The Open Innovation Community fellowforce, just announced the launch of a great widget/toolkit to enable customer and leaduser integration for companies of all sizes:

The ‘Innovate Us’ button is like a ‘Digg-this’ application for innovation, empowering and encouraging consumers to submit ideas to company controlled (Fellowforce enabled) innovation boxes. “We prefer to call them Innovation Boxes because consumer participation is more than just a feedback tool”, adds Crites, “it’s a driver for innovation. And for companies, this is like having a souped-up RSS aggregator to manage idea feeds.”

The basic ‘Innovate Us’ button is free of charge and takes just minutes to install. Companies can upgrade for full facilitation, customization and complete open innovation box solutions. With basic or premium, companies can easily manage ideas from submission to implementation. Consumers can see status reports on their submissions, so the process is transparent between parties. And soon, Fellowforce will launch an Innovation Forum, giving companies the option to take ‘Innovate Us’ ideas into the open for feedback from Fellows. (via prweb.com)

With this solution, fellowforce provides various ways (idea challenges, suggestion-boxes for specific product improvements) to integrate leaduser and customers even for small companies with minimal R&D budgets.  This could be an important step to democratize the innovation process.

Another extraordinary interesting example supporting our concept of Open Entrepreneurship is the platform CreateSpace by Amazon.com, a new online service for media on demand. The company is not charging setup fees for books, audio CDs, DVDs, Blue-Ray media and digital video downloads, enabling authors, filmmakers and musicians to offer their works to millions of customers worldwide and to determine the prices for their products themself. One could say, of course simplified, that CreateSpace is the Spreadshirt for media content of any kind.

The concept of CreateSpace from our point of view holds the potential to heavily jumble the publishing landscape up. Hereby it is shown once more, what fundamental consequences for the way we are understanding the economic coherences, the creation of value in networks can have. Artists had until now only the opportunity to achieve the publishing of their works by intermediaries like the big publishing companies for example with their affiliated distribution channels. A publishing within the framework of self publishers was markedly expensive and furthermore because of missing distribution channels less promising. Now, everyone can operate his own publishing house over an outstanding distribution channel like Amazon.com and is able to both publish his self created media and on behalf of third-party artists. The service seems to be useful especially for small editions, for instance the publishing of scientific work like dissertations.

With Amazon, there is opening one of the largest distribution networks worldwide for the first time, being a classic player in E-Commerce, for the creation of value in networks or, as we call it, Open Entrepreneurship. Seen from the perspective of Amazon, this makes sense in several ways. First and foremost, Amazon is ensuring exclusive access to media contents of a huge amount of media creators, massively expanding its already very far reaching Long Tail. Secondly, Amazon enlarges as a producer of record carriers for media its margins compared to its function as a distributor enourmously. Through a sale over Amazon.com, the company earns for instance with a single DVD 45 percent of the purchase price and through a sale over the CreateSpace E-Store anyhow 15 percent, each time plus a fixed charge per unit of 4,95 dollar. For instance, the Open Publisher earns through the sale of a DVD for the purchase price of 20 dollars via Amazon.com in the end just 6 dollars. On the other hand, this can be clearly overcompensated by the scalability of the distribution channel. It is very clever by the way, that Amazon reserved the right to give discounts on the products, only eating into Amazon’s margin leaving the earnings of the seller the same.

Especially because of the distribution model, the service of CreateSpace seems to be extremely interesting on the whole. Almost the complete infrastructure of Amazon.com is accessible and shipping is possible within 24 hours after receiving the order. All on demand books are automatically eligible for Search Inside!, Amazon Prime, Super Saver Shipping and other Amazon.com programs as well. Just by the interplay with the Amazon.com community, true creation of value in networks will become possible and we can wait eagerly for the upcoming developments. Welcome, Open Publishing!

The guys over at openinnovators.net describe the exemplary scientific engagement of Philips Research - willing to invest over 50 Million Dollar for a new Campus in Shanghai:

Philips’ aim is double. First, they want to increase efficiency and internal collaboration by bringing different R&D centers together on one campus. Second, they want to open up the campus to external parties, facilitating R&D cooperation and open innvation (via openinnovators.net)

This would be the second Open Innovation Campus supported by Philips. They already launched the High-Tech Campus Eindhoven (HTCE) in 1999 - the prototype for their new project in Shanghai. HTCE is some kind of a scientifically backed Innovation Incubator, for companies and students. Open Innovation at HTCE:

Open innovation is all about collaboration. With the current state of technology, a one-firm solution is a thing of the past. Specialist companies, knowledge institutes and governments increasingly join forces. This has its benefits. Using each other’s strengths, knowledge, experience and expensive research equipment will result in efficient and effective technology developments. Combining views and visions will create synergy. The success rate of new initiatives that emerge from open innovation is substantially higher than the success rate of closed research centres. Open innovation also creates space for specialist companies to develop their core business at a high level and to market new products effectively. High Tech Campus Eindhoven has created an ecosystem that focuses on open innovation – with a network that extends way beyond Eindhoven. (via hightechcampus.nl)

Openinnovators on HTCE:

Built on the site of Philips Research in Eindhoven, HTCE houses over 40 (external) technology-based companies and institutes employing several thousand people in developing ground-breaking technologies and products through the open innovation model. Philips tries to create an environment and structures which promote interactions, networking and knowledge-sharing, leading to joint projects and joint ventures among the HTCE companies. For Philips this means that the company can spin in ideas and innovations from outside, enriching the services it can offer Philips’ business divisions. It can also spin out technologies from its own extensive IPR portfolio to high-tech companies in the HTCE, which can bring innovations to market more quickly. (via openinnovators.net)

We`ve stumbled on an interesting speach of Charles Leadbeater about Open Innovation and Lead User Entrepreneurship at the TED-Conference in 2005:

In this deceptively casual talk, Charles Leadbeater weaves a tight argument that innovation isn’t just for professionals anymore. Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t. He describes the rising role of serious amateurs (”Pro-Ams,” as he calls them) through the story of the mountain bike. (TED)

TED is an interesting organization committed to the spreading of radical innovations and important ideas. To realize this ambitious approach they arrange a big conference “bringing together 1000 of the world’s most remarkable people” once a year. On their great website you can find various recordings of the conference-speaches. In general the speakers are extraordinary and absolutely absorbing. You might be specially interested in the videos of Collaboration and Not business as usual.

Nespresso - Design Contest

Nespresso’s 2005 Design Contest aimed at imagining the future of coffee rituals, yielded gems like the Nespresso InCar coffee machine and the Nespresso Chipcard (which stores coffee preferences for registered individuals, and when inserted into a vending machine, communicates with a central database to brew a personalised cup of coffee). Pictures of the winning concepts can be found at gizmag.co.uk/go/5493/gallery. (trendwatching.com)

Philips - Live Simplicity - Leadusers.nl

Tapping into the minds and ideas of crowds to source knowledge on trends and future developments is an important aspect of crowdsourcing, an aspect which we call sensing. How can one effectivily sense new demands and opportunities?

Philips for example, has launched two sensing platforms: Lead Users and Live Simplicity. Philips is a dutch multinational, offering technology products for lifestyle and healthcare sectors. On Leadusers.nl (dutch website) they conducted studies with lead users on specific topics, like video technology and sleep quality. The initiative was thus aimed at gaining knowledge on the specific subjects as well as sensing new product demands and opportunities.

The new Live Simplicity website is partly a marketing instrument to promote Philips’ Sense and Simplicity slogan, but definititely also a tool to acquire knowledge on what people think in Philips-relevant areas of life. The sensing platform facilitates discussions in 6 areas (Business, Communication, General, Internet & Technology, Lifestyle & Social, and Wellness). Each discussion starts with a short description and two contrasting viewpoints (A and B). Visitors are invited either to vote for a viewpoint, or register as contributor and write a comment. The initiators also thought of incentives for contributors and have set up a rating/reward system. Each contributer has a rating, shown as an icon. This is calculated based on how many times that contributer has made a point and had others agree or disagree with it. Each posting has an agree/disagree button next to it, and the combined results of these are displayed in the Rating. So contributors can develop themselves as respected members of the site. It must be said, although one may expect otherwise, the reactions and opinions on the platform are indeed of high quality. In addition, high-rating contributers are often selected to contribute to certain discussions. Philips has also developed a visual tracker, which enables contributors to track their favorite topics from their desktop. (openinnovators.net)

Muji-Award

Stylish Japanese purveyor of all things minimalist Muji is also launching an international design competition, which is about to start, well, now. Calling on the entire GLOBAL BRAIN, Muji’s first theme is “SUMI”, (corner / edge / end). From the site’s briefing: “The objective is not to design something that is placed in the middle of the room, but towards the edges, not at the centre and not directly around the centre; you should look for somewhere that evades the eye, send us an object designed for that place, and name it as you wish. We are not asking for any particular genre, it could be anything from furniture, stationery and office equipment, to everyday items.” Just like aforementioned Nespresso, winners will be announced at the Milan Salone. (trendwatching.com)

More Google-News. Google has joined the Open Invention Network.

About OIN:

Open Invention Network is refining the intellectual property model so that important patents are openly shared in a collaborative environment. Patents owned by Open Invention Network are available royalty-free to any company, institution or individual that agrees not to assert its patents against the Linux System. This enables companies to make significant corporate and capital expenditure investments in Linux — helping to fuel economic growth.

Open Invention Network has considerable industry backing. It was launched in 2005, and has received investments from IBM, NEC, Novell, Philips, Red Hat and Sony.

Statement from google (via ars technica)

“Linux plays a vital role at Google, and we’re strongly committed to supporting the Linux developer community”

“We believe that by becoming an Open Invention Network licensee, we can encourage Linux development and foster innovation in a way that benefits everyone. We’re proud to participate in OIN’s mission to help Linux thrive.”

More about the deal @ ars technica & mashable

Google announced an viral video-competion:

Add your clip to this video:
Help us imagine how an email message travels around the world. Take a look at the collaborative video we started, and then film what happens next. We’ll rotate a selection of the clips we receive on this page, and add the best ones to the video. The final video will be featured on the Gmail homepage and seen by users worldwide.

More about the contest and first uploads on the gmail-blog

Nowadays there are very few web-entrepreneurs using the power of what Joseph Schumpeter described as creative destruction:
“This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism. It
is what capitalism consists in and what every capitalist concern has got to
live in.“ Joseph Schumpeter

Sometimes the ordinary needs to be destroyed to clear the path for new things. One central momentum of this process is playing with existing solutions - to recombine them in a totally new way later on.

The guys behind Spigit have made that by providing a rich playground where people can jointly test, promote and improve their business ideas.

Spigit is a newly launched community that aims to provide a network of support for start-ups and their founders.

The simulation engine provided by spigit is a way to sort of test out your idea. The simulation runs through three stages, where approval badges are awarded for things like buzz percentile, number of views, and expert approval. Completion badges are awarded at the end of each stage, enabling ideas to graduate to the next level. Several data points are considered for the simulation engine, including the tracking of dynamic interaction on the site. Spigit’s simulation benefits carry over into the virtual stock market as well, where “spigits” can be traded to determine the market value of a particular idea.

As a participant in this community, you don’t have to be testing out an idea. You can provide value by offering feedback, interacting with others on the site, and helping the idea to either gain traction or lose steam. This wisdom-of-the-crowd approach can be useful when prepping ideas for real world implementation, but the structure of spigit allows for experts to be created and relied upon for the cultivation of the community. So users get badges in the same manner as ideas. You can also support or deny an idea, write a review, offer up resources, or add it to your watch list. (via Mashable)

We`re excited by the idea and looking forward for the first spigit-startup becoming a severe player.

The Openeur bestpractice-archive - frequently updated and now directly accessible by Tab

Inspiring moments

A few interesting Open Innovation projects - customer integration at its best:

Nokia Concept Lounge

How a brand engages the Internet community and rallies it around its brand value.
Mobile communication represents a two-way street also in the area of marketing, as loyal customer relations are crucial. Especially since Nokia views its customers as the be-all and end-all of everything it does.
Without customer input there is no innovation and without innovation there are no new customers. (thesedays.com)

Great video describing the functionality of the Concept Lounge

Lego - Lego Factory

LEGO’s LEGO Factory has been around for a while, but it remains an inspiring example of how to truly unleash THE GLOBAL BRAIN. Children and other building enthusiasts visiting the site are invited to design models (using easy to use, free downloadable software) and take part in competitions for LEGO prizes. A popular contest last year entitled winners to have their model mass produced and sold in Shop@Home, receiving a 5% royalty on each set sold. While customers can still upload their creations and have them become part of Lego’s official catalogue, the royalty scheme sadly has been nixed. (trendwatching.com)

Nintentdo - Wiiware

Staples - Idea Hunt - Invention Quest

BIG and Staples identified an opportunity for Staples to create private-label products that offered more innovative features and benefits than commodity goods. To keep inventors focused, the Hunt scope was narrowed to filing and note-taking products. BIG helped Staples articulate the guidelines, wrote the Hunt spec, and then publicized it to our network (via mail, email, and web). At the conclusion of our 6-week Hunt, we had approximately 300 ideas.

In 2003, Staples inaugurated a nationwide consumer contest for the best new concepts in office supply products. The main goals of contest were to discover innovative products to fuel Staples’ private-label brands, to generate positive PR, and to drive traffic to Staples’ retail sites.Working with both product development and marketing specialists at Staples, Big Idea proposed, outlined, managed, and helped judge the event. Culling through nearly 8500 submissions, BIG identified the best for invitations to the Semi-Finals, which we organized and ran. The process culminated in a best-of-the-best competition among 12 Finalists in New York City. The event, staged at the New York NASDAQ, generated national media coverage, including inventor appearances on Regis and Kelly. The grand prize of $25,000 was awarded to the WordLock, an innovative lock that uses letters (and words) instead of numbers. (Big Idea Group)