Perspectives on Innovation

Recently Alph Bingham presented a short but impactful “Flash of Genius” session at the Economist Ideas Economy: Information event in Santa Clara.  In his speech, he draws the distinction between searching data and searching wisdom.  Taken to the next level, how do you find the uniquely prepared mind, who can answer your question only if you ask it at the right moment?  Using the classic story of Archimedes and the bathtub, Alph illustrates how asking the right question at the right time can mean the difference between “it’s not possible” and “Eureka!” View the video in its entirety below.

We recently announced the publication of The Open Innovation Marketplace, written by InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham and CEO Dwayne Spradlin.  In the post below, Alph Bingham shares his thoughts on Challenge Driven Innovation.

Business processes make companies smart. They are one of the primary means for archiving and retrieving institutional knowledge. They are what allows Boeing to build a plane or Pfizer to launch a drug — when in all likelihood NO one employee of any company knows what it takes to accomplish those tasks. But in spite of enabling this almost magical quality of collective knowledge, business processes also make companies dumb. They can archive and institutionalize modes of behavior no longer relevant. They all have a “discard by” date, but too few get discarded on time.

Many of the current business processes related to innovation were forged before the world became “connected.” They assumed a reality that ceased to exist as we rolled into a new century. New innovation processes need to be hung on an innovation architecture that reflects a world where knowledge is fluid, where connections are fast and where outcome transcends geography. Corporate innovation practices assume a closed system — or at least one that is predominately so. Leaders have read much and talked much about the new era of open innovation but how many have rewritten their business innovation processes, how many have changed their metrics for innovation success and how many have gone back and redefined the gate criteria separating the stages of their innovation cycle?

Innovation is risky business. And to manage those risks, project gating criteria are selected that prevent an overabundance of false positives. That is to say that projects likely to fail are periodically reviewed and terminated before they burn too many resources and too much cash. But if those expenses were shared by a partner or better by a network, such terminations would in most instances be premature. (more…)

Some of you may have noticed elsewhere an announcement regarding the recent publication of “The Open Innovation Marketplace” by myself, InnoCentive co-founder,  Alph Bingham, and InnoCentive CEO, Dwayne Spradlin.  We wanted to communicate directly with you about this bit of news because you are an integral part of it.  In this book, we often reference you and your contributions as we speak of a Solver population and the amazing capabilities of that network, punctuated with a few concrete examples.

But let’s back up and make clear that this book is not and was not intended to be “The InnoCentive Story.”  Not that such a book shouldn’t be written — just that, this is not it.  As Dwayne and I point out in the Afterword, “…there were a few areas …that we could not address sufficiently in the book. First was the desire to tell InnoCentive’s story from its founding to the present—and forward, to what might come next. Indeed the story is like no other, and is one that we love to tell … (and another missing piece) was the call for many more case studies telling the amazing stories of InnoCentive’s Solvers and their ingenuity and dedication in finding solutions to problems.  … there is no doubt that we are at the center of a hotbed of activity that is shattering all the prior notions of how innovation happens, how organizations should access and manage talent, and why people do what they do. We observe and facilitate unbelievably inspiring stories of the power of crowds to do everything from accelerating industrial research, to imagining new business opportunities, to accelerating cures for neglected diseases.”

But of course the experiences of InnoCentive and the impressive stories of Solvers could not be neglected altogether, and we point out in the preface that:  “As executives of InnoCentive, we have used our own business as a laboratory (italics added) for understanding open processes and for examining the way innovation is practiced by ourselves and our many customers and partners…” (more…)

Introducing  “The Open Innovation Marketplace”

By Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin

We are pleased to announce that our new book “The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise” is now available, published by FT Press.

Over a year in the making, we worked to create a book which would appeal to business decision makers, innovation leaders, and strategists.  Our premise is this: Firms must adapt to survive in the 21^st century.  In this new “normal”, business is global, distributed, dynamic, and fast paced.  Markets are hyper competitive and you are only as good as your last business, product, or technology innovation.  Execution is critical, but not sufficient to succeed.  Business leaders must fundamentally rethink their strategies to become more agile, flexible, and innovative than ever – and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Watch: Dwayne Spradlin discusses The Open Innovation Marketplace

We have divided the book into 9 chapters, grouped into two sections:

Chapter 1: “Introduction”

Every business and undertaking is based upon probabilities and portfolio management. Bets are made every day in every corporation, whether determining the next drug to develop in the pharmaceutical industry, building a factory, or choosing the next CEO. Understanding how to best manage those risks and maximize options is fundamental to good business management, which is particularly true in a world where constant innovation and smart risk taking is the new normal. Effective leaders must balance their resources between efforts of exploration and exploitation. Open innovation offers an enhanced toolbox for accomplishing these things. The purposes of the bets, the portfolios, and the risk management are to produce innovations that distinguish one company from another in the marketplace. To this end, all leaders must engage in meta-innovation — innovating on the way they innovate.

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Today’s post, contributed by InnoCentive Founder Alph Bingham, addresses the gaps in most molecular compound libraries, and the new ways InnoCentive is reaching out to Solvers to help close those gaps.

The very concept of molecular space is an intriguing one. But even after decades, it seems a rigorous (rigid?) standard has never developed for defining this space. Are the axes topological alone? Are they graph theoretical and limited to connectivity? Are they electronic? Do they include physical or chemical properties associated more with the nature of the substance than the behavior of a single molecule? Well, yes. All of the above, depending on application, assumptions and objectives.

But even without a rigorous set of definitions, the metaphor alone allows us to think carefully about the design of our experiments, the creation of our libraries (collections of molecules), the subsets we’ll screen and the way we’ll respond to hits and build out SARs (structure activity relationships). In a perfect world, our libraries are “smooth” not “lumpy.” They fill out molecular space evenly, not like swiss cheese with big holes. And the density is a factor under OUR control. We use low density compound collections when we must screen across vast territories and we use high density collections when prior screens and experiences have told us the regions of space wherein lie interesting possibilities. (more…)