It’s nice to know that other bloggers are writing about the importance of sharing innovation insights. Chuck Frey over at InnovationTools.com did a nice job capturing the Global Innovation Exchange 2007 event that I keynoted last month. The GIE was a 100 percent virtual event that in itself was a highly innovative online format. We had great participation and I enjoyed the feedback.

Events like GIE highlight the need for companies to focus on enabling open innovation through organizational structures that work. I often counsel clients to organize their companies in such a way to include innovation councils, communities of practice and venture boards.

I championed these measures at Kimberly-Clark, and I’ve seen how these structures work in many other companies. Hewlett-Packard, for instance, leverages communities of practice to share best practices, experiences and processes across business units.

At K-C, we used venture boards to manage the growth portfolio and drive a steady stream of new product and market innovations. The board members—all C-level people—were a combination of internal innovation leaders and external experts, who help the company enter “white space” business opportunities.

Nokia formed a venture group called the Innovent  to identify companies and technologies that could disrupt their business. These disruptors help in developing Nokia’s business plans and go-to-market strategies. By investing in and partnering with them, Nokia is able to prevent itself from being blindsided by the competition.

These organizational structures enable companies to take huge strides in building open innovation models that deliver real growth time and again.

In the past few years you’ve no doubt heard the term “speed dating,” the fastest way for singles to meet and greet eligible singles. What if you could find that in the business realm? If you are looking to connect with other innovators like yourself, here’s another great reason to sign up for the CoDev 2008 Conference in Scottsdale, Ariz.: Innovation Speed Dating!

Innovation Speed Dating is a brand new event for CoDev attendees interested in finding new connections for their own co-development and innovation efforts. It’s a structured approach to networking, ensuring attendees meet the people they need to meet, and designed specifically for CoDev08.

I’m chairing CoDev 2008, and I encourage you to get off the fence if you haven’t registered yet. CoDev is focused on presenting thought leadership and relevant case studies on open innovation, co-development and building networks of innovators to fuel growth.

Innovationedge and Venture2 are sponsoring the new Innovation Speed Dating event, which we’ve designed specifically for CoDev 2008 registrants, whether large company, emerging company, academic members or service providers. The event is designed to support a variety of connections’ opportunities, including:

• “company to company” networking for potential co-development or other collaborative opportunities
• “technology provider to company” networking for potential technology licensing opportunities
• “service provider to company” networking to match up company’s needs with service providers having a potential solution

Based on the collective preferences of all the attendees, we’ll create a customized schedule of 5 minute ‘speed-dates’ in multiple rounds in the same reception room at individual ‘stations’. It’s high energy, fun and amazingly effective at connecting you with the right people at CoDev08. Beyond the event, the online portal can be used for follow-up networking with connections of choice.

In a few days I’ll be heading to Juneau County Wis., for the Inventors & Entrepreneurs Club gathering, and I am looking forward to meeting some creative innovators! I have the pleasure of presenting the keynote on one of my favorite topics–and one I feel is extremely important: The Keys to Sustainable Innovation.

I will be speaking on this topic at the Management Roundtable Product Development IMPACT 2008 conference in Scottsdale, Ariz., April 7-9. My presentation segues into an engaging discussion among top innovation leaders about some of the hot topics in this area, and I encourage you to attend if you are able!

When I advise clients on building a strategy for sustainable innovation, we talk about creating an “Innovation Ecosystem.” That is a holistic environment designed to address all aspects of innovation, including leadership, structure, culture and people.

Sustainable innovation is all about looking at the way you innovate with new eyes. How you define the problem, create ideas and blend them into a holistic system. Your ecosystem needs to build innovation with open-ended sustainable outcomes. By designing the right model and choosing the right partners, your sustainable innovation capability will deliver return on your investment steadily and predictably over time.

I’ve been  reflecting on last week’s Tri-State PDMA conference in Cincinnati, where I did the keynote address on The Keys to Sustainable Front-End Innovation.

Some stats from this conference:

• 74 percent of companies say they will increase their spending on innovation
• 66 percent of companies say innovation is one of the top three strategic priorities
• 90 percent say generating organic growth through innovation has become essential for success in their industry

The so-called “Fuzzy Front End” refers to the way in which innovative companies put on their creative thinking caps and blend what they know about markets and competitors with newly-discovered insights about the needs of their customers. At this point they’re not coming up with ideas, but rather finding the right problems to solve.   I’m simplifying here, of course, but it takes a significant amount of up-front work for leaders to leverage their unique capabilities and competencies to create value for their customers through business models, processes, products, services and overall customer experience.

So how can leaders make innovation a systematic, repeatable process? First, you need to understand your company’s strategies and drivers to place all of the innovation opportunities in the proper context. And you must assess those opportunity areas in a structured way with a variety of tools and methods. Remember you don’t just want to talk to your customers; you want to watch them in action to gain insights into their lives so that you can prioritize which problems to resolve first. Once you generate genuine customer insights, you can begin to illuminate their motivations and construct winning concepts from customer requirements.
 

I’ve been doing quite a few Webinars and Podcasts lately on a variety of innovation topics. I recently teamed up with Mike Docherty of Venture2 to record the first of a series of Webinars that will provide a toolbox targeted at senior leaders to ensure success of a company’s open innovation efforts. The toolbox will range from models, processes and metrics to enable leaders to find the right partners to populate their pipeline for growth. 

Our first Webinar is titled, “What is Open Innovation?” It originally aired October 11, but the good news is that if you were unable to tune in you can still get a recording of the session over at the Pure Insights Web site. The great thing about archived Webinars is that you can listen and watch whenever it’s convenient for you.

These recordings are available in MP3 format (audio only) or in Windows Media Player format (audio with slides).  I encourage you to plug in!

One of our Innovationedge team members, Dr. Jeff Lindsay, is participating today at an Open Innovation Roundtable in Vancouver where he will be discussing the university/industry interface needed to identify the needs and resources necessary for innovation to flow to industry.  Jeff will discuss how universities can become a partner of choice. The event is part of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Licensing Executive Society (LES).

Jeff will offer insights drawn from his years in academia and industry, where he worked with many universities and companies to help implement innovative technologies. He’ll also share experiences, where he was involved while in industry in university outreach efforts. During my time leading K-C’s innovation charge, Jeff supported many of our extensive open innovation efforts through university connections.

I applaud not only Jeff’s leadership, but also his passion for teaching and inspiring future innovators—especially when it comes to protecting their intellectual assets. He just returned from Brigham Young University where he was a guest lecturer at a graduate seminar this past Saturday. Jeff taught BYU’s Chemical Engineering Department on disruptive innovation and intellectual asset strategy. It’s just one of many teaching opportunities Jeff has on his calendar in the months ahead.

I am in Scottsdale, Arizona today preparing to present at the 13th annual Innovation Immersion conference. The theme this year is the 360 Degree Innovation Experience, and will focus on how companies need to approach innovation in order to grow. If you lead your company’s innovation efforts, I encourage you to click on the above link and make plans to attend next year’s conference.

Why are convergence events like these important? Because Innovation has become a corporate buzzword that is not well understood.  Many companies want to innovate and even say they are innovative, but do not really “walk the talk.” Those who get it are the companies that see innovation as a continuum from incremental to breakthrough innovation and are balancing the needs for today while developing solution opportunities for tomorrow.

This convergence event focuses not only on product and service offerings but also on strategy, culture, people and organizational structure to deliver business value. Only executives who incorporate all of these elements can truly claim to be innovative. and deliver sustainable growth.

I am in Denver today and tomorrow for the Chief Innovation Officer conference, and I’m delighted to be meeting and mentoring those leading their company’s innovation efforts. I’m partnering with BMG’s CEO David Silverstein and Dr. Phil Samuel for this second CIO event, and attendees come from companies like Levi Strauss, GE Energy, United Healthcare,Circuit City and Versatech to name just a few. These innovation leaders have a challenging job and come with a lot of questions about how to deliver sustainable, innovation-driven growth. As someone who has been in their shoes, I can relate to these challenges, and I am looking forward to helping them build a roadmap to create a custom strategy that will achieve their goals. 

Not surprisingly, a growing number of companies all over the world adding CIOs at very high levels within their leadership ranks:

The list continues to grow. I’ve helped many of my corporate clients across different industries (including some on this list) to restructure their organizations to stimulate innovation by appointing these uniquely-skilled leaders to champion their innovation efforts.  Several will have new innovation leaders within the next few months.
These CIOs are role models for leadership qualities and typically have the following characteristics that enable them to be successful in their roles:

•     Ability to be successful in a complex matrix environment
•     Ability to influence supervisors, peers, and subordinates in order to drive Innovation initiatives
•     High cognitive power skills
•     Strong Business Acumen Sound judgment
•     Strategic, conceptual orientation
•     High energy, flexibility, motivational and empowerment skills
•     Ability to select, retain, and delegate to an solid deputy group
•     Requires change management skills, conflict resolution skills and the ability to promote, motivate and effect positive changes for the total organization
•     Ability to inspire and motivate teams to achieve superior results

A significant amount of their time is spent stewarding innovation efforts and building capabilities across business units, functions and geographies.  They are tasked with finding creative ways to balance building tomorrow while delivering results today.  Their efforts are personally stimulating yet challenging at times.  That is why a lot of these C-suite leaders are experimenting with new metrics that go beyond financial measures. They are not satisfied with lagging metrics and are finding creative ways to demonstrate their accomplishments by looking at a simple portfolio of input and output metrics such as innovation success rates for products and services, outside idea sourcing, return on investment metrics, capability measures, and even sources of additional revenue. The area of metrics is expanding rapidly to meet the evolving needs of these C-suite leaders.  

As you can see, I have a lot of passion in these areas of innovation and an excited to share about my own rewarding experience as a CIO, championing innovation at Kimberly-Clark, and what I am seeing as a thought leader across industries with my clients today.

Many companies are finding it difficult to sustain growth because they are dependant on incremental innovations, which don’t often provide the level of growth expected in today’s marketplace. So it was very encouraging to me to take part in the Consumer Goods Technology Growth and Innovation forum in Miami this week. I spent time talking with and listening to leaders and attendees from around the world about their efforts to revitalize their innovation strategies.These innovation leaders shared retrospectives on their innovation journey—what they have done, lessons learned and future approaches. Many CPG companies facing similar growth challenges are looking for innovative solutions to drive top-line growth. That transformation needs to take them from simply pushing technologies to market, toward building brand loyalty by delivering meaningfully differentiated consumer benefits.  

I’m gearing up for this year’s Global Innovation Exchange 2007 virtual conference for global innovation best practices. This event will take place November 7-9 right on your desktop, and I hope you’ll take this opportunity to join me for what I know to be a groundbreaking Internet experience.

You will glean innovation insights, strategies and next practices from around the world, and learn about emerging innovation models, tools and approaches to the latest trends in innovation management and strategy.

What’s great about this program is that you can engage directly with innovation thought leaders and network with your peers from all over the world. Joining me will be innovation experts from Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, Idea Crossing, as well as innovators from Turkey to Denmark. For more information or to register, click here. See you online!