Perspectives on Innovation

Looking for more than just our good word and that of our community on how open innovation is changing the world for the better?  We hope you’ll be impressed by our announcement this week about the findings of Forrester Consulting’s study, “The Total Economic Impact of InnoCentive Challenges.” Results? A  $15 billion global consumer goods company, SCA , achieved a Return on Investment (ROI) of 74 percent (saving the organization more $1.5 million) with payback in less than three months as a result of posting innovation Challenges to the InnoCentive Global Marketplace.

With 52,000 employees in 60 countries, SCA was challenged to find an effective way to expand its R&D capabilities. The global economic crisis is inspiring companies of all sizes, in all industries, to innovate- many are realizing that relying solely on their internal R&D dept. costs too much, takes too long and results in too little. SCA and others are quickly learning that by using the internet (crowdsourcing) to ask the world to help them innovate they can speed up their research process at a lower cost than using either internal resources or employing outside consultants to find solutions.

What’s the larger implication here?  There is limitless potential for companies, government organizations and non-profits to use open innovation to develop better products and cure diseases faster. Read Matthew Bishop’s article “A market for ideas”about the TEI study in The Economist. Download the Forrester Consulting study, “The Total Economic Impact of InnoCentive Challenges” for free. Tell us in the comments what you think.

In today’s installment of “Help a Solver Succeed” (HASS), where we ask InnoCentive experts to provide resources that they think might be helpful to you in solving Challenges, Marilyn Toomey introduces OpenOffice.org.

As a member of Client Services, I spend a lot of time scanning and organizing the many submissions received for our posted Challenges.  When asked to blog about a service or technology that might be of interest to our Solver community, my first thought was “OOOOOOO”….. sort of like when you are excited and don’t know what to say!!   In this case, I know exactly what to say, so I’m going to shorten my “OOOOOOO” to OOo (OpenOffice.org) which is the official name of the open source office suite called Open Office.org.

What is OpenOffice.org?

I was first introduced to OpenOffice.org by my husband and we have used it on our home computer ever since.  It’s a free downloadable suite of applications that includes a document editor, a spreadsheet, presentation software, a graphics tool and a database.  I know some of our Solvers are using OpenOffice.org as some of our submissions come in with a .odt extension. While Open Office defaults to saving documents using the .odt extension, it also can read and write files that are created by many existing software products.  By using the Save As command from the  tool bar, a document can be saved in various formats that can be read by all the popular office suites. It’s easy to learn and can be used for any purpose by just about anyone.  There is one interface where you can start what you want ….a new document, new spreadsheet, new presentation, new drawing or new database from the same dropdown list. In addition to offering great products and applications, there is a whole open source community developing improvements and modifications to the code. Anyone can report a bug or offer enhancements.  It all seems to be a meritocracy so start contributing and you will get recognized.

Did I mention, it’s free?

When I first started using computers I used “free” software to sell the expensive hardware we were offering so I am sort of attached at the hip to “free” software.    The price is right. You can find the download at http://www.openoffice.org.   OpenOffice.org is in its third version, has always been reliable when I have used it, and is currently celebrating its ninth birthday!  It works on multiple platforms and is available in 80 different languages!

Another great free tool

Before writing this blog I was familiar with the OpenOffice.org document writer and spreadsheet.  I didn’t know they had a graphics tool and so I was also going to suggest XnView, which can be downloaded at http://www.xnview.com/en/download.html.  XnView is also a free download for private, non-commercial, or educational use. I really enjoy using this graphics tool for my photographs and would suggest it to all, even if you’re already using the  graphics tool in OpenOffice.org.  It’s a pretty cool tool to have in your pocket.  However, I am now going to explore the Draw tool in OpenOffice.org to see what it has to offer!  I’d love to hear from other people who have tried this application – please let me know if you are an OpenOffice user and if you use the Draw feature!!!

Marilyn

On October 19th, InnoCentive CEO Dwayne Spradlin was a guest on the CNBC series “The Business of Innovation” with Maria Bartiromo.  The segment was called “The Power of the Crowd” and centered on harnessing the collective wisdom of the masses to find answers outside the corporate culture of R&D.  One of Dwayne’s key points was that the right answers are usually found in unexpected places.  His point was illustrated with the examples of two prominent InnoCentive Solvers, Giorgia Sgargetta, from Perugia Italy, who solved the Challenge of turning dishwater blue when more soap was needed, and John Davis, who solved the Oil Spill Recovery Institute Challenge.  Giorgia is a chemist who lives in Italy and even though her Challenge was in the Chemistry discipline, she would not have othewise been tapped as a resource by this Seeker.

John Davis was even farther from the Seeker’s network – he was not in the oil cleanup and recovery business, and in fact knew very little about it.  However, he solved a Challenge that had plagued the oil and gas industry for over 20 years by applying experience he had gained while working as a consultant for a concrete company.

In addition to the profiles of John and Giorgia, the segment featured a video mashup that included the winning video from the 2008 InnoCentive video Challenge.  This video was created by InnoCentive Solver  John Michael Zervoulei, who certainly had no idea when he submitted it that that his work would be featured on a prominent news program on a major network!

If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth viewing – the clip can be found here.  The “Power of the Crowd” segment begins at 16:10.

Congratulations to John, Giorgia and John Michael.

Affordable public housing. Quality schools. Safe neighborhoods. Clean streets. Inexpensive mass transit. There’s no shortage of challenges facing American cities.  But there is an innovative new way to go about solving them:  open innovation.  Last week we announced our “Empowering American Cities” initiative, in which we invite city governments to post a Challenge on our Innovation Marketplace, where it can be addressed by our global community of more than 180,000 scientists, inventors, engineers, researchers, and business people who thrive on solving the world’s toughest problems.

The Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce recently partnered with InnoCentive to generate more than 125 ideas for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by increasing the region’s mass transit ridership to 1 billion riders.  The winning idea came from a Chicago-based urban affairs writer who received an award of $5,000.  Creative thinkers from as far away as Kenya, Australia and Japan submitted countless new ideas designed to improve Chicago’s mass transit system—from transformational green initiatives to new fare structures and improved user experience.

Now we’re offering the largest cities in America the opportunity to harness the collective brainpower of the world’s most creative minds to solve a pressing urban challenge.  Why are we doing this?  We recognize that what’s good for cities is good for everyone.  We believe InnoCentive can help to impact this positive change, and we’re excited to be part of bringing about solutions that can truly make a difference in the day to day lives of millions of people.

What do you think?  What Challenge would you encourage your city or town to post to our Solvers?  Tell us in the comments.

For more information on how to engage the world’s brightest minds to Solve your city’s critical Challenges, please contact InnoCentive here.

In an effort to improve your InnoCentive experience and get you the answers you need, we have made some upates to our Message Center.

You’ll be able to see the difference when you open your next project room – specifically, a logical division of sent vs. received messages.

To see the new Message Center, click on the Messages Tab or the Messages button on the right side of your project room. You will then be able to view messages for this Challenge from your Inbox or Sent tab. We think you’ll find this interface much easier to use.

As always, we value your feedback – please let us know if there is anything else we can do to enhance your InnoCentive Solving experience!