May 16, 2012 | By Michael Fruhling | Category: Best Practices

In business and in life, clear and accurate problem definition is an essential prerequisite for effective problem solving. This may sound obvious, or even trite, but this simple truth can be overlooked by those with pressing needs and a bias for action.
 
What do I mean by this? A very simple, dramatic example: Megan is preparing the family dinner when the phone rings. Though she is only momentarily away from the stove top, the sausage dish she is cooking bursts into flame. The fire frightens her and fearing it will quickly burn out of control, she grabs a pitcher of water to pour on it...and if she does it will be an enormous mistake. One must not use water on a grease fire. Doing so will cause the grease to splash, will likely create serious injury and will risk spreading the fire further. In effect, it will not solve her problem. Quite the contrary. It will likely create additional ones.
 
In this example, Megan did not correctly define her problem. Fortunately, most situations aren't this dire, and typically don't require split second decision making. We often have more time to reflect on our needs. Still, the stakes involved in proper problem definition can often be quite high. As a result, knowing how to properly articulate and communicate a problem and how to recognize what help looks like is very important. In the example provided, Megan needed to safely and quickly extinguish a grease fire. Understanding this, would likely lead to different solution options than a less precisely worded problem statement.
 
In business and in life, do you take time to understand and define your problems and your needs before you try to solve them? And when you do, do you recognize what help should look like for you?

May 15, 2012 | By Dana Wolcott | Category: Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing continues to be a good tool for innovation. And, you could participate on either the challenge end or the participant end (or, both of course). If your organization hasn't found a way to try it, here's a good example.

If you're a creative problem solver looking for a new challenge, here's an outlet for you!

"ChallengePost enables government agencies and software companies to invite the public to solve problems. Challenges increase awareness, foster participation, and generate innovation...ChallengePost provides full-service competition management and promotions services to guide clients throughout the entire challenge process. With more than 200 competitions under our belt, we have a built in community of 220,000+ developers, designers and technology enthusiasts who look to us for meaningful open government and software development challenges."

There are 43 active challenges on the website right now and while some only get you a pat on the back, there are a few with real money rewards such as The Royal Canadian Mint's offer of $52,700 for apps using their Mintchip digital money system or US Department of Energy's offer of $100,000 for an app to help utility consumers make the most of their Green Button electricity usage data.

As we know, the first step to an innovative solution is a well constructed problem statement and secondly, getting as many ideas as possible improves your odds for an outstanding solution. Challenger or challengee, how could your organization benefit from clear problem statements and crowdsourcing the solutions?

May 10, 2012 | By Michael Fruhling | Category: Innovation Strategy

There is often a considerable amount of ambiguity at the outset of open innovation partnerships. Quite often, the technology customer is considerably larger than the provider and is being pursued versus being the pursuer. The technology provider almost never knows the full extent of what needs to be demonstrated in order to earn a customer's business commitment. They are also quite often reluctant to ask so as to avoid offending the other party or seeming ignorant or unsophisticated. How can this situation be improved?

Routinely, before any kind of open innovation business deal is struck, it requires unilateral investment of time and resources by the technology provider in order to win the customer's interest. There is frequently tension attached to these interactions: how much to invest before requiring a yes or no decision?

Very often, technology candidates arrive with a data package that is not consistent with what a technology seeker might generate if he/she were developing it themselves.  As technology seekers wish to minimize risk associated with adopting a new technology, their tendency is to request that the provider perform additional work to address questions. Technology providers become increasingly resistant with each successive investment.  No external technology will ever be thought of as risk-free.  However, there should be a reasonable, objective standard.  Therefore, technology providers and seekers need to reach an agreement as to what is reasonable...and they should do this sooner versus later. 

Technology providers are often hesitant about inquiring about success criteria and action standards.  They don't wish to seem inexperienced or risk offending the customer. It would be generous for companies to be more forthcoming with this important information. That said, it is not their responsiblity to volunteer it.  It is up to the individual technology provider to pursue this with providers so that they understand specifically what is required of them and then decide whether or not they still wish to engage.   

While some companies may be more communicative than others with the information they choose to share with prospective partners, they are not obligated to be totally transparent.  Nor are technology providers required to make what they might judge as excessive investments.  They can always choose to disengage if necessary. If the two parties can achieve shared understanding regarding the terms of engagement, the smoother their experience together should be.

May 3, 2012 | By Michael Fruhling | Category: Open innovation

Given the relatively small number of qualified solution providers for any given technical challenge, one fairly productive and successful problem solving approach undertaken by corporate technology seekers is to organize "supplier summits." These are comprised of carefully selected and highly regarded partners in the technology seeker's "inner circle."

Summits are effective for two key reasons:

1. The sponsor has activated high caliber resources who are fully engaged and dedicated to the problem solving endeavor, and
2. The sponsor and the participants both stand to benefit, even if the latter's benefit consists primarily of goodwill. It is implicit that each party needs to "give" in order to "get".

One possible limitation of a supplier summit approach is that the ideas brought forward may be restricted to thinking governed by current industrial paradigms. Thus, additional networking approaches may be necessary in order to introduce new or unconventional thinking. Unlike supplier summits, there are currently very limited win/win opportunities for would-be participants outside of the tech seeker's supplier inner-circle to contribute to developing qualified solutions. That said, the following is one encouraging sign:

An open innovation event called Quebec Solutions will be held this month in Quebec City, Canada. It appears to be a more open (less exclusive) version of a supplier summit. It is focused against solving specific problems brought forward by a number of corporate seekers. Each participant pays $250 for admission to the event. The fee helps to underwrite the event and likely aids in qualifying the participant base.

$250 represents a fairly modest new business development investment for participants to interact intensively with motivated potential clients and to expand their respective networks beyond its traditional boundaries. Last year, 9 problem seeking companies and 175 participating problem solvers attended. The event's organizer reported that it yielded some appealing leads and 3 cooperation agreements (which may or may not have led to valid solutions).

While the seeker's "yield" from this event sounds relatively modest and while the vast majority of the participants likely didn't derive an immediate financial benefit, there may yet be some residual value for them. There may be some reciprocal value exchanged in this exercise, though its extent is not known to me and may not be easily quantified. It is reasonable to assume that the more equitably distributed the value generated from this event, the more attractive it will be to future participants.

In my view, there also need to be collaborative vehicles for qualified parties who wish to interact and contribute to developing viable solutions, but may only be able to contribute a portion of it and not the entire solution. There are currently no formal mechanisms for parties to share these contributions, and none where reciprocal value is exchanged. This is a missed opportunity.

The opportunity for companies to make a quantum leap in open innovation productivity will come when they make it worthwhile for many more parties to participate and contribute to identifying appropriate and qualified solutions. I don't profess to know the right incentive system or mechanism for implementing this type of approach. I just know that no one seems to be doing it yet.

May 3, 2012 | By Dana Wolcott | Category: Innovation Trends

What technology could be older than making glass? The history of glassmaking can be traced back to 3500 BC in Mesopotamia. So what are we to make of the headline of a current Mike Elgan piece in Computerworld: Consumer Electronics Glass Innovation to Transform Industry.

"A combination of new technology, plus a strong desire on the part of major companies to transform glass, will affect nearly every category of consumer electronics, from smart watches to phones to tablets to desktop computers to smart homes and offices."

Starting with Google’s Project Glass to Apple’s desire for curved glass displays to fulfilling Microsoft’s vision for ubiquitous computing, the challenge to invent better glass has been set. MIT researchers provided one advancement and "...this week announced a breakthrough in glass technology that solves the glare problem. The glass has a revolutionary surface pattern made of nano-scale cones of glass. It's called multifunctional glass. It's very clear, without glare or reflection."

Got any old technologies lying around your organization that could use an upgrade? If new forms of glass can "transform" the entire consumer electronics industry, what element of your business that might be accepted as fully developed could transform your industry? What if someone had the imagination and vision to throw down the challenge?

Have visionary week!

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