Turning Ideation into Innovation

A question that's top of mind among our clientele is this: Getting innovative ideas is relatively easy. But how do you build a core competency in converting ideas into innovative products and services?

We've spent some time recently at GE's Global Research Center in Albany, NY. GE Global Research is the world’s largest corporate applied research institution. What I like about its approach is that it is focused on turning problems into solutions that can be successfully produced and deployed as commercial products. It does this by taking advantage of cross-fertilization among subject matter experts in multiple disciplines. Life scientists, materials scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and many different disciplines are represented. So are all the industries that GE serves—healthcare, financial services, energy, aviation, automotive, appliances—and so on. Business units bring thorny issues to the research center, and a team is put together to come up with prototypes and pilots that can be tested and moved into production or discarded. Customers are often intimately involved in presenting hard problems, specifying real world requirements in context, and testing prototypes. Outside innovation is also fostered by involving outside experts, as well as by co-locating research facilities on university campuses and near large innovative customers. GE Global Research (which now has campuses distributed around the world) is one example of how to structure and evolve core competencies in turning ideas into practical reality. You can learn more about it on their Web site GEGlobalresearch.com or follow them on Twitter @edisonsdesk.

We enjoyed sifting through our notes from our latest Visionaries' meeting, which took place in Cambridge, MA in December, hosted by Nature Education. We discovered some interesting patterns among the broad-ranging discussions and show and tell sessions on the topic of "how do I turn ideas into innovative products/services?" Ronni Marshak pulled these "lessons learned" into 7 simple steps for moving from ideation to innovation.

Turning Innovation into Reality
From Ideation to Implementation—Lessons Learned from Our Visionaries
By Ronni T. Marshak, Sr. VP and Sr. Consultant, January 20, 2011

Comments

[Erin Schumpert]

Nice article. There are a lot of companies, like GE, that are shifting to a more innovation-focused approach of doing business. A number of industry leaders are doing a great job of creating engaging employee and customer idea communities.

Telecom leader AT&T has over 300,000 employees and has a set of ideas (that were discovered using Spigit) that are to be announced later this year in their 2011 product line. BusinessWeek wrote an article that features AT&T and their use of Spigit. Read more here:

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/sep2010/tc2010097_904409.htm

Other companies such as AAA, Overstock.com and Comcast are also doing some amazing things when it comes to innovation.

BusinessWeek also recently featured Spigit in a video where Cisco discusses their quest with Spigit to find its next big business ideas from employees and outsiders alike.
You can watch the video here:

http://feedroom.businessweek.com/?fr_story=c16a8ecdc55c12d00795f89d4dfee184a05293eb&chan=technology_special+report+–+ceo+guide+to+collective+intelligence_special+report:+ceo+guide+to+collective+intelligence

Thanks!
Erin