Perspectives on Innovation

We recently announced that InnoCentive and The Economist were forming a partnership to solve some of the most critical problems facing mankind.  To kick off this partnership, InnoCentive founder Alph Bingham was invited to present at The Economist’s Ideas Economy series at the University of California, Berkeley.  The video of his speech has just been published and, as usual, Alph provides a compelling view of open innovation, set in the context of a few individual Solver stories.

Alph points out in his speech that “Some problems are too important to leave to the experts.” and presents some interesting information about where solutions actually come from.  Interesting to note is that, based on research from Harvard professor Karim Lakhani, on average, women are more successful at solving Challenges than men.  He also discusses the current trend toward Solvers creating teams to work together on problems.

Click on the presentation above to hear more from Alph.

Here’s a crowdsourcing project to interest the burgeoning writer in you – in October 2009 BBC America Audiobooks gave people the chance to write a story with famed urban fantasy writer Neil Gaiman via the most contemporary of social media art forms, Twitter.  Gaiman provided the first line of the story (“Sam was brushing her hair when the girl in the mirror put down the hairbrush, smiled & said, ‘We don’t love you anymore.’”) and has invited dozens of twitterphiles to continue the story in 140 character increments. The story-thon went on for 8 days and is now complete and published on BBCAA’s blog (http://bit.ly/GmN5L). The audiobook, to be read by Gaiman, will be titled and published shortly.

The process was as follows: anyone could Tweet the next sentence, but a BBCAA editor was charged with sifting and selecting sentences to make a cohesive storyline, and came up with the finished product. Surprisingly, even though Neil Gaiman had very little to do with the actual arc of the storyline, the character development or the ending, the final selection is very Gaimanesque in tone. Must be due to the number of Gaiman fans that contributed!

What do you think? Collaboration is not a new concept in the writing world – the shared universe of Dragonlance is one such example. However, with collaboration being the highway of the internet, there are a bunch of pretty cool online creative collaborations taking place such as such as Altered Books (http://bit.ly/w9jxb) and ArsPoetics (http://bit.ly/3b9nOd).

Read the story here (http://bit.ly/GmN5L) & let us know your thoughts on crowdsourcing the creative arts.

I never really thought much about toothpaste.  But at the last two innovation conferences where I spoke, toothpaste was one of the hot topics.

At the FT Innovate conference in London, Unilever discussed their “Signal White Now” (and other brands) toothpaste.  Instead of using harsh bleaches and abrasives, they borrowed an optical-effect technology from their laundry team.  This toothpaste uses a blue pigment to make yellow teeth instantly appear whiter.  This same ingredient is used to make white clothes look even whiter.

At the Open Innovation Summit in Orlando, GSK discussed how their “Aquafresh iso-active” toothpaste borrowed an idea from Edge shaving cream (now a division of Energizer Holdings, Inc).  The toothpaste comes out like a gel, but foams in the mouth, much like the shaving cream.  This formulation, according to the can I was given, removes 25% more bacteria than regular toothpaste – or 3x more according to the picture left.

This got me thinking.  If toothpaste manufacturers can get ideas from shaving cream and laundry detergent, where else could they get ideas?  Within 5 minutes, I thought up a few ideas of how to gain inspiration from other products:

1. Pop Rocks:  As a kid, I loved how Pop Rocks, the carbonated candy, exploded in your mouth.  What if you added Pop Rock-like crystals to toothpaste?  Not only would the toothpaste foam, it would fizz and explode.  Maybe this would blast the plaque off your teeth.  Of course, it might blast off your teeth like Pop Rocks reputedly did a few times.
2. Shampoo: Shampoos are infused with vitamins and minerals to give your hair bounce and shine.  What if you infused toothpaste with these ingredients? Or maybe you could add some homeopathic remedies – for those who believe in these alternative “medicines.”  Sublingual administration (under the tongue) is a common and effective way of delivering drugs directly into the bloodstream.
3. Conditioner: We use shampoo to clean and conditioner to protect.  Maybe they can create a tooth conditioner; a special toothpaste that you use after your regular toothpaste.  It could coat your teeth to prevent staining, bad breath, or split ends.  Even better, they could borrow the “technology” used by shampoos like “Pearl” that combine shampoo and conditioner into one formulation.
4. Moisturizers: Several moisturizers have an AM and a PM formulation.  One is used in the morning and the other at night before you go to sleep.  The AM formula of toothpaste could be infused with caffeine that would be absorbed into the bloodstream sublingually (see idea #2 above).  And the PM formulation could be infused with melatonin to help you sleep better at night.
5. Weight Loss Products:  I’m not sure how this would work, but what if you could create a toothpaste that somehow made certain foods taste bad?  This might cause you to reduce the amount of food you eat.  Or maybe there is another way to make toothpaste a weight loss product.  OK, this one is a stretch, but there might be a kernel of an idea there!

Ideas can indeed come from anywhere. (Read more to find out how!)

If you have other toothpaste innovation ideas, I would love for you to post them as comments!

A guest blog post by Jennifer Moebius, uTest

Having grilled some of the top minds in the software business, this installment of Testing the Limits will deviate slightly from the norm. With us this month is John Winsor – author, entrepreneur and crowdsourcing expert.

After a successful career as a journalist and magazine publisher, John founded Radar Communications in 1998, where he implemented a variety of academic-based market intelligence tools to help some of the country’s most progressive companies learn from key voices in their communities. Today, he offers that same advice as the VP/Executive Director of Strategy and Product Innovation at Crispin, Porter + Bogusky.

John has written extensively on the subject of crowdsourcing, having published the popular 2005 book Spark: Be more Innovative through Co-Creation. With his latest book Baked In: Creating Products and Businesses That Market Themselves now hitting the shelves, John was kind enough to sit down with us to discuss the future of crowdsourcing, the premise of his new book, and the best (or worst) rock-climbing movies of all-time.

uTest: The hottest debate in crowdsourcing right now is the “fall” of traditional advertising or design firms and the “rise” of crowdsourced services. In your opinion, what does the future of crowdsourcing look like? Is the world ready for what you call the “digital tsunami?”

JW: Well the future of crowdsourcing is definitely bright, but there are still a lot of unanswered questions in people’s minds. Those who are skeptical of crowdsourcing question its ability to truly connect people. With crowdsourcing, you no longer have all of these professionals working together in the same building – that alone is often too much for some people to come to terms with. The idea of a crowd aggregating to solve business problems in a virtual environment is entirely new to most people, even though the underlying trend has been developing for years. The difference now is that it simply can’t be ignored.

uTest: So you see crowdsourcing as eventually obtaining mainstream acceptance?

JW: Absolutely. People are starting to see the full potential of this model, especially on the client side of the equation. There was a time when most people viewed crowdsourcing as chaos – like the inmates running the asylum, and that’s no longer the case for a growing number of people. So I think we’re just getting started.

Let me give you an example. When I started blogging, people would say to me, “Oh that desktop publishing thing is never going to work out. It’s just not going happen. Amateurs will never rise to rank and status of newsprint.”

That was in 2003! So crowdsourcing, like blogging, is an evolving market. I suspect that we’ll look back in a few years and have a laugh over the naysayers the same way we laugh at those who thought blogging was a “fad.” I’d categorize many of today’s crowdsourcing companies as “Crowdsourcing 1.0.” In other words, there’s still a long way to go – and too many great ideas for this trend to fail or even fall short.

uTest: Your new book Baked In just hit the shelves and it’s getting some great reviews. What’s it about and where did the idea for this book come from?

JW: I wrote the book with Alex Bogusky. It is largely based on our personal observations. Over the last few years we’ve seen many clients enter a market with almost identical products, so it was almost impossible for them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. We started to see how this situation was reducing marketing as little more than a way to lie about their products or services. In other words, if there’s no difference between your product or service from that of your competitors, then what other options do marketers have? This obviously led to some very poor marketing strategies.

Social media is changing all that – and that’s what a big part of this book is all about. Social media lends itself to transparency. You’ve got to live up to what you’re saying, because if you don’t, someone else will. The simplest way to summarize the book would be to say that marketing shouldn’t be separate from your product or service – they have to be one and the same. Hence the title.

The basic premise of the book is that the future lies with those who embrace creativity. I’m convinced that crowdsourcing will play a major part in this evolution….

Read the rest of this John Winsor crowdsourcing interview at the uTest blog

The 2009 Army Capstone Concept from TRADOC on Vimeo.

In honor of Veterans Day, celebrated in the United States on November 11th, today’s post looks at the U.S. Army’s newest crowdsourcing initiative, the Capstone Concept.

The United States Army has long been on the forefront of technological advancement, all while maintaining an aura of secrecy and confidentiality.  For this reason, it’s hard to imagine that they would be looking for opinions on one of the most pivotal issue in warfare – how to plan for an environment that is changing so rapidly that they have no idea what it will look like in five months, much less five years or longer.

The Army is developing a document called the Capstone Concept, which attempts to do just this – define the problems that will be faced in future armed conflict, and describe how the army will deal with these problems.  The Capstone Project was first created in 2005, and dealt primarily with technological issues of warfare – assuming that changing technology would be the biggest catalyst in the way armed conflicts are waged.  After 8 years in Iraq and Afghanistan, however, the Army has realized that technology is only a small element of the change that has occurred.

One of their discoveries was that, more important than technology is the intelligence that comes from relationships.  They discovered, for example, that oftentimes the enemy hides within a population, walking among civilians, unrecognizable to an outside observer.  At the same time, they learned that junior leaders on the ground can have significant knowledge of these populations that their higher ups might not have.  When given the autonomy to establish trust with people in these communities, these junior leaders were better able to ferret out the enemy, which enabled the army to deal with them individually rather than in larger initiatives that put civilians at risk.  They also found that if they could forge relationships with key community leaders – clergy, teachers, merchants – they were better able to earn the trust of that community, which in turn led to better intelligence.

This current document reflects the lessons learned in the last 8 years of war, and attempts to find gaps in the Army’s experience, with plans for how to fill these gaps.   It’s an unimaginable assignment – figure out what you don’t know, and then determine how to minimize surprises.  To tackle the daunting task of writing this document, the Army assembled a team of individuals with different perspectives – Army personnel of various ranks, from Generals to Privates, members of Academia, professional Strategists, and allies. Now they want to know what you think . They have created a draft and have shared it here. Regardless of where you stand in relation to current operations, this is an opportunity to have your voice heard and potentially contribute to this important document.