What can innovation seeking enterprises DO with LEGO set manuals?

LEGO pieces can be converted into far more variety of structures in addition to what is given in its manual. The outcome is usually unusual, and ranges from having no significant beauty to having an extraordinary beauty which has not been created before; and an originality which could carry a class and a value of its own.

Seems quite obvious. Let’s examine it a little closer and see what goes on to make this obvious - the obvious.

1) The child or a parent needs to think that maybe she should try to build something without referring the manual. (Innovative organizations always have involved leadership who understands the unstructured nature of creativity and facilitate this direction.)

2) The child might behave clueless at first, but show him once even the three piece structure done without the manual and see how she takes it further from there. (Besides providing vision, leaders know the importance of enablement.)

3) You won’t fail to notice the pride in her voice when she finally shows it to you. (It is of utmost importance to encourage and reward the effort, in however small or insignificant ways.)

4) You have kept the manual and she does refer it for the fundamentals like - what fits where, once in a while. (Building innovation culture efforts does not need to change the ways you run your company, however it might need a tweak here and a tweak there.)

Hiding them occasionally is what innovation seeking enterprises can DO with the LEGO set manuals.

ideaken team can help your enterprise in planning & implementing points 2,3 and 4 mentioned above and benefit from the power of co-creation and open innovation.

FINISH uses crowd sourcing to find solutions for Indian sanitation problem

ideaken's journey with FINISH began with a chance meeting over the internet. However as we have continued our journey, we have been humbled to meet some great people who are committed to the cause of total sanitation system in rural India. We are proud to be associated with FINISH and sincerely hope that the ideaken platform helps FINISH to meet their noble and worthy objective.

A search for a rural toilet design begins on 19th Nov – the World Toilet Day

FINISH is launching an “innovation contest” to create new and improved sanitation systems for rural India, with rewards up to Rs. 620,000 (or 10,000 Euros) is up for grab. The contest is being launched on World Toilet Day - 19th Nov 2010. FINISH will incorporate the best innovations generated by the contest in thousands of toilets being installed in rural India under its programme.

November 17, 2010 - India / Netherlands / France
It is often said that Safe Sanitation Systems form the last chapter of human development. 1 in every 4 person in the world does not have access to Sanitation. India is a prime illustration.
Indian Space scientists have put machines on the moon, yet 1 in every 2 Indians does not have access to toilets. Everyday 638 million people or about 50% of the population in India resort to open defecation.

There has been progress, from the “Central Rural Sanitation Programme”, which was initiated in 1988 by the Government of India, to the “Total Sanitation Campaign” launched in the year 1999. However, according to the 2010 report by UNICEF, on progress in sanitation coverage, even in 2008, 69% of rural Indian population did not have access to toilets.
All private and public sanitation drives suffer from some common problems.

1. The quality of constructed toilets is very poor due to budgetary or time constraints.
2. Toilet designs are often not appropriate for the targeted ecological terrain.
3. A lack of clearly defined “standards” for toilet design is leading to toilets that pollute the environment.
4. Stakeholders do not have adequate awareness and knowledge of sustainable sanitation models.

The FINISH ‘Sanitation Challenge Contest’ is a serious attempt to find solutions to some of above problems. FINISH, which stands for Financial INclusion Improves Sanitation and Health, with the help of ideaken.com - a collaborative innovation platform provider and other network partners – WASTE, FIN Trust, Ethos India and the World Toilet Organisation have launched an innovation competition to generate new designs in sanitation systems.

The contest is open to all individuals and institutions. Its objective is to arrive at significant, even revolutionary improvements in toilet design, and safe disposal system, specifically suited to different climatic, soil, water table conditions, which will ensure sustainable and safe management of the human waste. This new toilet design will be used to diffuse 1 million safe toilets in India.

“The 3rd toilet was constructed by the NGO even though 2 unused toilets already stand in the same house.” (This tells us that just building toilets won’t solve the issue)

You can help too

Please diffuse this news to sources you think can contribute to designing this new sanitation system. (Including but not limited to social media sites, news sources, NGOs, SMEs in Sanitation, WC/ Restroom and waste management areas, and Engineering and Design crowd)

Please click here to participate in the contest

Please click here to view complete press release

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.

yet2.com and ideaken.com partnership aims to place Asia onto the Innovation World Map

 
Two years back, when ideaken team was doing their business planning, we had listed yet2.com as one of our top competitions! Today we are glad to partner with yet2.com.  –  Jayesh


yet2.com and ideaken.com partnership aims to place Asia onto the Innovation World Map


India / USA 21 Oct 2010 - yet2.com and ideaken.com today announced a partnership to jointly scout innovative solutions from individuals and technology SMEs for their enterprise clients.

Open innovation and Co-creation is the fastest emerging way to procure & supply innovation in a world of diminishing boundaries. This partnership will help both yet2.com and ideaken.com to expand their innovator solver base and get faster and better solutions for their enterprise clients. This partnership will also provide a greater opportunity for individual innovators and technology SMEs to access bigger market of innovation seekers from around the world.

Head quartered in US, yet2.com is world’s largest intellectual property exchange. ideaken.com is a leading open innovation intermediary and co-creation platform provider in Asia.

Dr. Eugene Buff, Vice President of Consulting for yet2.com, said, “Asia is a developing powerhouse of innovation that is of immense importance to the rest of the world. It’s also one of the world’s great markets for technology. yet2.com is very happy to be partnering with an organization of ideaken’s stature.”

“We look forward to a long partnership with ideaken,” said Ben DuPont, president and co-founder of yet2.com. “Innovation is not regional. Developments from Bangalore or Delhi can easily find their way to the shelves of New York or Tokyo, just as innovations from Berlin or Johannesburg may help companies in Bangalore. Organizations like ideaken and yet2.com exist to make these connections happen.”

Jayesh Badani, Founder and CEO of ideaken said “yet2.com and ideaken.com are in the business of tapping into innovative technology providers who are somewhere out there. It makes lot of sense to join forces and create a larger community of innovation seekers and innovation solvers, everybody wins this way. We help our clients collaborate to innovate; this partnership is about applying this principle to ourselves!”


Please click here to view complete press release

How to get ideas that are not 'a dime a dozen'?

Today, every enterprise has or plans to have some sort of an idea management initiative to capture the ideas of their employees and customers.  This could be because of a very strategic vision or the result of the hype about tapping into the wisdom of employees & customers. Some have mastered the art, but the rest end up being me too. Throughputs - some get as many as 150,000 ideas in a year and some just 15 from the same number of employees and customers. The effectiveness is equally extreme; some making real money from it and it becoming a main stream process for them, while others are completely clueless about the direction to navigate into.

Question is how organizations get hold of ideas that can elevate them to the next level, help them create a service or a product that could define a new market. In other words how do organizations harvest ideas which can make substantial & positive difference to the organizations’ objectives?

Part of  the answer lies in following two strategies, this is with an assumption that all other operational aspects are taken care.

Before you ask for ideas

• Shift your pitch from “Do you have an idea  ... “ to “Do you have an idea FOR  ...” Basically shift your pitch from generally asking for any idea to asking for an idea for a given challenge.
• If you can’t think of a challenge then run a challenge to find a challenge, you will be surprised how many you unearth!
• Stop behaving like you have the right to ask for ideas, instead create an atmosphere of co-creation.
• If you do not genuinely intend to read each of the ideas received and try to figure out the intent behind each idea then stop right here (It saves your time, yes theirs too!). Often the intent of the idea provider will lead you to the ideas you are after. 

After you get the ideas

• Lookout for the possibility of combining two not so good ideas to get the good one out of it. Or pick up the clue to make the not so good one, a really good one.
• Make the review team a mix of someone who could see the bigger picture and also someone who may not. 
• Refrain from judging the idea on the basis of how easy or difficult it is to implement it.
• Look at the act of rewarding the person with a good idea as an act of encouraging the innovation spirit and not as an act of buying out the idea.

In short addressing the points relevant to your enterprise from list above, a well defined challenge with an incentive and a committed evaluation team could fetch you ideas which are not a dime dozen.

Enterprise Culture & Enterprise Productivity, what is the connection?

Enterprises wanting to improve the productivity will typically show the signs of Six sigma and Lean. Six sigma and Lean are great tools and they produce great results, the only catch is they do so when in the right hands. The real power of these tools is to create the right culture, a culture of measurement and improvement; productivity improvement is the by-product which usually follows.

Similarly, when you want your employees to be innovative, don’t go and ask them to be innovative, create a culture for it, nurture the ecosystem, the results will soon be visible.
An enterprise which is on the path of creating this innovative culture for their employee shows the following signs.

1. They often provide opportunities to employees, which convey that the management trusts the employees.
2. Some of these opportunities are given away to all at the same time irrespective of the levels or grades of the employee.
3. There is a genuine public encouragement displayed and conveyed for every failed attempt in trying to do something new. (and the same for a successful outcome!)
4. These companies have established the connection between employee satisfaction and in providing an opportunity to express the creativity.
5. They are putting up systems and processes in place to actually take the ideas and solutions forward and benefit from it.

There is increasing evidence that an outlet for employee creativity can add to employee satisfaction and the productivity, over and above the employer benefits from implementing the employee ideas and solutions.

More enterprises are joining the league, creating an innovative culture for their employee. In this list of signs and the league, which stage are you in?

Anatomy of Rewards!

Innovators innovate for the passion of innovating, yes that is true. Then why give away rewards?

Between the guy who won’t innovate for you and the guy who will anyway innovate, there are a large number of people who are capable of innovating. To get the attention of this large number of people - you need upfront mentioning of reward. And for the guy who will anyway innovate, it is one way of saying ’you care’.

How much should be the reward?

This does not matter as long as you make it in some way proportionate to the benefit you will derive from the innovation. There is no right or wrong answer for what should be the proportion, the key is that you value the contribution and you are being fair. The best way to get the answer is ask these questions a) Will you yourself work on it for the given reward b) What is the innovation budget?, and c) How much will it cost me if I get it done from a third party innovation firm?

Having found how much I should reward, how do I decide between monetary and non-monetary rewards?

Monetary rewards are quite a safe bet in most of the cases. However if you decide to go with non-monetary rewards like fully paid vacation for two, then you must make sure that the winner is able to use it without any additional cost. Similarly if you are rewarding a Gadget, then you must consider how you will transport it to the winner. It is best to choose the non monetary rewards like Amazon gift coupons which are redeemable from anywhere in the world.

I am only partially satisfied with the solution and I like more than one solutions.

It is likely. Award partially and distribute it among the top three solution providers.

Should I distribute the reward to all who participate, this way I can be safe from any conflicts?

Once, to prove the issues with socialism, a professor agreed to average the grades. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy. As the second test results rolled out, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. By the time 4th test rolled around, the average was D. When reward for merit is taken away, no one will try or want to succeed.

The greatest indirect benefit of giving away rewards is, it builds trust and curiosity, both of which can immensely help in your subsequent innovation challenge.

RESULTS = function (SOMETHINGS), here are few SOMETHINGS for an Open Innovation Seeker

The more we participate in the challenge definition exercises for our clients, the more we learn about what works and what could be improved.

In our endeavor to share the learning on how the best results could be achieved for an open innovation or co-creation challenge, below is the checklist cum scorecard for innovation seeker.

Checklist for an open innovation seeker Yes = 1 No = 0 1. Did more than two individuals, not reporting to each other, have a say in formulating your innovation challenge? 2. Did seeker team discuss what would be their plan of action if they end up getting what they are requesting from the solvers? (Doing this upfront can seriously alter how you go about executing the solution seeking) 3. Is your reward (monetary, non monetary or both) proportionate in some way to effort required by solvers? 4. Does your promotion campaign for current challenge leverage the positive memories of previous challenge run by your enterprise? 5. Does your challenge clearly mention the "must meet" expectations and the "solution evaluation criteria"? 6. Do you have a plan for monitoring progress of your challenge and promoting it accordingly? 7. Have you given a thought around NOT making challenge duration too short (that you can't reach out to right solvers) or too long (that solvers postpone solving it)? 8. Is your challenge title to the point and convey what you are expecting in very direct words? 9. Does your solver composition plan for a given challenge include solver diversity with respect to skill set, age group and geo? 10. Do you have upfront time commitment from innovation sponsor & designated reviewers for evaluating the outcome? 11. Did you test how a typical solver might perceive your challenge brief? (Get your challenge reviewed by at least 2 independent reviewers, who have no clue whatsoever on what you are after before reading the brief) 12. Is your innovation seeker team prepared to tolerate people and ideas "worse than theirs", "as good as theirs" and "better than theirs"? 13. Open innovation will throw some bad ideas at you, is your innovation seeker team ready to trash those ideas without creating an opinion of any sort? 14. Has your innovation seeker team gone past "not invented here" mind block and embracing "proudly found elsewhere" culture? 15. Is your innovation seeker team agreeable that they may not always receive exact blue print of a solution and they might have to take the ideas received to the next level? 16. Is your innovation seeker team committed to NOT use any ideas or solution received without compensating and acknowledging the idea or solution submitter? Total

We leave it to you to interpret your score, just in case you ask us our opinion, it would be as follows.

Score 13-16 You are doing great
Score 9-12 Good going, scope for improvement
Score 1-8 Must improve the score

More than getting you a score, this check list helps you initiate the thought process that could address some of the essentials around seeking a solution in an open innovation way, thereby increasing the probability of success.

If you have a suggestion on additional points for the above list, then please feel free to send it across to us at contact@ideaken.com

Employee co-creation: an elevator pitch

Employee CO-CREATION is an act of innovating with the help of talent which is primarily NOT employed as INNOVATORS in your enterprise.

Be it the culture, the education, the upbringing or the personal interest - sheer DIVERSITY of talent available within the enterprise has huge untapped potential, and this latent talent is more than willing to collaborate and make a difference for the enterprise.

We are used to executing the given task as a project, where we apply control and a kind of PUSH to get things done. When it comes to creativity, the exact opposite works. Co-creation works on the principles of a PULL, where one creates a right challenge and puts in a right incentive for someone to provide the solution. The solvers (employees or non employees) are NOT hard pressed to deliver; in fact it is a voluntary act on their side, is done with far more willingness, with a passion to make a difference, and for intellectual satisfaction.

Today innovation is no longer a geek thing happening somewhere behind the closed doors. Now every individual gets excited by a new idea, and is in search of an avenue to share it. Small could be the idea, but the pride it delivers remain high.

‘But in our business we don’t need to innovate a lot’ is fast becoming the thought from the previous decade. Fundamental reason for this shift is the emerging knowledge from WITHIN which tells the enterprises that innovation has given them good returns, dollars has been made or dollars has been saved, brand has a better positioning and employee morale has seen a boost. Best part is - these benefits come from small, incremental and continuous innovation, not from a rare path breaking one.

Enterprises are deriving several ways to leverage this newly discovered POWER OF COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION. Be it through an innovation competition, seeking new service lines to enhance the revenue, cost cutting, productivity improvement, employee satisfaction & retention, for co-creating with customers or even for a latest trend around corporate social responsibility (CSR). The list ends only where the imagination ends!

Employee co-creation is one of those few LOW hanging phenomenon where it’s a WIN-WIN for both employers and employees.

ideaken enables enterprises when they need to collaborate to innovate with employees, and optionally with customers, research vendors, academia or with the global pool of talent. Enterprises can run ideaken platform with their own branding accessible only to their employees, and optionally and selectively open up to outside world.

ideaken exhibited at Silicon India, Bangalore and Echelon 2010, Singapore