innovation.net

Getting too personal?

Very intriguing articlein WSJ today "On the Web's Cutting Edge, Anonymity in Name Only".  Ths article talks about the emerging area of predictive analytics and how easily it is becoming to aggregate public information about you and make it available to marketers.

It's a fine line between intrusive marketing and personalized online experiences.  I'm especially intrigued to think about where predictive analytics will help marketers go  in enabling marketing and brand-building on mobile devices.  Lots of buzz these days about location based services, but the combination of context based information, location and predictive analytics is going to usher in an amazing new era in personalized information and experiences. 

Reinventing 'commodity' categories -- even the bowling ball

I recently was introduced to some of the underlying innovations and technologies driving advances in the bowling industry.  Ebonite based in a small town in KY here in the US is continuing to apply R&D in new ways.  Encouraging, though they don't label it as such, they are also leaders in 'open innovation' through their history and experience in bringing emerging technologies from other industries and university settings into their category.  I can't share the specifics of some of their new ideas, but here's a link to a recent television show highlighting some of their developments. 

Whenever I hear a client or industry 'expert' labeling a product as 'commoditized' I wince.  That's what they used to say about the home vacuum category until Richard Dyson came along and has launched a continuous series of innovations in that very mature and competitive market.

I believe that any business and any product can be innovated.  I wrote some time back about Dan Touhey and Spalding.  Through a series of disruptive ideas, several of which were developed via 'open innovation' partnerships, Spalding grew their business by 33% in one year!

And in particular, I'm intrigued by the nuances (from basketball and bowling, to swim suits)  of how technology is helping to drive performance and break records in sports equipment.  Like I said, you can reinvent ANY category.

Pepsico10 Innovation Challenge

I've been highlighting recently how open innovation and venture capital are (and need to be) on a path of convergence.  Here's another twist on the trend from Pepsi.  The Pepsico10 Challenge is a partnership between Pepsi, Highland Capital Partners and Mashable.  Its aim is is to identify, select and incubate 10 promising technology startups by connecting then directly with Pepsi brand teams for pilot projects. 

It's a great example of corporate open innovation moving beyond the basic blocking and tackling of technology search and embracing OI across multiple functions (marketing in this case) and a focus on relationships (by directly mentoring/coaching) and not just 'transactions'.

Philips Open Labsis another, more well known, example of this corporate/innovator collaboration happening via an incubator model.  Look for more of it.  If you're a corporate innovation leader, think about simple ways that you can structure events and interactions to collaborate face to face with innovators whom matter to your categories.

New Exits for Venture Capital

I've written a few times recently about the lack of VC interest in open innovation and how that might be changing.  You would think there would already be strong interest by VC's in leveraging the ability to gauge corporate interest in startups as a barometer of investment quality... as well as the built-in exit plans that corporations can provide for successful technology start-ups.

Steve Blanks, a successful Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor and writer had an interesting post recently about the dire outlook for IPO's and how this will further hurt the already devastated venture capital industry.

I think instead it points to a new model of venture capital and angel investment emerging that is focusing less on IPO's and more on building fundamentally sound start-ups on limited budgets.  And I believe more and more venture investors (angels and otherwise) will increasingly wake up to the opportunities that "open innovation" provides as a way to vet investments as well as connect with corporate partners for successful exit via M&A.

Look for more venture capital activity in the open innovation space as this unfolds.

 

Spencer Trask and City of Boston form "Open City Partnership"

City of Boston and Spencer Trask have announced the formation of the "Open City Partnership", leveraging collaborative innovation to attract and spur innovation within Boston's new Innovation District. Here's link to press release.

Q&A Discussion with Napkin Labs (Part 2)

Here's the second installment of my Q&A discussion with Napkin Labs, an emerging platform and services company focused on building and managing open innovation collaborative communities.

Below is an excerpt.....  (You can read the entire post at link above)

Napkin Labs: What is the future of open innovation?

Docherty: The future of open innovation is about moving beyond ‘transactional’ approaches to more relationship-based approaches to collaboration. And so, engaging with communities of innovators, and creating proprietary networks of innovators will become increasingly important. This notion of ‘proprietary networks’ is a bit counter-intuitive, but it simply means moving beyond ‘shopping for innovation’ at all of the online bazaars for technology and proactively identifying and connecting with key players and innovators that are relevant to your categories and technology arenas that can affect your product categories.

John Seely Brown, of Xerox fame, said it best in a recent Business Week online article: “For open innovation to realize its full potential, it will have to navigate from a narrow focus on transactions to provide much richer support with long-term, trust-based relationships around joint initiatives to address real problems or opportunities.”

10 technologies that changed the world

List of 10 technologies that changed the world from www.computerscienceschools.net

A pretty good list I think.

Q&A Discussion with Napkin Labs (Part 1)

Here's part 1 of my Q&A discussion with Napkin Labs on the future of open innovation.  I'm intrigued by Napkin Lab's OpenLab platform for building and managing innovation communities.  Moving beyond transactional approached to open innovation is where collaborative innovation is headed.  Will be interesting to watch their business model in this space... I'm predicting success.

Innovaro launches Verdant Ventures

Interestingly I was just wondering aloud on Twitter the other day why more VC's aren't getting into the open innovation game.  Open innovation is definitely becoming more mainstream and it offers opportunities for investors to increase their success rates by backing technologies and entrepreneurs that have a more clear path to profitable exit... whether license, sale or other partnership with the leading companies that are searching externally for innovation to fuel growth.

So great to see that Innovaro, a leading open innovation services company, has just announced the formation of Verdant Ventures Advisors.  Here's excerpt from their press release:

“Verdant Ventures will enable Innovaro clients to have access to capital that we believe will help facilitate the transfer of technologies that have not yet attained a certain milestone or level of development maturity. The underlying goal of this relationship is to further increase our clients’ commercialization success rates as well as increase the frequency of technology licensing for the Company," states Doug Schaedler, CEO of Innovaro.

Full disclosure:  I'm also an operating executive with Spencer Trask Collaborative Innovations, a unique firm that is building a comprehensive suite of collaborative innovation with some of the world's leaders in open innovation.

Both of these models demonstrate a natural and synergistic combination of venture capital and open/collaborative innovation and I'm sure we'll be seeing much more of this model... especially with how broken the traditional venture capital market is these days.

The Turbo-Encabulator: How Inventors Speak to Marketers

This is an old video (click here) recently forwarded to me (thanks Bob Birkenes at Pinpoint Communications).  It reminds me of the way too many entrepreneurs and inventors explain their technologies and inventions to marketers and business types!  Enjoy.