On February 26-27, the 2nd annual Open Innovation Conference was held at The Venetian in Las Vegas. Darin Eich was there for Open Innovators and blogged about the conference. To roundup, a list of Darin’s posts:

• Attending the Open Innovation Conference
• Live from the Open Innovation Conference
• Great day at the conference
• Insights And Themes From Presentations
• Sources of Innovation: Where do ideas & innovation come from?
• How Really Big Companies Open Innovate
• The Need for Innovation Teams and Internal Consultants within Organizations
• Becoming an Open Innovation Partner with Large Companies

Thanks Darin! I hope to be there too next year.

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I will be attending the Plugg Conference on Wednesday, March 19 in Brussels. Plugg is a one day conference focused on European start-ups in the Web / Mobile 2.0 field. In combination with an impressive list of speakers, there will be a place for 20 start-ups to showcase their ventures and realizations. One of them will walk away with the Plugg Start-Up of the Year Award. I will be interviewing during the conference together with Nick De Mey from MouseOver.be. The interviews will be posted on Plugg.eu.

One theme the Open Innovation conference that stood out is that in large companies, there is often an innovation consulting team or unit that is a generalist and will help the other individual business units. They are almost like innovation consultants within the organization or “intrepreneurs” who are always looking for opportunities to develop and will then approach the specific business unit within the organization about the opportunity, or the specific business unit will seek the help of the innovation consultants within the organization. Generally this is a small team of individuals who are expert on innovation and product development. This generalist team focused on innovation within the organization is more valuable then just giving each business unit the responsibility for innovation without help. if each business unit were fully responsible for their own innovation without the help of the innovation consultants, the success wouldn’t be as great because the day to day operations of the business unit prevent the long term and exploratory focus needed. Plus, the business unit leaders are expert in their own product and market, not necessarily innovation. It is also a different mindset between operating and innovating. Innovating is more ambiguous and risky and takes a more entrepreneurial creative skill set than operations. In addition, innovation consultants possess specific knowledge about innovation processes that would take individuals in the business units a long time to learn and develop and they most prominently, they don’t have the additional time to work on it. It was found at the conference that having these generalists were critical for innovation success not only because they are expert on innovation but because they also serve as organizational connectors who can bring best practices from one business unit or product area to the next. They facilitate sharing of information and resources for innovation. The good news is that it doesn’t take a large team to pull this off. It can be done with as few as 1-2 professionals to start, but these professionals must be fully engaged in innovation. So one key finding from the Open Innovation conference is to establish an innovation position or team within the organization that can connect and facilitate innovation initiatives throughout the organizations.