Structured Approach to Open Innovation

Are you looking for ways to preserve and develop your company, organization or new business ideas?

I wrote these thoughts 7.9.2009 and published somewhere. Decided to upload it to Digital Villages today.

The picture is very old: I guess, it was made 1987  or 1989.

It might be a god idea to take a sneak peak into social media environments. 

Sounds strange that something called "open" promises to deliver "innovations" to maximize future profits and helps to build a healthier and more sustainable society.

Working with a structured approach to open innovation, co-creation, and global collaboration.

• Open (accepting new, different, weird, and outsider participation)

• Positive (we are attracted to positive working conditions; relaxed atmosphere & learning environment)

• Environment (open, positive, relaxed, humor, emphatic, supporting sustainable)
  
• Natural (organic evolution of collaboration; command and control doesn't work anymore)
  
• Innovation (new elements or aspects are needed to motivate collaborators like social attraction)
  
• Nomadic (social, technical, cultural mobility; open innovation brothers and sisters)
  
• Global (open culture to reach global markets through co-creation and collaboration)

Crazy Creative Finns are accepting and adapting new working cultures to enhance Open Innovation. Social media, microblogs, wikis, basecamps, nings, photo, video & podcast galleries, and blogs are used to replace traditional meeting rooms and seminars.

Innovators and entrepreneurs are networking and collaborating to improve the profitability of product development and service design.

1. Industrial products, innovations, and services are always invented and created in narrow subcultures (laboratory, R&D department, research institute, corporation). "Market Penetration" is followed by "Dedication" and finally we move towards "Saturation" if we are able to break out from the subculture and get a broader acceptance for our invention(s).
   
2. Social media can be used to "socialize" or adapt a new invention, product + service to a new culture, national market or subculture.
   
3. Social engineering can be used to understand the differences of a product development subculture and the new environment where we want to adapt it.
   
4. NIH is a valid reaction. If we don't socialize and adapt our product or service to the new market, culture or environment, the "not invented here" (NIH) is a predictable, valid, and understandable reaction.
   
5. Service design is a practical tool for personalization of a product + the service promise to a new culture, country, user / market segment.
   
6. Open Innovation is a cost effective way of producer - consumer - client service improvements. If we don't do the "prosumer adaption" we should expect product rejection comparable to hearth transplant rejection.
   
7. Open source software development takes us to a new product adaption layer. Programming is very complex in a closed environment and "open development" leads to even bigger challenges.
   
8. Personalization is needed for industrial processes and consumer gadgets. It's the core of customer orientation, but we tend to think that customers should adapt to our [the producers] needs.
   
9. Many to many networking is effective and productive only if we have a clear and structured strategy for our participation. If not, Social Media leads us to an endless loop of discussions that won't take us anywhere. Worst case of social media is talking, talking, talking into eternity - but no tangible results.
   
10. Ethernet is a starting point for data collection in a "thing links" environment where we need clear goals or are alternatively drowned into a stormy sea of data that can't be interpreted.
    
11. Values and goals are important tools in information society solution developments. We need them to control where we are, and where we are heading.
    
12. Don't accept social media as an endless talking mechanism. It can be transformed into a structured productivity tool for all kinds of organizations.

Open Innovation and Co-creation isn't limited to face to face activities within the traditional organization. Digital technology empowers us to do things with collaborators living in other countries and cultures.

Are we slowly moving towards a global networking business development?

• No physical seminars (they key is participation and sharing)
• No physical meeting rooms needed (virtualization of collaboration)
• No organization charts (we create in ad-hoc open environments with people we never met before)

Killing me softly

Killing me [my company] softly with no innovation can be defended by opening the gates for multitalented crowds to participate and share their ideas, experiences, and skills. We're moving towards open door creativity where customers, clients, and partners have a central role in the design of killer applications and sustainable business ideas.

As we know, goals play a huge factor in personal and business success. Look at the most successful people in business and industry. Do they set goals? They do, but what are the goals we've to set for the future sustainable future development of Europe and a more peaceful world.

Opening Europe

The economic conditions in Europe, on the globe, and this country [Finland]  is presenting challenges for many traditional industries and enterprises. The post-depression marketplace will undergo dramatic changes and many industrial enterprises are downscaling to adapt.

• car manufacturing has to reduce capacity
• forest industry, pulp and paper are downscaling in Europe
• the mobile gadgets industry is not growing like in the past, new products and services are needed
• music industry has to adapt to Internet as a distribution and marketing channel
• engineering, construction, building, renovation markets are facing financing challenges
• the possibilities of growth are in Russia, China, India, South America, Asia...

The mobile phone was the big Finnish break-through in the 90's. We're now ready to launch the next big thing - open innovation, co-creation and collaboration on a global scale - as a method for new wealth creation. Sounds strange that something called "open" promises to deliver "innovations" to maximize future profits, but continue to challenge and motivate your organization to move towards:

• participation
• sharing of ideas and concepts
• provide open access to new ideas and opportunities
• collaboration and co-creation are attitudes for more cost-effective change management
• become a part of a much larger groups (crowdsourcing and multitalented problem solving)
• we've to be open minded, learn to use open platforms, and have to be ready to take risks

The wisdom of the crowd is needed

Globally, water consumption increases at more than twice the rate of population growth. There will be a shortage of Water, Money, Oil and Energy in many parts of the world.  A workforce of several hundred millions is waiting for whatever jobs available. If cheap energy helped fuel the boom in China and India, then a vanishing supply of fresh water will apply the brakes in the near future.

• Could open innovation play a role in solving these problems?
• Military power and command control isn't the only way towards democracy
• We ca do serious business with social media, but for proper use we need to re-think and re-engineer the way we used to work within the safety of four walls of the traditional organization in the past
• Is the management ready?
• How about the individuals?
• What will the corporate lawyers say?
• The company's security manual isn't written for open global collaboration

Digital Documentation and Distribution

I like to give some examples where "Open Innovation and Collaboration" has been applied unconsciously. The first one is about a Power plant where the user started to use different biomass compositions to avoid the mixing procedure of peat, bark, wood chips, sawdust, planning residues. The mixing would be an additional work and require more storage space. The supply of biomass isn't stable and consistent either.

The power plant owner and operator started to burn unmixed residues and to make manual adjustments. The supplier learned about the new evolution and ideas about programming and the use of machine vision to determine what residues were delivered to the heating plant. PLC Logic changed rotation speed of burning chamber and the air supply increased the efficiency of the process.

This is a "prosumer" [produce and consumer] collaboration example resulted in a better operational practice through a trial and error process. The plant owner and manufacturer were in continuous contact and by accident they learned about the unconventional operation and as a result they were supporting the development of a more practical operational model. The manufacturer is now able to deliver turnkey plants with multiple biomass species.

A tightly regulated and controlled power plant operation according to specifications would have taken a much longer time to evolve. It's not a good idea to play by the books and agreements. Innovations are born when people start to work without the operating manual or agreement.

There will be more examples later: IKEA, Unicode, Big projects...

Helge V. Keitel

KK-Net

helgekeitel at gmail.com

+ 358 50 309 2021

I’ll be speaking in Tallinn May 25, 2010

Microblogging is fun. Qaiku is one of the Finnish services taking it mainstream. Before this we had Jaiku.

Everybody knows Twitter and Facebook but the Finnish Qaiku is much more advanced for those who want to interact, report and advance open innovation.

Why is managing technical people difficult? I had this question on of my blogs.

Some would say tech people are socially inept to adopt social media and some don't communicate well.

While that may be true in some cases, saying so doesn't help managers deal with social media in a better way.

The solution is learning by doing. I’ll be speaking at Tallinn BlogFest 2010 May 25, 2010. Take a look at the details here.

Loose wire blog: Learning in the Open

loose wire blog: "Learning in the Open. Here's a piece I wrote for the WSJ on open source education resources. It's part of the free section of WSJ.com. A revolution of sorts is sweeping education.

Helge: Open source collaboration is closer to me but we can learn from each other

In the past few years, educational material, from handwritten lecture notes to whole courses, has been made available online, free for anyone who wants it. Backed by big-name universities in the U.S., China, Japan and Europe, the Open Education Resources movement is gaining ground, providing access to knowledge so that no one is 'walled in by money, race and other issues,' says Lucifer Chu, a 32-year-old Taiwanese citizen and among the thousands world-wide promoting the effort. He says he has used about half a million dollars from his translation of the 'Lord of the Rings' novels into Chinese to translate engineering, math and other educational material, also from English into Chinese.

Helge: Gaining access to knowledge...

The movement started in the late 1990s, inspired in part by the 'open source' software movement, based on the notion computer programs should be free. Open-source software now powers more than half the world's servers and about 18% of its browsers, according to TheCounter.com, a Web-analysis service by Connecticut-based Internet publisher Jupitermedia Corp. Behind its success are copyright licenses that allow users to use, change and then redistribute the software. Another inspiration was the proliferation of Web sites where millions share photos or write encyclopedia entries."

Helge: Computer programs should be free... Search is free... Blogs are free... Facebook is Free... Jaiku is Free... Twittering is Free. What isn't? We are sharing things. Great. What are we going to see next?

NewsFactor Network | Linux-Based Android and LiMo Dominate Phone Show

NewsFactor Network | Linux-Based Android and LiMo Dominate Phone Show: "Linux-Based Android and LiMo Dominate Phone Show Linux-Based Android and LiMo Dominate Phone Show| By Barry Levine | February 12, 2008 2:26PM.

Helge: The Finnish perspective is very Nokia centric. People go to exhibitions with very different mindsets. I guess the Swedish press is writing all about Sony Ericsson's point of view.

Linux originates from Finland. Hmmm, I didn't mean to be nationalistic. We just don't have too many internationally known companies and that's why it comes natural to tell about those who are big and well known names.

Attention at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona has focused on Linux-based mobile platforms, including Google's Android and LiMo. NEC promised to show the first LiMo mobile handset, and other vendors will also display products. But despite the publicity for LiMo, Android has a big advantage -- the Google name.

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Open-source Linux is coming of age for mobile phones. While Google's Android platform has attracted attention at the World Mobile Congress in Barcelona, Spain, so has LiMo, another Linux-based platform.

NEC Corporation announced Monday that it will show what it described as 'the first LiMo-compliant handsets' for the global market.

Morgan Gillis, executive director of the LiMo Foundation, said that, within a year, 'LiMo has secured powerful industry engagement, announced the on-schedule availability of the LiMo platform," and the first generation of handsets are appearing.

NTT DoCoMo, Motorola, Others

NTT DoCoMo also showed four LiMo handsets for the Japanese market. One of them, the FOMA N905i, features 3G/GSM international roaming, HSDPA, mobile TV, GPS location tracking, and credit payment services.

The Barcelona show is a big coming-out party for the LiMo Foundation, which describes itself as a "consortium of mobile-industry leaders" working to develop "an open and globally consistent handset software platform based on Mobile Linux." It was founded in January 2007 by Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone. LG is not officially a member, but it has shown a LiMo prototype. On Monday, telecommunications companies Orange and ACCESS said they would join.

Other handset makers are showing LiMo devices. Motorola has announced a Motorokr and Razr2, and Purple Labs, a supplier of embedded Linux solutions for mobile devices, announced an under-$100 LiMo feature phone. At least 18 LiMo-based handsets have been announced, including from Panasonic and Samsung.

The first release of the LiMo operating system is scheduled for March, and a software development kit is scheduled for the second half of this year.

The Google Name Advantage

Several LiMo backers also support Google's Open Handset Alliance (OHA) -- Motorola, NTT DoCoMo, and Samsung. In all, 34 companies back OHA, which was first announced in November. Texas Instruments, ARM Holdings, Qualcomm, NEC, Marvell, ST Microelectronics and others are showing or have announced Android prototypes. Deutsche Telecom's T-Mobile, HTC and others have said they expect to sell Android-based phones this year.

LiMo has "been in this game" longer than Android, giving its supporters more time to develop handsets, said IDC analyst Chris Hazelton. But he added that virtually no one will buy a mobile device simply because it is based on Linux.

The key competitive advantages will be, as always, price and features, but Android has an ace -- the Google name. Hazelton predicted that the first Android phones on the market, even if they are not literally branded "Google phones," will be known for their Google lineage. "One way or another," he said, these phones will be associated with the Google name.

Helge: I've written about the Google Phone in my Finnish language blogs. It takes time before the GP is out on the market. What new did Apple iPhone present? My understanding is that the mobile phone content race is still an emerging market. There has been much more talk about future networks in Barcelona.

When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

Helge: How reliable are we bloggers as sources? Is blogging all about recycling stories and the value grows with the recycling frequency?

When Did A Fake Blogger Become a Reliable Source?

Written by Josh Catone / October 25, 2007 / 0 comments

There are not one, but two stories on Techmeme this morning broken by Fake Steve Jobs , a.k.a. Forbes' Daniel Lyons. Both were repeated on a number of blogs. Yes, we know who Fake Steve is now, and yes he's a credible reporter working for a respected publication, but bear in mind that these stories were reported with no sources and on the blog of a fictional character. Yet, they were taken at face value by a number of prominent bloggers.

The first story Lyon's "broke" was about the supposed imminent demise of PodTech . "Well, they've had a good run but apparently the Casa de Scoble is heading for the big sleep," wrote Lyons. "Or is it the dirt nap? I can never remember. No announcement yet but we hear it's imminent." It was picked up by TechCrunch , Valleywag and others and repeated as if the original source was, well, Lyons and not his fictional persona (the one that just released a book).

Andalusia Open Source

Andalusia, Spain. They are doing battle with Microsoft. The projects are promoting Open Source software. It would save a lot of money to install open source on their computers. Windows Vista out but it’s becoming more and more expensive to update government computers. Even banks are considering the move from Windows to Open Source. I'll write more about this soon.

Kurt Linderoos about Innostars

"Last week I participated the IST 2006 conference, Helsinki, Finland." Writes Kurt Linderoos in his blog PERSONAL EU. More than 4000 innovation society professionals from all EU countries and the rest of the world, 3 days with parallell programs, 105 network sessions and workshops, 150 stands spread over 9000 square meters.

We were both there with Kurt representing the open source innovation tradition of Finland. Our initiative is to open up the innovation process and get into and over to cross-border innovation networking. Finland has a great innovation culture, but we are only one promille of the world population. The added value of our innovations can only be found in cross-border and cross-cultural projects.

What an unique chance to choose exactly right themes and minutes for meeting face-to-face the exactly right international team for making them interested in the "Personal EU" idea! Theory and truth are different: Too many interpassive school class presentations, too few opportunities to comments and short 1 slide point of views, too poor capacity to recognize the real key persons.

"I was lucky tp found some exceptional interesting - and interested - individuals and potential project partners." Writes Kurt and I agree. I counted that I had the opportunity to speak with people from all over the world representing over 30 nations, ranging from China to Colombia or from Barcelona to Espoo.

"The challenge now is to take practical interactive steps forward - connecting all essential new resources - not just with me but - with eachothers, to really work out something that is more than a sum of its components. " Blogs Kurt, and I agree.

This week (Nov 29th 2006) my friend Helge Keitel and I started an interactive Google Documents & Spread Sheet document "Innovation Society"/"InnoStar", fully editable by invited experts from different (mostly EU) countries. We started the document from scratch - and today just we 2 have joined it.

The Google Documents is the Writely web based word document platform aquired by Google this autumn. If you are one of those who should be invited, so please let me know - by email or comment to this blog. Successful cooperation! Kurre. www.personaleu.net.

PS. If there is below a "very strange" document, it can be a present but closed version of that "InnoStar". The work is in progress all the time.

• The document is open for collaborative actions
• We are practicing open source innovation methodology
• The work is in a continuous progress
• The first step is a learning experience
• How to cooperate over long distances
  

Mobile Symbian open source

"Phones have suffered from being too much about what the cellular company puts on them and not enough about what users put on them. Of course, the cellular companies do this to create walled gardens and charge people lots of money for things—like ringtones. " Writes Phil Windley in his Technometria blog.

Podcasting about Web 2.0

Yesterday I was interviewed over Skype concerning Web 2.0 applications and practices at KK-Net. The audio interview will be published in the coming next days. The story is a part of the preparations for IST 2006 Helsinki and is also related to "CONSEN - CONSEN (EEIG) Euro-Group is a Grouping of European SMEs who have agreed to cooperate as Euro-Cluster in Information Society Technologies projects, tenders and business throughout Europe."

The main objective of the CONSEN (EEIG) is to establish an ongoing and effective dialogue between members focused on Research, Development, Innovation and Business of Open Technological Solutions for Information and Communication at European level. The companies are all experts in Open-Source Software, Contents, Standards, Infrastructures and Information Society Technologies.

Here is a posting that maybe could give some background to what we planned could be covered by the interview.

1. Collaboration and an open source mindset
   
2. Web 2.0 - dynamic, interactive and easy to use
   
3. Project management - Basecamp as a tool
   
4. Collaboration taking steps to moving into the mobile devices
5. Contribution and sharing
6. Innovations can't be investigated, they are made
7. Where is the next garage pouring out innovations from Europe
8. What can we do together on an European level?
   

"Something like this? What do you think?" I wrote to the Danish science and technology journalist Lennart Kiil, calling me from Barcelona, where he works as an independent freelance journalist covering Web 2.0 among others.

KK-Net is an independent consulting company with a dispersed work-force. We've a long experience about what makes good ideas, excellent products and services to succeed or fail in the global market place. Global partnership strategies for faster market penetration is a part of the solutions delivered by us. The world is moving so rapidly and changing so fast that we need an open process of innovation. We are building bridges, roads and channels to new markets.

Web 2.0, rich media, interactivity, cross-border collaboration and cross-cultural open source innovation methods are important parts in our daily work processes. We're used to talk and do business with people from all over the world. Broadband connections and the attitude of sharing and contribution has a central role in our corporate culture. We think that open source and Web 2.0 isn't just about technical platforms. The idea is to take them as tools and methods supporting our daily activities.

Lennart Kiil wanted to know about the differences in Web 2.0 practices and the evolution in US and EU. In my short statement the US leadership was probably underlined too much. Web 2.0 is a booming baby technology in the Silicon Valley, Bay Area, Southeastern US, but the development doesn't include the whole country.

Indiana, meaning the "Land of the Indians," is a state in the Great Lakes region of the Midwestern United States. Residents of Indiana are called Hoosiers. Indiana is 15^th in population at nearly 6.3 million. The population can be compared with the Nordic countries in Europe. Internet and Web 2.0 doesn't play a central role in the strongholds of steel and car manufacturing. And this is especially true if we take a vertical look at what is happening in the rural areas of US.

There are high-profiled areas in US with loud and visible Web 2.0 presence. We tend to evaluate the US leadership based on that. The booming Web 2.0 applications are covering millions of users both in US and abroad. Google, Yahoo, eBay, blog platform suppliers, MySpace, YouTube and a myriad of other rich media, podcasting, open source and social network tools providers have taken a strong lead in the market place.

But the same technology is available to European companies as well. The EU innovation and development programs might be much more inclusive compared to the ultra capitalistic American model. We've possibilities in the way we can spread the use of Open Source and Skype enabled work models to all the European member states.

• Skype has its origins in Europe (Denemark, Estonia, Sweden)
• Open Source and Linux were initiated by the Finnish born Linus Thorwalds

Rich media applications and user generated content can be produced and delivered with the same intensity at this side of the ocean. We have a definitive leadership in the field of Mobile Technology. We could focus on, how to find ways to implement Social Networking and Community building features into the future Smart Phones rolling out in hundreds of millions to users around the globe in the coming years. There will certainly be much more Mobile platforms on the globe than desktop publishers of blogs, podcasts and weblogs.

Here is a list of collaborative tools we use in our daily works at KK-Net:

• Basecamp - the worlds simplest project management tool
• Blogs, Wikis and various collaborative betas
• IM, Yahoo, GoogleTalk, Skype for online audio (VoIP) and instant messaging (chat)
• Google tools: GoogleTalk, Writely, Spreadsheet etc
• We use less and less traditional html pages: the home page is static
• Web based project management have proven to be cost-effective
• Distance work with people, friends and experts around the globe
• Mobile tools are getting new shapes, new opportunities waiting
• What could we do together with Nokia?
• Collaborative features will be an important part of future mobility

The mobile phone market is changing. We're going towards a smart phone, flat screen future, where mobiles can be used for multiple other things than just calling your friends or sending text messages.

The future of mobile includes micro payments, RFID, several HDTV digital television channels, hamburger content viewing, GPS, email, multimedia, you can blog, photoblog and videoblog with your phones.

More features will be brought to you through the carriers with the evolution of high-speed networks. This means that less of the features need to be in the phone itself. We can see the same thing happening with personal computers.

We never know what is going to be the next killer application. Collaboration and open source attitude seems to embrace the strategical thinking of big companies like IBM and Nokia, Google and Yahoo. The big players are opening up their development platforms and calling in grass roots players. Big companies need the to work with "the next big thing coming from a garage". Even Microsoft is ready to do it.

But there is often a mental barrier also in the garages in Europe and around the globe. SMEs need to have more defined messages when approaching the big players. I just happen to know that Nokia, among others, is more than ready to work together with innovative "GARAGE bands and gangs".

What do we have to offer as a more united and collaborating networking force? I've tried to outline a mission for European SMEs that could be next thing out of the garage in Information Technology. What do you think?