Here is text of the interview:
1. Why should organizations be thinking about Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing?
The pace of innovation has increased to a degree where it is difficult to generate the required number of high-quality ideas and initiatives using internal resources alone. Big companies like Kraft, Unilever and IBM have realized that they need to harness the brainpower of people outside their companies if they are to compete in the innovation race. Open innovation involves collaborating with outsiders to bring new products and services to market quickly. No matter how big or small you are, you should be doing something similar. The trick is to find the kind of open innovation that suits your business and your style.
2. When it comes to Open Innovation or Crowdsourcing, what is the biggest challenge that you see organizations facing?
The biggest challenge typically involves corporate culture and mindset. Most established organizations are internally focused. They have a certain way of doing things that has been established over many years and it does not involve sharing development projects with outsiders. The normal attitude to suppliers is that you negotiate the sharpest deal you can with them to screw down the price. All of this has to change if you are to succeed with OI. You need an attitude of shared objectives, shared risk, shared intellectual property and shared reward. Above all you need openness and trust.
3. What are some of the best strategies for involving external ideas in your innovation process?
You should start by setting goals and metrics for OI. That is the way that you measure and manage other key initiatives. Set a target for the number of new products or services that you want to generate from outside the company. That is what CEO A.G. Lafley did at P&G when he set the target of 50% of new products to come from outside. Then you need to allocate the resources – time, people and money to make this happen. There is not one way that is ideal for all organizations so study some of the pioneers to see how they have approached these issues. That is where the book, A Guide to Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing, is so useful.
4. What are some of the biggest barriers to innovation that you’ve seen in organizations?
There are a number of common factors that inhibit innovation in most of the larger organizations that I meet. These include:
- A lack of leadership commitment to innovation
- No vision, goals or metrics for innovation
- People are too busy, no time is allocated for creativity and experimentation
- The corporate culture is risk averse
- People are micro-managed and not empowered to try new things
- There is no effective suggestions scheme
- There is a fear of change or a fear or failure
5. What skills do you believe that managers need to acquire to succeed in an innovation-led organization?
I wrote a book called The Innovative Leader which explores this topic in detail. In summary I believe that to succeed with innovation leaders need to be visionaries who can inspire their teams. They need to set clear goals and then empower their people to explore different ways to reach the goals. They need to manage risk and learn from failure. They need to question more, listen more and trust more.
6. If you were to change one thing about our educational system to better prepare students to contribute in the innovation workforce of tomorrow, what would it be?
We need to teach students that is fine to collaborate and to use other people’s ideas to solve a problem. Our current educational system often describes this process as ‘cheating’. We also need to encourage young people to think about what is involved in starting their own business – whether it is in biotech, web design or hairdressing. We need a new generation of entrepreneurs.
