One of the things he talks about is how beneficial it is to spend  time considering the concrete needs for innovation of a company, before launching a challenge.  He gives an example as explanation:

During the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, BP created an  open innovation website to ask people solutions to stop the oil spill. They got 80.000 responses, and just 100 of the 20.000  that they assessed were valuable.

The way Open Innovation was used in this context created more noise in the system than necessary, as Shapiro highlights.

One of the big advantages of OI is the speed  it gives to the innovation processes, but, to benefit the most from it, requires a company to define the challenges in the right way. That means asking the questions in a way that provides solutions and creates value for the company and, at the same time, makes people stop submitting ideas that don’t follow the organization’s criteria.

According to Shapiro, it is better to invest the time to define a challenge instead of investing in analyzing solutions because it allows one achieve fewer but better solutions.

In the video, of around 20 minutes, he also talks about other cases of Open Innovation and about the importance of diversity for innovation and integrating different types of knowledge.

Some of the ideas I went on where:

1. Leaders are moved by passion. Everything they do is based on their “Why”, as Simon Sinek defined it.

2. Leaders promote value alignment. People do everything according to their “Why” and look for others with a similar “Why”. The leaders create environments where people want to be or belong.

3. For innovation, leadership is essential. Leadership goes before management when a company needs to get an innovative product into the market and Crossing the Chasm, defined by Geoffrey Moore.

4.  Leaders are the ones who see something first and pass the idea onto others. The followers are the ones that make something work.

5. The leaders have to find the know-how and align it. Innovation and know-how are constantly flowing in the market. Leaders must find the people with the right know-how and connect them together together to push innovation. Simon Dolan defines a new market with freelancers who are constantly moving from one company to another because they want to apply their know-how and be aligned with the companies’ values.

Our model of Open Innovation operates in this way, looking for the best know-how everywhere to solve challenges, constantly thinking in innovation.

Open Innovation is a way to get a structured process of innovation, able to generate ideas:

• systematically
• routinely
• habitually
• in order

Robinson also points out that the first step towards a culture of innovation is that companies recognize that ideas come from people. So:

• Companies that care for innovation facilitate ideas
• Companies that care for innovation pay attention to the ideas of their employees and partners
• Companies that care for innovation stimulate the imagination and sense of possibility of the people working in them.

Vanhaverbeke touches on interesting issues in the article, such as:

• The need for the wider use of Open Innovation
• The importance of focus on strategy as a starting point
• The usefulness of opening new theoretical frameworks for Open Innovation
• The interest of managing innovation ecosystems as a new imperative
• The benefit of leverage collaboration with technology partners to build new internal skills

Still, to create true value and innovation in the food industry it is necessary to develop strategies and planning in order to open the way to the market to new services or products. We work hard on tools and concepts that will help make innovation a reality. In this regard, we are collaborating with the Chasm institute to apply disruptive business strategies to food business.

The Premium Ingredients, Blendhub and Allfoodexperts teams are participating in the Crossing the Chasm 3-months seminar. It is the first time that the Chasm Institute, very well known for their  work in the high technology sector, works with food companies.

I left you a video presentation (it is about 41 minutes long) by Geoffrey A. Moore, business advisor and author of Crossing the Chasm, among other books. He is an advocate for the need for companies to seek breakout growth and innovation. The title of the presentation is Escape Velocity: Portfolio Management in the Age of Disruptive Innovation.

He points out that we are in a never ending cycle in which there are individuals constantly breaking the rules to innovate and are at the same time creating new rules.

According to Bass, innovation is hard because it requires challenges, taking chances and risks, and breaking the rules. This is why it more likely involves individuals rather than large companies. Nonetheless, innovation is needed to solve global challenges for humanity and it is accelerating because of:

1. We are in the age of access and experiences. Different access to some products like music, cinema or books is more important than possession.
2. We are doing business differently. Open Innovation and Crowdfunding are helping to solve challenges faster.
3. Digital fabrication. It is changing the basic rule of the industrial revolution: to have large quality and low prices by manufacturing huge quantities of things. Also, 3D printing is changing the location of production because it makes it possible to produce things anywhere and everywhere.
4. The rise of information and the rise of communities sharing online.
5. Infinite computing. Computing is one of the most powerful tools ever. It is helping to solve a lot of big challenges.

In the video, he explains how a real collaboration or interaction between rich and poor countries can provide the world with better innovations. As it happens with Open Innovation and companies, Reverse Innovation shows the need of partnership, collaboration and sharing knowledge between different environments or countries, as well as the need to take advantage of diversity to develop new ideas, products or concepts.

Govindarajan points out that it is necessary to change the dominant logic for innovation  and look at the developing countries as markets with their own needs. He explains that many companies in industrialized countries try to adapt their innovation to poor countries. Instead, they have to wonder: What are the problems in poor countries? What is the strategy for those markets? And how can we use our global capabilities to engage in fundamental innovation?

Also, he speaks of changing the paradigm “value for money” for the paradigm “value for many”. He indicates that companies in rich countries try to innovate by spending more money while companies in poor countries try to do it by spending less because they don’t have the resources. This is an important threatening in terms of competitiveness.

Japanese people have also the ability to integrate new ideas into their culture. Our first stop on the initial tour through Tokyo was the Meiji Shrine. And at the entrance, a demonstration about real Japan today and the impact the Meiji transition had on this from 1867-1912. My first photo on the trip: sake barrels for aging rice wine on one side of the patch and Burgundy oak casks on the other side of the patch.
Japan is everywhere smelling of a very open society with admiration for both international as well as local culture. Breakfast in our hotels were often served as Japanese traditional in one room and western in another room or sometimes even together in harmony.

Our trip took us to Hakone or Mount Fuji area where millions of Japanese every year pass to honour the mountain or the Kamis according to shinto tradition. Again in a beautiful and relaxed atmosphere even though all trains and cable cars were full of people. Voices in general were low and respectful so I had to constantly fight with my four Spanish educated children to kept their Db at an acceptable level.

Finally our trip was crowned with 3 nights in fantastic Kyoto arranged with the help of my good friend Take-san originally from Kyoto and his wife from Fushimi but now living in Germany since years however without ever loosing their true Japanese perfection, friendliness and accent. All hotels filled to the last bed, a beautiful cherry blossom and fantastic food.

Thanks to Japan, all the Japanese people and my friend Take-san; you are a model that we all could learn a lot from if our leaders just were a little more visionaries like Meiji back in 1867. Maybe it is about time that Europe and USA now open up for a more spiritual vision coming from Asia.

Hope to see you all soon again.

When arriving into Tokyo and taking the Japan Rail Narita Express downtown some basic values are immediately visible. The respect with which the ticket controller inclines his head carefully towards the passengers when entering each wagon, the extraordinary communications that the country has through the railway network and the complete absence of graffiti on stations and in the trains including the clean and very well kept state of trains, public toilets and everything surrounding a superb first introduction to a new country. This type of infrastructure is an example of efficiency and well planned investments which invite the visitor to stay and spend his time and money in a beautiful atmosphere.

No need to say what all this creates in terms of saving energy and respecting the environment that is a culture in itself.

Sugiere que para mejorar la productividad de los “cerebros de obra” hay que retarlos. Evitar que se aburran. También la innovación, como los innovadores, necesitan retos. Las plataformas de Open Innovation son un lugar al que las empresas pueden llevar sus retos para buscar técnicos cualificados, expertos o innovadores apasionados a los que retar.

Muñoz-Seca destaca que el teatro es un entorno donde todo el personal involucrado en una representación está implicado y apasionado con su cometido. Y la pasión significa aportar soluciones, no problemas. Significa que los “cerebros de obra” o los innovadores disfruten con lo que hacen.

Por último, destaco dos ideas también presentes en el vídeo que parecen interesantes. La primera es que una empresa que funciona no necesita apenas al directivo porque este ha logrado entusiasmar a su gente para que lo que él espera de ellos sea lo mismo que lo que ellos quieren hacer. Si se conduce el talento de aquellos con capacidad de innovar y su pasión a una plataforma de innovación abierta, ellos mismos se retarán para buscar soluciones a los desafíos que se les propongan.

La segunda, que en el siglo XXI gestión es hablar en plural. También para innovar hay que poder sumar talento y colaborar.