What can a smaller organization or entrepreneurial individual do to be a part of larger organization’s open innovation initiatives? How can they connect in and what can they connect in? Many times people ask me what they can do with their idea? During more closed innovation times it was difficult to pitch your ideas to a large organization. Standard company policies were to “not to review, accept, or fund any submitted idea from outside the company.” Times are changing a bit thanks to the need for open innovation for large organizations to not only be successful but to survive. I’m learning that the idea has to be extremely well developed, perhaps have intellectual property or a patent connected to it, and already testing or even commercialization behind it. Just an idea isn’t nearly as valuable as the intellectual property that a company can accesss, especially when it solves a problem they are current having. The companies are making their problems more widely known so individuals and other organizations can provide their solutions. The solutions just have to fit and be well developed…it can’t be just an idea. P&G asks “Do you have a game-changing product, technology, business model, method, trademark, package or design that can help deliver new products and/or services that improve the lives of the world’s consumers? Do you have commercial opportunities for existing P&G products/brands?” If you do, you can reach them through their portal at http://www.pgconnectdevelop.com. For instance you would contact them if you have a low cost ability to create foam/effervescence in solution. At the Open Innovation Conference this week we learned that this is a current challenge they have and are accepting partners for.

All of these big companies want to be the “partner of choice.” This was a buzz word at the conference. General Mills is the 6th biggest food company but they want to be the #1 partner of choice. They want to be the first company an entrepreneur comes to with a relevant solution they need. Researchers from BYU approached General Mills with a technology they created to carbonate yogurt. General Mills saw value in it and now the innovation “Fizzix” Yogurt is hitting stores. Here is an article I found from BYU about this.

It appears that large companies are still not really reaching out much, but they are now becoming more open for people to come to them. They are shifting from having formal policies “not to review, accept, or fund any submitted idea from outside the company” to creating portals where people can contact them. The P&G connect and develop portal as well as General Mills G-Win is an example of this. This BrainReactions BrainWaves e-magazine article details how entrepreneurs can partner with General Mills and other Fortune 500 companies. Maybe you can connect in the next Fizzix to your “partner of choice.”

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This last weekend, at the Northern Voice conference in Vancouver, I had the pleasure of spending a few minutes talking about collaboration and crowdsourcing with the great folks at GiveMeaning. I had a similar discussion with Jaison Morgan, of the X-Prize Foundation, in Santa Monica last fall. But sadly, these sorts of meetings seem to be few and far between.

By my last count, there are a few dozen web portals dedicated to crowd-sourcing, on the spectrum from ideation, through charity and into straight-up commerce and procurement. I should know - I run one of them. And yet, in a field defined by cooperation over competition, and the wisdom of the crowd over the supremacy of the individual, there is a noticeable glaring lack of communication between these companies.

Why? Here are the reasons I see: Read the rest of this post >

A recent article in the Creativity and Innovation Management journal (March 2008) takes on internet marketplaces for technology such as yet2.com and Innocentive, and shows that there’s still a bumpy road ahead for totally open innovation. Specifically, the success rate has been far lower than expected.

In their study of 25 large Swiss and German firms (on average, 8 457 employees and 2 135 million € in revenue), Ulrich Lichtenthaler and Holger Ernst find that markets for technology have remained imperfect, resulting to high transaction costs and limited adoption by industry incumbents. Although all the firms surveyed were aware of different service providers, and several firms had invested substantial time and resources to decide on their technology offerings, the maximum number of transactions for a single company was only one out-licensing and one in-licensing agreement.

It might be no wonder, therefore, that most industry experts interviewed by Lichtenthaler and Ernst “have relatively reserved attitudes towards these marketplaces”. Only two out of 25 firms wanted to give the internet marketplaces another chance in the short to medium term, while the rest are presumably waiting for the markets to shed their imperfections. Thus, a vicious circle is set up: firms do not want to spend their resources on imperfect markets, while markets remain imperfect as long as firms do not participate more actively.

According to the authors, the most severe deficit is that the commercialization of technology through internet marketplaces constitutes a relatively unsystematic and passive approach. Specific technology needs or customers are not addressed, and problems and solutions are communicated very broadly. This makes matching technologies with buyers difficult, and numbers tell the rest of the tale: in 2004, yet2.com, with its 90 000 registered users, concluded only 10 technology transfers. Companies also tend to publish only relatively unattractive, residual technologies that have limited value, further weakening the attractiveness of using the marketplace. Read the rest of this post >