The speed of changes at the global range is accelerating because of the intersection of AI and multiple other new technologies such as IoT, edge computing, quantum computing, robotics, 5G, human-machine interface technology, Blockchain, distributed ledger technology, and smart contracts, etc. Knowledge building is exploding but happens in too many silos. And because of the complexity, no one has all the answers, collective intelligence or sustainable collaboration becomes more important than ever.
Qmarkets, a company supporting open innovation across 500+ companies for 12 years, was founded in 2008 by three people on a kitchen table. It’s inspired by the crowdsourcing process – the wisdom and knowledge of a large crowd. And with that, the organizations can make more qualified decisions than an individual.
Recently we had a chat with one of the co-founders & Senior Vice President, Michael Stilger, and Director of Innovation Solutions, Steve Reed. The highlights of the conversation are below.
The Maturity/Evolution of Corporate Innovation
The evolution of ideation, from the suggestion box over post-its which are sticking everywhere, to the spreadsheets and manually managing ideas, to have automated ideation papers plus spreadsheets, to a full-blown, modern end to end ideation system including next-generation AI features.
For a company today in globalization, there are knowledge pockets in different departments or company locations. An ideation system with AI breaks up these silos and lets them all come together. The software lets you capture trends or problems. And based on those problems, you can find solutions.
You have all the trends from all sides that come into the market, which can be small trends or big trends. It could be social media content or big data… It doesn’t matter whether it comes from startups, suppliers, customers, citizens, or business partners. You have all these trends hit the company that is relevant for you. Then these trends get generated into challenges, then you ask your employees, your customers, your partners to come up with great ideas or you scout new technology, new startups.
Then you take these ideas and incubate them, prototype them, experiment and launch, measure the ROI and outcomes of new technologies, new products, new materials. You process new IP, brand, strengthening revenue or savings. Different processes are needed for different purposes. For example, there are “fail-fast” types or “incremental improvement” types. (Qmarkets covers all the processes)
Innovation’s 3 Key Elements
- What is important is in an organization, you need to create a culture of innovation. (Please refer to the image on the next page)
- There is a strategy, like 3M or Apple give their employee half a day per week to stop working and to think of new ideas. There is an innovation process, how to do it. And they have a tool and can scale it across the whole organization and reach the wisdom of the crowd.
- In an organization, you need all three things to create a culture of innovation. When you have these three things, You have a winner. But if you only have one of these things or two of these things, it can work, but they usually struggle …
Some Success Stories
Utility Provider
- For Utility Provides, customers have no loyalty. The electricity comes out of the socket. It doesn’t matter where it comes from as long as it’s the cheapest. This is a challenge. This is a global trend for utility companies.
- How RTE, a utility provider and high-voltage transmission system operator in Europe, uses the wisdom of the crowd, their employee, to improve this problem?
Truck Manufacturer
The whole world is terribly impacted by the Coronavirus pandemic since 2020 started. How Ford Otosan, a truck manufacturing company in Turkey, adopts and leverages the wisdom of its employees for this Coronavirus pandemic to help local hospitals and health workers?
Food and Drink Company
The world’s largest food company Nestle, a Swiss multinational food and drink processing conglomerate corporation headquartered Switzerland, adopts and leverages the wisdom of start-ups worldwide. By connecting the brightest ideas and innovation with Nestle’s businesses, expertise, and market insights, start-ups and Nestle can make the biggest possible impact.
Enterprises are facing many pressures such as cost-down, customer experience improvement, or technology development. Democratizing insights improve the decision process and productivity. Collaboration between internal and external innovators also enhances the workplace culture as well as the speed of innovation. The innovation process needs a digital transformation to support the scale and speed.
We are excited to partner with Qmarkets and provide a free space for companies that want to try open innovation, you can test it out here, it’s our community service. (welcome to discuss ideas with us, we will help set it up, the ideas and process can be set confidential)
We also put up a “Corporate Digital Transformation” challenge campaign that startups or professionals are welcome to submit solutions or ideas. Technology implementation or digital transformation isn’t easy and what works might vary from company to company, the ideation and discussions for developing proof of concept (PoC) on implementation are important.
