Personality Poker®

E31: Solve Internal Problems by Looking Externally

Episode Summary

What if the best solutions to your internal business problems can be found by looking externally? In this episode, I have a conversation (using the Invisible Solutions® lenses) with my friend and colleague Jon Fredrickson. He is the Chief Innovation Officer for InnoCentive (part of Wazoku) and has 15 years of deep open innovation experience.

Episode Notes

What if the best solutions to your internal business problems can be found by looking externally?

In this episode, I have a conversation (using the Invisible Solutions® lenses) with my friend and colleague Jon Fredrickson. He is the Chief Innovation Officer for InnoCentive (a Wazoku company) and has 15 years of deep open innovation experience.

The conversation covered a wide range of topics including:

According to a study conducted by Harvard, over 80% of solvers of InnoCentive challenges would not fit the hiring profile of the client
One company replicated 15 years of R&D history with one problem with a 60 day challenge - and they got a better answer
If you start looking externally, you can find a kernel of a solution which can be brought back to the organization and adapted
Open innovation enables parallel processing of problem-solving which can speed time to solution

There were so many stories, such as how a radiologist solved a problem on how to identify fractures and fissures in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to find natural gas or oil deposits.