Vision & Execution’s Weblog

That’s an interesting question in a Web 2.0 world, and it was recently posted as an inquiry on LinkedIn. The question becomes should your core competency be innovation, commercialization of innovation, or both?

Historically innovation has been presumed to be a core competency while commercialization has been much easier to outsource. When you think about the most successful companies, were they successful because they invented a novel solution or because they executed well on an idea whose time had come, or both? The challenge is having the vision and market savvy to identify the idea whose time has come ahead of the curve but not ahead of customer readiness to adopt.

Some large and notable companies are slashing their R&D budgets in favor of Open Innovation platforms such as those below sourcing “big” ideas from outside of the company.

• NineSigma
  leverages a singularly focused approach of posting well-defined tech briefs (needs) to it global network of solvers.
• Yet2 is a global marketplace that lists both “technology needs” and “technologies available”. Yet2’s software engine drives many of the corporate open innovation marketplaces (DuPont, P&G, etc.).
• TekScout
  connects companies (TekScouts) and scientists (TekExperts). The company cites its relationships with over 2000 academic institutions around the world in addition to the TekExperts who join the site directly.
• Innocentive offers a rewards-based approach to open innovation. Problem solvers post technical challenges to network of 140,000 technical solvers. Winning solutions are rewarded via cash awards. Although usually small, the potential reward is up to $1,000,000.

The rise in user communities and social media has enabled many companies to outsource piece parts of the NPD process.

• You can test theories about what will become a trend or track others’ trend projections with edopter.
• Monitor Google Trends and Google Insight for Search for search queries that suggest trends.
• Trendspotting service Trendwatching.com tracks consumer trends.
• SpringWise.com’s network of spotters scan the globe for new business ideas that you can mine.
• Fellowforce’s WebForce 2.1 provides an online suggestion box and customer challenge platform to facilitate co-creation with customers.
• Kluster facilitates internal brainstorming with its group decision making platform. Kluster has an interesting approach to prioritizing ideas as part of its solution.
• redesignme lets customers redesign the look and feel of your products — part customer QA and part customer co-creation.

See Not Invented Here is a Good Thing for more ideas.

While there are many good tools and resources that allow many parts or phases of the product development process to be outsourced, at the end of the day someone needs to translate the input into new business opportunities. It is an art as well as science to discern what new ideas are big marketable ideas. Hopefully you’ll be leveraging these tools soon to advance your business priorities.

Actually they’ve been coming for the past 5 years to Silicon Valley Open Doors – an investor conference sponsored by AmBAR for Russian and Russian-American entrepreneurs. This is my fourth year attending and I’ve found it insightful in terms of the dynamics of innovation and migration of innovation centers. An interesting example was a company that presented in 2006 which designed a product for India, manufactured it in China and came to Silicon Valley for funding – the company was based in Israel.

This year has been notable in terms of the sophistication of the investor presentations and also in the complexity of the offerings. It’s not just twenty-somethings with a Web 2.0 application they coded in their dorm room. There’s more gray hair, more serial entrepreneurs and not so many hockey stick revenue projections.

What’s interesting this year is the migration of financing. A US-based company that started to flounder after receiving its Series A funding went to Russia for its next round of funding. It received funding from Troika Dialog (Russia) and DoCoMo (Japan). It was then able to close a sizable Series B round from Morgenthaler Ventures.

In addition to learning about entrepreneurial activity in former Soviet Union states, there are always nuggets to be gleaned from the high quality VC speakers they secure. A few highlights from my perspective are noted below:

The second day included a one hour Q&A session with Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures who offered his point of view across a wide area of topics but some particularly interesting ones on CleanTech:

And after 18 presentations culled from 80 submissions ….The winner is….PTP Group Americas.

Looking forward to SVOD 2010.

…rather quietly.  It’s hard to believe that 10 years have gone by.  It’s the longest job I’ve had and most of the time the best boss I’ve had.  We’ve ridden the dot com boom and bust, the rolling waves of recessions adjusting our services to meet client needs along the way.  Our tag line evolved from Marketing Strategies that Deliver Results to Creating Value Across the Product Lifecycle to our latest incarnation of Turning Innovative Ideas into Global Success.

We’ve watched the epicenter of innovation — Silicon Valley — lose a bit of luster as emerging markets developed their own innovation centers.  We’re enjoying riding that wave with relationships to organizations like FinPro, AmBAR, Innovation Center Denmark with the goal of having similar relationships to Chinese and Indian trade organizations.

When we started, cleantech had been languishing for roughly 20 years…it was not the hot technology sector it is today targeted to lead the US into financial recovery.  Now it’s a significant part of our business and we’ve done our pro bono part mentoring entrepreneurs competing in the California Cleantech Open.

What has been constant over the 10 years is our passion for helping entrepreneurs and companies find the best way to bring the best products to market for the benefit of customers and now more than ever, the planet.  We look forward to continuing that commitment here in Silicon Valley and the many new innovation centers around the globe.

NPD 2.0: Leveraging the Internet for New Product Development Web 2.0 principles have revolutionized the Web experience as well as
the design patterns and business models of software companies. This is a workshop on how innovative companies can apply Web 2.0
capabilities to leverage end-users for a powerful new approach to product development, also known as NPD 2.0. NPD 2.0 can enable
companies to co-create better and richer products in a reduced timeframe.

This course is designed to help students learn how to apply the capabilities of the Internet to the product development process.

Participants will learn:

• The most successful examples of turning over non-essential control to users directly via the Web.
• How to leverage the web and NPD 2.0 to protect a traditional business model in a Web 2.0 world.
• The most useful Web 2.0/social networking apps to support a closer collaboration.
• How to extend NPD 2.0 to partners and channels.
• How to overcome challenges companies may face as they apply NPD 2.0 to their products?

The course will follow a highly interactive workshop format to ensure that the theory and best practices of innovation are understood. Participants will practice using state-of-the-art models of product development and so are encouraged to bring their own innovation challenges to class to learn how to resolve them using NPD 2.0.

Wednesdays, 6-9PM – 7 meetings
February 4 – March 25 (no meeting Feb. 18)
UCSC Extension in Silicon Valley – Cupertino Campus
Register at www.ucsc-extension.edu
Course code – 20322-003 – $540 until January 21st; $600 after Jan. 21

There has been talk of being in a recession most of 2008. With the credit crises and stock market swan dive, the debate should have been over. Yesterday’s news made it official – two quarters in a row of declining growth.

Earlier this year, Business Week published an article on the 10 Worst Innovation Mistakes In A Recession. #4 was to stop New Product Development under the assumption that it would save money. In fact, it doesn’t save money, it simply reduces the chances for new revenue streams downstream.

Research conducted by Robert Cooper, President of the Product Development Institute, in 2004 found that new product sales fell from 32.6 percent of total company sales in the mid-1990s to 28 percent. More importantly, the same study showed that profits derived from new products were down from 33.2 percent of business profits to 28.3 percent over the same period. Why? What did companies do differently? Quite simply, companies stopped taking risks — new to world product innovations fell nearly 50% during that same time period accounting for the drop in revenues and profits.

What lessons can you learn from these past mistakes? I hope you will decide that now is not the time to slow down innovation. Your approach to innovation needs to become more productive and efficient. It’s not simply about being more creative but about being brilliant in your execution. How do you mobilize people and keep them focused? How do you explore technical feasibility? How do you identify what will drive adoption? How do you determine who best to partner or align yourself with to realize your vision? And most of all, how do you manage risk?

I wish you great success in these interesting times for new opportunities.

Regards,
Patrina