Breakthrough ideas could be on the way, but from where?

If you are a person who has a habit of coming up with great ideas then this article is not for you.
For everyone else, here are pointers which have worked in past and present of the history of mankind.

From where breakthrough idea come from..

3) It comes later from simple notes you took down today: on your notepad or on a mobile, of something which got your attention momentarily but with a deep wow within. It could be about a problem, solution or just a picture of someone doing something.

2) It comes from chatting with new people coffee or a bar: but usually at a place which is not too upscale, a place where you are yourself.

4) It comes from spending lots of time in articulating a known challenge or a problem: and revising the problem statement many times around.

7) It comes from following your fascination.

5) It comes from purposely disconnecting from the “How will that be done but..” mindset.

6) It comes from talking to someone from the different domain, industry, education, geography, social status, gender.

10) It comes from visiting a new place; it could be just around the corner of your usual place.

8) It comes from switching off the gadgets.

9) It comes from listening in.

1) Lastly, and importantly, it comes from a belief that you can get a breakthrough idea!

It may not come by jumbling up the sequence numbering, or well it might!

You possibly cannot crowdsource breakthrough ideas, but you can get lot of help by running an idea competition.

Once you have a breakthrough idea, ideaken can help in getting the technologies you need to make your idea come to life.

TED Presentation on Open Innovation by our associate Lucia

New kind of Competitive Advantage for a RFP response.

You already know about Product, Support, Cost or a Geographic proximity related Competitive Advantages. You will most probably use the right advantages and value propositions while responding to a typical RFP. But there is a new kind of Competitive Advantage used by the large to medium organizations, and it is about Crowdsourcing the expert or niche inputs from outside of your company, just in time, and make your proposal stand out. Let’s elaborate using a walk through example.

You head the presales unit for a company, your primary source of new business is via responding to the RFPs from the clients around the world, who belong to diverse industries and domains & Geographies.

You receive one such RFP. The team does the initial analysis and comes up with the list of expertise needed to prepare winning proposal, along with the list of questions to be ask the RFP submitter.

Best way to have a competitive advantage is to be really good in the Industry and the domain this  RFP belongs and also understand the requirement well. But there are two issues, one is the availability of right resources at your end, two you still might have only the high level understanding of the problem, industry and domain of this RFP.

The route most of the presales people follow in such a scenario is talk GENERIC, talk at HIGH LEVEL, talk what can be neither right nor wrong! Or still worst, just Copy/Paste from previous proposal. Only issue with such approach is there are too many vendors who will take this approach.

Instead, imagine, you have a vendor who can Securely and anonymously crowd source just in time expert  inputs (Telephonic, Web, Email). With this newly acquired knowledge your proposal response or consulting deliverable would stand apart in terms of..

a) Localized industry & environmental know-how.
b) Knowledge of real issues and hence possible proposed solutions approaches.
c) Your confidence that you are on the same page with your client

We at ideaken help your company implement this approach and bring in noticeable increase in the quality of your RFP responses.

We have finished working on more than 120 projects, and have delivered increased success in consulting assignments and improved RFP win ratio by 5-25%.  

Contact us to discuss our “Competitive Advantage” service for your company today.

Planning an Innovation Competition?

So, you have decided to hold an innovation competition and get some creative ideas from experts all over the world, or from specific communities of interest; or you might be using it as an indirect marketing tool to create awareness of your product.

The biggest issue I see with some of the innovation competitions, is the expectation the companies have from participants in terms of understanding long and complex jargon, so much that what they want participants to do almost gets lost in the long description. So, having a clear ask is a key, but that does not mean you cannot spice it up. Titles like “Your chance to design for your Olympic hero” or “Ever thought you would have a green idea?” can do the trick.

I believe whoever runs the innovation competition does not have an expectation to really get to a breakthrough innovation using the entries they get; but if they do, then they most probably, will not succeed. However; if they have expectations to find the ingredients, ideas, starting point of the thoughts which eventually result in some sort of innovation then they are on a right track.

Have you used innovation competition for marketing? If not, then you must. Companies are using it to cover many aspects of marketing. When someone is running an innovation competition, the first impression it sends out to the market is that the company believes in innovation. This subtle but very powerful message, then can take on a role of engaging the curious population; on the way it creates the awareness of the product or a service and then in the last it can also end up getting some good ideas, problems, improvement suggestions; which can then be taken forward by the company to make measurable difference to the bottom line.

 

Open innovation competition is far more suitable for fetching real innovations into the company and has a slightly different tone, in terms of formulating the brief. It also has different ways of reaching out and engaging the participants. While innovation competition would ideally have a cash reward, open innovation would also have a mechanism to license, buy or co-develop the solutions. Pointing out this little difference; that it is good to know what your goals are and accordingly make the right selection, organize and execute.

ideaken can help in running an innovation competition for your organisation.

Why talk about Implicit Crowdsourcing?

Basically to showcase that seemingly unsuspected things have Crowdsourcing involved, and if you can develop an eye for it then you might be able to come up with better usage of Crowdsourcing for your business.

The Crowdsourcing based business or a project is comparatively easy to detect, but it is amazing that there exist many trivial but interesting examples all around us which has Crowdsourcing embedded. The influence might vary for each case; however they might open your minds to rather interesting possibilities. 

Scene 01:

You decide to learn a new language.  You searched on Google and zeroed in on one website. You had a great experience in learning a new language. At the end of it, to your surprise you might as well have contributed in translating
digital text for businesses.  

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

The language learners also help to translate digital text for businesses for other clients.  For example – if say 50 people guess that the word “pelota” in Spanish means “ball” in English then Duolingo assumes that it is correct.  Duolingo has more than 250,000 active language learners – so you can guess the “intelligence” it has acquired through Crowdsourcing.

Scene 02: 

A leading news daily posted an article online on their website with a title “Vivekananda balls to boost Modi campaign “.  I glanced over it and said to myself, they need better editors and I moved on. It could have been some journalist’s way to sensationalize the article or just a genuine oversight.
When the article went in press for a print edition the next day, the news title did not have the obvious issue and was changed to “Vivekananda volleyballs to spike up Modi campaign”.  I checked back the online version and it was changed there as well.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

Within hours of publishing the article online, unlike me, many readers objected and commented on the online article. The news daily took a note of it. The news business is typically one way traffic, and reader’s feedback is usually on general public or parties covered in the article. Here you see a business case for media to formalise incorporation of such feedback before they reaches wider audience.

Scene 03:

There was this interesting page doing rounds in a South American city. Simply compare randomly selected two faces and tell if they match or not, and get paid for it.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

This case is an attempt to locate the offenders in the mob video captured by an amateur. Authorities asked several citizens to assert if the individual pictures match with randomly selected images of their citizens, but they did it without telling the background story. Such Implicit Crowdsourcing with undisclosed agenda, however has to face moral questions (and for the right reason) if it is right to get work done w/o revealing the end purpose.
In another similar example, authorities at UK uploaded 2000+ images of rioters from London in 2011 and asked people to identify them.
 
Scene 04:

You are surfing the web and at one of the sites, you entered a captcha validation (where you need to see the picture and key in the letters to prove you are human and not a machine). And you went on with your surfing life.

Implicit Crowdsourcing at play:

Well, you just made a valuable contribution to digitizing an old precious book. One of the two words in the captcha image was scanned from the heritage book that they want digitized. And in case you are wondering how the website knows if the words you typed is correct or not, and if they already know then why they need digitise again. The trick is they always use a set of two words, one of them is known to them, and that is the only one used for validation. The second word you typed in is your contribution to digitise a book. You can see how a entire book can get digitised one word at a time.

This list can go on and we will share more examples like these in the coming months. And you too can send us instances you spotted.

These examples might trigger ideas on how you can utilize Crowdsourcing for your own business. 

ideaken can help you Crowdsourcing challenge based problems or a scenario where wisdom of crowds can make a difference for your business.

Announcing winner of DSM e-nnovation challenge hosted on ideaken platform.

Geoff McCue from US who submitted a detailed idea of exercise suit with multi-functional resistance patches is the winner of DSM e-nnovation challenge hosted on ideaken platform. Geoff wins a VIP trip for 2 to the Olympic Games in London this summer. Congratulations Geoff!

The jury's main verdict was that Geoff McCue had submitted a solution that was elegant in its simplicity.

Geoff said "My design was triggered by the variable elasticity of Arnitel Eco, as well as its ability to be shaped into different forms and colours, making it possible to give every resistance level a different colour."

Runners up in the competition were Alexander Xydas with shin pads; Alberto Villareal with a soccer ball; Sebastian Wolzak, Millie Clive-Smith & Seitaro Taniguchi with a prosthetic leg; and Daniel Hernly, who was selected by the popular vote, with a golf glove.

Jury Chairman Francis Aussems, Innovation Manager at DSM Engineering Plastics says: "The quality of the ideas that contestants submitted was very high. The 5 finalists delivered absolutely top professional designs and ideas.” Francis Aussems concludes: "No single entry was the same, and most designs were valid applications of Arnitel Eco”.

The DSM e-nnovation contest, which was launched in 2011 on ideaken platform, invited creative thinkers and designers interested in sports to submit ideas for equipment innovations that could make a difference in any sport. The specified material for the designs was Arnitel Eco, a bio-based thermoplastic copolyester. Karen Scholz, Project Manager Open Innovation at DSM says: "As a company that is strongly committed to open innovation, DSM is always ready to talk to the designer community. We want to create valuable applications with our materials and a competition such as this gives us the insights into people's needs and expectations. This competition enabled us to start such a dialogue about design and sport– we are keen to make it an ongoing conversation”.

Jayesh Badani, CEO of ideaken.com said “We loved hosting DSM Arnitel innovation challenge; it was an exciting experience to reach out to a unique mix of innovators from material science, design and sports domains. This example showcases how open innovation is not only for technology advancement, but also for market advancement.”

Diversity - hard to define, but has pretty good impact on business & innovation.

When you come across someone very innovative or creative, most probably you would be looking at an intersection of abilities and the breadth of knowledge. If you zoom out a bit, the communities which are rich in diversity are also fun to be in. Take it to another level and you will find companies which are most innovative are also the ones who support diversity – not by chance but pretty much by design.

However diversity is not an overnight change which you can bring into your community or a company.

Let’s examine ‘Why’ diversity has such positive impact and ‘How’ you can make sure you are not leaving this important aspect unaddressed and how you can benefit from it in your quest for the business growth and innovation.

WHY (diversity has positive impact)

a) It all starts from a very unique environment and culture we as individuals are brought up in . The world is so big that no single community can survive with the same outlook, practices and tools. This  localized and trapped knowledge is pretty much accessible via the people who move around the world.

b) Heard of bio-mimicry, the science of looking at nature and solving problems not related to nature or taking an inspiration and innovate. Diversity is a tool using which one can think from different perspectives, which as we all know can result in inventions.

c) Most probably your company strategy is somewhere trying to capture the long tail of a market, you probably need a similar strategy for your research and development activities, where you can reach out to the long tail of talent, the just in time, and the right match and just for the period you really need it.

HOW (you can promote diversity)

a) Companies do not have a bias in their hiring policies, but the person in control could pretty much influence the not so diverse hiring, best place to retrospect. Though one way to bring in diversity is to bring in people from diverse background, another important way is to reach out to them and engage with them in a mutually beneficial way for a short duration of time.

b) Apply tools which bring in diversity, talk to the wrong people (assuming you have already spoken to the right people!), pick the odd country and imagine your product and services there, may not be for your expansion but just to get away from stereotype market you see around you. You may not be able to build a machine which flies like a bee, but you will surely find an idea for improvement, get inspired, and possibly get close to where you want to be.

c) Long tail of a talent match is all about spreading it wide and letting the receiver decide if he or she would like to engage.  Diversify from your conventional methods of engagements; the good news is it does not cost the earth in this connected world.

ideaken enables your engagement with individuals from diverse geographies, connect to the perceived wrong set of people and engage with someone who could be at the long tail you are after!

Be method agnostic - for your innovation goals.

Every organization develops certain liking for methods to innovate over a time. I am using ‘Methods” as a broad term – starting from how the R&D division is structured, what are their goals & objectives, who they are answerable to,  processes in place, further extending to the tools and techniques the organization has been using till date.

By being methodical, the organization is trying to bring in some sort of certainty; however there is also a danger of settling in, and getting satisfied with what you come up with. Remember the whole purpose is to innovate, which by all purpose means to come up with something which is new and beneficial - then why not apply the same philosophy for the ecosystem around getting the innovation done?

How about structuring R&D division where every employee, irrespective of his job profile - has to spend say x months in every y years at R&D / Innovation division of the organization. Let’s assume this makes it 20% of your R&D staff is always a rotated staff from other non R&D divisions. While on rotation, you may not produce great results, but just the feel and experience of being in the middle of R&D will continue to add value to your productivity and also to the Organizational Research even after you are back at your usual job profile.

How about making an R&D division have P&L of its own?

How about giving the freedom to use any tool or technique? I know a company where they can’t use 6 thinking hats because they have their own in house methods to brainstorm, no harm in using own methods but why ban other methods.

Collaborative innovation is one of the ways to become method agnostic, because you won’t know what methods the innovator has used, or will not use, most importantly you won’t care about the methods. Other way around is also true, if you truly try to become method agnostic, you are actually becoming more collaborative, more open, because now an accountant also has a chance to be in the research lab, you are more open because you no longer hide your real revenue truly from new research and innovations, you are more open because now an employee is allowed to install a freeware and try out new things in her free time. 

Trying different things and being method agnostic will breed diversity, which has been shown to be the best way to get innovative results.

Not to forget that being method agnostic does not mean getting rid of methods, it mostly means that you are open, collaborative and flexible – basically you are innovative in doing innovation.

WHEN IT IS BEST NOT TO TALK ABOUT the most innovative feature of your product

When Tata Nano was being conceptualized and talked about in the media, all of us thought that this is a revolution. It was indeed a revolution in technology, and entire world acknowledged it, however the buyer in the market is not impressed, here is why …

For most of the middle class Indians, owning a car is a status symbol, Tata nano does not help in creating a status symbol. The car itself has no issues, it has everything to become a proud owner of, but the Tatas and the media have ruined the image by calling it a car for the poor. It’s a no brainer that the middle class do not want to be categorized as poor or middle class, even if they are one.

At the other extreme are Apple products, where the technology being sold is a bit over hyped, and the price for them in some cases cannot be justified, but I know many who buy an apple product as a status symbol.

The core of Tata Nano’s innovation was in having a vision for a unique car, partnering with SMEs, pushing its engineering staff to “do more with less” and in making the engine more efficient.  All these also contributed in achieving a significantly less manufacturing cost – a first of its kind cost innovation, however sometimes, the most innovative feature of your solution is best kept hidden from your customers.

Imagine one of following three scenarios …

1)    If Tata had never used the word ‘Cheap car’ in any of their communications. If they had simply put this car at par with all other entry level cars, and provide incredible free goodies or discount or best of all - free petrol for years! They could as well afford to replace the whole car after 5 years!
2)    If they would have used their technology advancements to provide C class/ sedan features at hatchback/ entry level prices. You might argue that the purpose of making a car affordable won’t be achieved, I agree.
3)    If their PR was based on a concept of - finally a nano (small) car has arrived, or having a message “why spend more” instead of “spend less coz your are poor”

So how did the low cost airlines pull it off? Low cost airlines worked because the flights didn’t taxi into your garage. No one really had to exhibit their boarding passes.

In the already crowded tablet market in India, the Government of India is talking about launching a tablet for $35 for students and maybe $50 for others.  Question is – how are they going to position it?  Hope they don’t launch it as a tablet for the poor man!

The message for corporate innovation leaders is - Technology Innovation must go in hand with Design, Business and Marketing innovation. Market research is not the best way to feel the pulse of your customers, and innovation also needs a cultural touch.

In addition to a) Product & Technology challenges, ideaken will soon launch collaborative innovation for b) Process, service & business, and c) Design, brand & usability category of innovation challenges.

From ‘Ego’ to ‘Pride’ – The change in Innovation mindset?

‘Ego’ occupies its place inside every individual from early childhood, be it a self respect or a self esteem, or even arrogance. And as enterprises are made of people, enterprises too have their ego. 

Traditionally ‘Ego’ has been one of the driving forces behind companies doing innovation. I say - one of the factors, because there are many other factors which drive innovation, but here I am trying to explore just the ego angle.

This ‘Ego’ is usually two fold, one in terms of being superior to the competition and second being superior to your own self. Both types are healthy!

Over the time, however the cost of keeping this ‘Ego’ has gone up. It’s neither the individual’s fault nor the enterprise’s – ‘Globalization’ is the culprit, and unfortunately you or your enterprise cannot stop this guy!

So should one forget about the ‘Ego’? Some decided just that, some are ok to pay the cost of it, but some of them decided to reinvent it.

Let’s talk about the people and enterprises that are reinventing it, in other words innovating the innovation itself. What I feel they did is – they (e.g. P&G) worked backwards. Backwards from the final goal of wanting to be innovative. Instead of looking down and cut cost they looked up, they replaced the ‘Ego’ with the ‘Pride’. Even in this lot, not everyone worked backwards, others who saw this work, just followed the trend setters.

With ‘Ego’ being out of sight, these enterprises became far more open, they started collaborating with employees, customers, vendors and even someone completely stranger for their innovation needs. The real test though was if they really can get innovation done this way, it turns out that they did!

Obviously now instead of cost of ‘Ego’, they dealt with cost of ‘Pride’.

They soon realized that they no longer need to increase their innovation budget in direct proportionate to the increased innovation expectations.

The cost of pride turned out to be far less than the cost of ego, in turn resolving their initial challenge around cost.

Additionally, ‘Pride’ felt far more positive a feeling than the ‘Ego’.

Unless you are like Steve Jobs, who would rather keep his ego, albeit for the right reasons, and innovate yourself at the cost and speed you can afford, for rest of us, I feel switch from ‘Ego’ centric innovation to ‘Pride’ centric innovation is on its way to become mainstream.

Better have a Non-Innovative Chief Innovation Officer

You read it right. There is more to an innovation officer than innovation.

MUST have

1.    Foremost; something which you cannot learn by practice, it’s something inbuilt, don’t tick this off too quickly - Ability to smile at failure, wholeheartedly.

2.    Either an expert technologist with a keen interest in Business, or the other way round - Basically a Master of None. Because if you are one; then there is not only a possibility of a bias, but also a risk of not knowing what you don’t know!

3.    Collaboration is an overused word and so is Innovation, but you must bring these words together to collaborate to innovate. You need to be - A messenger, between all the Grey assets of your enterprise - especially the ones which are not labeled as Grey; and the Business of your enterprise. You will also enable engagements at top management level, both within and outside enterprise for decisions related to innovation.

4.    You are happy only when you have added building blocks to your company’s sales growth, however small, but definitely repeatedly. You have an Ability to get bored with status quo!.

GOOD to have

1.    This is another one which you cannot learn but only experience. Diversity in your thoughts blooms when you have often had lunch outside of your country and culture.

2.    ‘What if’ mindset, not necessarily of a chess player, but of a curious one, who might just window shop..

Must NOT

1.    The deadliest mistake is to have chief innovation officer as a mere ornamental position. When it is, the innovation agenda goes on for years w/o any positive impact on the organization and no one even notices it.

Before they decide to ‘Research’

We recently presented at a colloquium at Philips Innovation Campus. One of the topics of interest was the life cycle of a challenge. Questions which were asked inspired me to write a bit more about the management of challenges, way before someone starts logging time against them. Or in case of collaborative innovation, well before the challenge starts showing up all over the place.

In short - it’s good to know the directions, especially before getting onto a free way.

So what do the best organizations do before they start putting in their time and resources on research?

They start with a “Challenge Inventory” and few good practices around it.

1)  Does your organization have a place, people and process to log a challenge? If not, you need to start here.  It could be a simple form with set of people as owners. The mode could be via your intranet website or even email.

2)  Now the best way to make your employees know that such an inventory exists, is to ask your employees to submit a challenge, the best challenge wins a prize. You must also tell what they should do when they think of a challenge in future.

Note that   it’s all about challenges and some more challenges, here we are not taking about the solutions.

It is best not to.

A challenge could be anywhere from very complex to not so complex and could be on high end technology, to just a process hiccup.

Examples are ...

• Our competition’s turnaround time for a repair call is 3 days while ours is 7 days, and we don’t have additional budget for our services division.

• Our current adhesive on the belt takes 2 hours to dry, but the print on the package fades a bit when exposed to the heat used for drying adhesive.

• For a re-launch, we want to replace our yogurt’s artificial flavor with a natural ingredient.

Never strike off an impossible looking challenge like “Our hybrid should accelerate similar to our best sports model”

 
Also when you store them in central place, all can access and leverage the previous efforts on the similar challenges.

3)  Prioritize the challenge inventory list with a set of relevant filters at that point of time. Never fix these filters upfront. The example of the filters could be ‘Natural ingredient’ (for the new launch). When you apply such a filter, all the challenges which have natural ingredient in it will go up the list and help you attack the problem from multiple directions.

Even open up a completely new possibility.

Above steps should be aimed at identifying your top X challenges and top Y domains at this point of time.  Once you do, you are armed with the information you need for initiating collaborative innovation and make an impact.

ideaken helps organizations draw up collaborative innovation strategy, benefit from open innovation and leverage co-creation.

A slice of new products and services via vendor co-creation

Beside your enterprise and your customers, there is a rich layer of vendors your enterprise deals with. You deal with these vendors as they fulfill certain purposes of your business. Invariably these vendors develop fertile characteristics which are a mix of deep understanding of your business, solid technical know how and awareness of what else is happening in the industry you operate in.

Above attributes put your vendors in a unique position which you may not like to ignore.

There are various ways you could benefit from this, and the most promising could be how you could tap into this relevant talent beyond your primary reason of engaging with these vendors. For example you might be dealing with your vendors to provide you with a spare part, raw material, a particular service or a piece of software. Now is there a way you could tap into the peripheral talent of these vendors and their employees to add credible value to the tasks which you do in-house?

Obviously the first question to ask and to figure out is if your enterprise has such vendors; with whom you have been dealing with for a while, and over the years have developed a potential which could be tapped?

Second important question to ask is – is it possible to tap into this talent without being intrusive with your vendor’s talent and w/o violating contractual or IP issues. Part of the answer for this question could be to do this co-creation along with the existing projects / contracts. When co-creation is done as part of bigger engagement, it has a lesser chance of being looked as intrusive. When co-creation is implemented with a clear purpose, IP issues could be addressed upfront and hence managed better.

Clients have been always asking for additional value (and that additional slide on value proposition has been part of your selling deck ever since), now it appears that clients have started to look into more systematic ways of getting there, and vendor co-creation seems to be paving the way for it.

As a vendor, being partner in co-creation can add a tremendous differentiators, which can help you create client stickiness you always welcome, and a value proposition which can elevate your bid vis-à-vis your competition.

As usual only a win-win proposition stand a chance, both you as a vendor to your client, and you as a client to your vendor can benefit from Vendor co-creation.

This article is inspired by my recent discussion with Vikesh Mehta, General Manager Enterprise innovation and Pavan Soni, innovation evangelist at Wipro Technologies.

Does OPEN INNOVATION equal outsourcing innovation?

Contracting out a business function; be it IT services or Innovation; to an external provider will qualify as outsourcing. So what’s the big fuss about, why is open innovation being mentioned in all innovation forums?

On the face of it – there isn’t much difference.

While the traditional outsourcing based on Cost saving and  on demand resources; allows one to focus on their core business, it is also true for open innovation. However why open innovation is getting popular has more reasons than what meets the eye.

a) Outsourcing focuses on repeatable tasks, open innovation focuses on one- off task. (One would most probably try to open innovate when the answer is not a phone call away; at Bangalore or Beijing)

b) Outsourcing focuses on the getting job done, open innovation focuses on increasing the probability of getting that complex job done. (There are no guarantees in open innovation, but one can surely reduce the risk of not reaching out to a possible great idea)

c) Outsourcing success is based on identifying the right partner for medium to long term, open innovation success is based on having the right processes in place to leverage the long tail phenomenon. (Here the quantity of solutions does not matter, but the relevancy does and this relevancy may not be possible to be bought  from a predefined source) 

d) Outsourcing helps enterprises improve predictability, Open innovation helps enterprises improve novelty in their offerings. (Predictability is hygiene, consumers now want to be delighted)

e) Outsourcing is based on push, open innovation is based on pull. (Push works better for traditional business function outsourcing, Pull works better for creativity and innovation)

Reasons to go for open innovation could be a subset of reasons to go for a typical business function outsourcing, but the former has lot more underneath it.

This workshop had a single point agenda - define the challenge for open innovation

We recently participated in a 2 day workshop organized by one of our clients. This client is a consortium of agencies funded by United Nations, working towards providing solutions for sanitation and clean water in India. Approximately 50 delegates participated from France, Netherlands and fifteen different states of India.

Here we share some of the best practices followed during the workshop in formulating a challenge for open innovation.

First the no brainer, Schedule a long listening session – Put forward a guideline that only challenges and issues faced are being discussed and not the solution. Make sure to have involvement and participation from all stake holders. The best ingredient to have a right problem is to listen up from a diverse forum with respect to age, geographies, departments, designations or social status, whichever is applicable.

Conquer challenge articulation by dividing it in logical groups – This will help you express the challenge in a way which is much easier to understand by the individual who is likely  to solve it for you. Some of the examples of logical grouping for this workshop were related to culture and mindset, raw material availability and cost. Also this could help you divide the challenge into multiple smaller challenges to be solved independent of each other.

Try not telling the truth! – Telling what you need solved is the best way to get to solutions, but see if you can abstract it from the domain of your challenge. For example if your  sole interest is in reducing the cost of sanitation by reducing the cost of toilet roof then instead of calling it a sanitation challenge call it a “how to reduce the cost of roof” challenge. This way you are keeping it open for the people from construction domain as well, who otherwise, on seeing it as sanitation challenge could end up not considering it.

Simulate the outcome - Know your evaluation criteria well and convert them into specific expectations. Further categorize your expectations as ‘must meet’ and ‘good if met’.

Allocate Reward only after formulating the challenges – Having overall budget for the solution is ok, but put the exact reward only after you have the complete challenge in front of you. The only rule which should be applied while deciding on the reward is making it proportionate to the effort and skill required and the benefit it will deliver to you once obtained. There is no right or wrong answer for this one, but needs a bit of deliberation at the minimum.

Don’t overload the challenge – Don’t add up all the expectation into the challenge such that solvers are confused by too many requirements, perceive it to be too complicated, and don’t take it up for solving. At the same time make sure it has a good enough stretch factor and highlights all your must have expectations.

Do share if there are any additional best practices that worked for you while formulating a challenge for open innovation.

Seeking solution for the TRAFFIC JAM (how to avoid and ways to clear it off faster)

Most of the urban cities in India today have a traffic jam problem which results in loss of person hours, causes environmental damage, and increases fuel wastage.

There are thousands of suggestions received to resolve traffic issues by the planning authorities and traffic management agencies across India, however most of them lack either the impact (return on investment), solve too little of a problem or underplay the dependencies which exists to implement those solutions.

Seeker is expecting a comprehensive solution for the “Traffic Jam” problem in the urban cities.

Seeker is expecting solutions for one or both of the following categories.

Category 1 - High impact, low cost, practical, implementable
Category 2 - High impact but DOES NOT NEED TO be low on cost, practical or implementable

Category 2 needs a theoretical solution. Can the solution of traffic Jam come from the problem itself? How do we make the traffic jam problem self heal? Feel free to go WILD with your imagination without thinking about how it can be implemented (Applicable only for category 2)

Sign In to read more about the challenge or Sign Up Now and start solving.

Concept overview – collaborative innovation

This concept overview in approximately one minute, tries to convey the When, Why and How of collaborative innovation.

We are compiling the top questions  that enterprises frequently ask when embracing collaborative innovation, open innovation or co-creation. If you have a question on the same then please submit as a comment to this post or send it to us at contact@ideaken.com

We will respond individually to each question, and publish our take on some of the questions in subsequent posts here in this blog.

Eureka moments, now smaller, incremental and widespread

Path breaking innovations are few and getting relegated to a once in a decade phenomenon. What we see all around us are small and incremental innovations. The benefits delivered or dollars saved from these small and incremental innovations are turning out to be worth taking a note of.

Water tanks provided a quick solution to personal water storage problem, but putting wheels on it provided a solution for century old water transport challenge in remote villages of Africa.

Today, a solution for your challenge or your need, might already be getting discussed, sought, worked on - in another part of the world, in just another corner of your enterprise, or sitting idle in somebody’s mind. You need to collaborate with these sparks, which most probably are eager to collaborate with you as well. What you need is - a mechanism to connect.

In the past, innovations came out of eureka moments, then came people with fancy titles who would innovate for you, now we are back to where we started – it has become increasingly acceptable for anybody to have a solution which solves a given challenge.

Today, enterprises are adding up these small solutions, ideas and innovations rather than waiting for one big bang.

Seeker looking for a device that allows a player, to set up dominos faster for a toppling game

Seeker is looking for device design, which should allow a player to set up the dominos faster than any other traditional method of setting them up possible today.

The device design should allow the user to create interesting patterns, including but not limited to circles, trees where one row becomes two and two becomes four, curves. Also allow predefined shapes, which could connect to each other to make a longer domino queue. Patterns and shapes could be created by using the device multiple times (in other words, the device does not need to release the pattern or design in one go)

Player should be able to repeat the whole process for any number of times, which means that once the dominos fall, it should be easy to set them again.

Solver need to submit the technical design for the device with details.
A video capture of a) technical design with explanation and b) the design at work; is must.

Read more about the problem here or Sign Up Now to start solving.

Seeker is looking for a solution to save stranded Whales, Dolphins, and other big fish

Every year more than 2000 fish/mammals around the world get stranded and majority of them do not make it back to the sea. The occurrences of big fish/ mammal stranding and the causes are still a subject of scientific research and debate. Current known ways of rescuing, results only in saving a few, smaller and younger ones.

ideaken.com platform is hosting a challenge to identify  practical solution to save stranded Whales, Dolphins, and other big fish

The challenge is looking for a solution in following areas.

Point 1) Identification of the reasons that causes stranding and ways to fix those reasons.
OR
Point 2) a) Keeping the stranded big fish / mammals alive, far longer than possible today b) solution to move them back in the deep sea, and c) ways to avoid re-beaching
OR
Both Point 1) and Point 2) above.

Your solution will be reviewed by the experts in big fish/ mammal rescue field for applicability and suitability.

Read more about the problem here or Sign Up Now to start solving.