intent which ensures that these breakthroughs are enabling our reach into new markets and important adjacencies.

About the Author:


Shahira Raineri
GE Global Imagination Breakthrough Leader

Shahira joined GE in early 2003 as the Global Marketing Leader for the Healthcare Vertical Initiative. In this role she was responsible for analyzing healthcare needs, articulating the value proposition of our broader healthcare offer, creating company-wide sales tools and marketing communications materials. Now the Corporate Imagination Breakthrough Leader, Shahira leads a variety of strategic marketing projects and works closely with the GE Global Research Center and the businesses to enable the commercialization of breakthrough innovations.

Prior to GE, Shahira was at Siemens Medical Solutions where she worked as Marketing Director. During her tenure at Siemens, she was also Vice President of Marketing for the Optical Networking division of the company’s Information and Communications Network.

Shahira previously led various teams at Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Labs. During her tenure at AT&T and Lucent, Shahira led global teams in the areas of Product Management, Systems Engineering and Market Development. Shahira began her career as Chief Biomedical Engineer at Berlex Laboratories.

Shahira received a B.S. and a M.S.E.E. from Rutgers University.

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