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Excellent posting on YouTube of John Hagel III talking about innovation networks and Open Innovation in China. See posting below also on TSMC. Watch this space! As organizations in North America are struggling with the “how”, large Chinese corporates are implementing Open Innovation networks as we speak!

Worth watching this interesting and short video from Guy Kawasaki. Always entertaining.

Interesting to see governments in various parts of the world actively supporting innovation – more specifically, Open Innovation. General Electric has just announced it participation as a founding member of a new Japanese initiative to significantly further innovation in that country in the areas of healthcare, clean energy and the environment. Specifically, the new venture is based on Open Innovation. A total of $9.5 billion will be available as assets of the fund. Read more.

Companies actually engaged in business model innovation include Virgin, whose prolific brand spans myriad industries; Netflix, whose monthly subscription service disrupted the prevailing product rental paradigm; and Spanish clothing retailer Zara, whose model for design-to-distribution revolutionized the industry.Beyond the innovation hype, real opportunities exist for companies and their brands to endure tough times — and perhaps even flourish through them — by reconsidering business models, especially as relates to digital. No longer simply a delivery channel, digital has evolved to be foundational to business strategy. Read more……..

When I was in Taiwan not so long ago, I was exceptionally impressed by TSMC’s foray into the Open Innovation space. You might like to read this article for an update. It is heartening to see an organization such as TSMC embracing the Open Innovation paradigm.

Excellent discussion on Innovation from McKinsey.

Robert Atkinson, founder of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Iqbal Quadir, founder of MIT’s Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship, debate where innovation is moving in the 21st century. At the same time, McKinsey’s Jonathan Bays and Paul Jansendescribe the use of prizes as a way to spur solutions to intractable problems, while Peter Diamandis, founder of the X PRIZE Foundation, shares his perspective on the same subject in an audio interview. There’s much more, including an excerpt from Richard Florida’s newest bookWho’s Your City: How the Creative Economy is Making Where You Live the Most Important Decision of Your Life

Came across this excellent slide deck of s seminar Professor Henry Chesbrough gave at a symposium in Brazil last year. Thought you might find it of interest.

Patent systems are often justified by an assumption that innovation
will be spurred by the prospect of patent protection. However, little empirical evidence exists to support this
assumption. One way to test the hypothesis that a patent system promotes
innovation is to simulate the behavior of inventors and competitors
experimentally under conditions approximating patent and non-patent
systems. Employing a multi-user interactive simulation of patent and non-
patent (commons and open source) systems (―PatentSim‖), this studycompares rates of innovation, productivity, and societal utility. PatentSim
uses an abstracted and cumulative model of the invention process, a
database of potential innovations, an interactive interface that allows users
to invent, patent, or open source these innovations, and a network over
which users may interact with one another to license, assign, buy, infringe,
and enforce patents.

Data generated thus far using PatentSim suggest that a system combining patent and open source protection for inventions (that is, similar to modern patent systems) generates significantly lower rates of innovation (p<0.05), productivity (p<0.001), and societal utility (p<0.002) than does a commons system. These data also indicate that there is no statistical difference in innovation, productivity, or societal utility between a pure patent system and a system combining patent and open source protection. The results of this study are inconsistent with the orthodox justification for patent systems. However, they do accord well with evidence from the increasingly important field of user and open innovation. Read the study.

Having worked for Cisco in the innovaton space, and indeed continuing to do so on a contract basis, I have a soft spot for anything they do. Have a look at their new crowdsourcing initiative. To quote: Pass the Ball is all about the power of ideas, and the power of sharing. People working together to set ideas in motion and make things happen. Your idea really can change the world. Every time you start an idea or rate an idea, Cisco will make a donation to Teachers Without Borders, a global network of teachers bringing education to millions. What’s more, top-rated ideas will receive one year of free WebEx to help bring your idea to life through collaboration with people all over the world.

So go ahead. Pass the ball.

Netflix uses crowdsourcing to boost growth. Another excellent example of harnessing the ecosystem for innovation.  Read more.

Innovation and technology will be key to emergence from the global economic crisis, according to speakers at a recent United Nations conference on innovation-based competitiveness. However, innovation should be collaborative and involve resources inside and outside companies and institutions.

The “International Conference on Technological Readiness for Innovation-based Competitiveness” was organised by the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) on 29-30 June. Read more…

During a recent conference at the Mack Center for Technological Innovation, academics and business leaders argued that, rather than going back to the drawing board, companies should go outside their walls and tap into “innovation networks.” Read more….

Rising expectation in the emerging economies of Asia is poised to prompt a surge in demand and a wave of innovation in healthcare. “This is a huge opportunity for forward-thinking companies,” Helmut Schuhsler, Managing Partner of TVM Capital, told delegates at the recent Science|Business conference, The Innovation Economy. Read more…

Instead of developing everything from scratch, engineers at Rockwell Collins are realizing the importance of tapping into the talents of those outside of our own company. Read More.

Worth a read of this document. Some interesting statistics and insights on how mass collaboration is influencing decision making.

For those who are interested in social innovation, you should read the press release from President Obama. To quote:

And that’s precisely the idea behind the $50 million innovation fund included in the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act — an initiative designed to assist community solutions like these that we’re asking Congress to fund this year.

We’re going to use this fund to find the most promising non-profits in America.  We’ll examine their data and rigorously evaluate their outcomes.  We’ll invest in those with the best results that are most likely to provide a good return on our taxpayer dollars.  And we’ll require that they get matching investments from the private sector — from businesses and foundations and philanthropists — to make those taxpayer dollars go even further.

And today, I’m announcing that I’ll be asking Melody Barnes, who is our director of the Domestic Policy Council, and our innovation team to lead this process, traveling across the country to discover and evaluate the very best programs in our communities.

And we won’t just be looking at the usual suspects in the usual places.  We won’t just be seeking the programs that everybody already knows about, but we also want to find those hidden gems that haven’t yet gotten the attention they deserve.  And we’ll be looking in all sorts of communities — rural, urban, and suburban — in every region of this country, because we know that great ideas and outstanding programs are everywhere — and it’s up to us to find them.

You might also like to see posts on this blog, focussing on social innovation.

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