This last week, an independently organized TEDX-style convention was held in Washington, DC. TEDxOilSpill began on Monday with the sole purpose to bring to focus possible solutions for the 40,000 barrel-a-day problem in the Gulf of Mexico.

Bringing together expert opinion and broadcasting globally, the conference was the product of the crowd trying to do what a government, tied down with bureaucracy, and a private company, clearly stretched beyond capacity, could not.

Read More…

It isn’t every day that I’m willing to sit through a talk on leading a culture of innovation. It isn’t that I think I know everything already, but more that I’m keen to learn new things and often leave disappointed.

Read More…

Join an online live discussion with PwC on their Chaordix-powered Canada’s Digital Compass crowdsourcing community.

When: June 1st, 11am to noon, EDT

What: Free online education interview

Having just wrapped up the six-week debate in PwC’s Chaordix-powered Canada’s Digital Compass community, we wanted to sit down with Carrie Maynard, Industry Marketing Manager, Technology, InfoComm, Entertainment & Media (TICE) and ask her some questions about the project. What happened behind the scenes to motivate PwC to adopt a new research and innovation methodology? How did they choose the topics, the panel, get the word out, and apply the findings?

Register Now at http://www.chaordix.com/events

Questions we’ll ask:

• Why did PwC decide to start crowdsourcing?
• What did it take to get leaders and the organization comfortable with open innovation?
• How difficult was it to undertake a successful crowdsourcing initiative?
• What level of recruitment promotion and investment is required?
• How important is the moderator’s involvement and how much time should a moderator expect to invest?
• How can an organization guarantee the outcome will be of value?
• What would PwC do differently next time? What would PwC do again?

Have a question you want to ask PwC? Share it and we’ll make sure it’s on our agenda.

The great thing about SxSW is that it isn’t just one conference, it’s three. It gives one a new perspective to be surrounded by people who have interests outside of technology and innovation. Meeting with film and media leaders helped me see some of the challenges they are facing and got my wheels turning about how crowdsourcing could be applied in industries we don’t typically focus on. It also helped remind me how important it is to interact with smart people from various backgrounds – really, what crowdsourcing is all about! Here are three things I learned from attending SxSW this year:

You don’t go to SxSW to learn about your industry – As there’s so many people there, most of whom have no idea what you do, any panel on your industry will probably be pretty high level. That’s cool. Take this opportunity to learn what’s going on with other people. Catch up on areas that are adjacent to what you do, or complimentary to what you do. You never know what might spark a great business opportunity. While I love attending the crowdsourcing sessions and the speakers were incredibly engaging, people like Scott Belsky and Jeffrey Kalmikoff confirmed what I already know and didn’t really dive into new territory.

It’s all about location – Location based apps are still where it’s at, not matter what industry you are in. There was a definite battle between Gowalla and Foursquare for conference attendees. Which app did most users go with? Which party did most people attend? With so much going on and so many people to catch up with, I ended up having multiple apps on my phone to keep track of where I should be going next. If it’s all about the crowd, knowing where the crowd is and what the crowd thinks is hot is key.

Zone Bars are horrible - Everywhere I went, I was handed a Zone Bar (extremely dry, meal replacement bars). That’s great they were willing to sponsor the conference so much, but zone bars taste awful! I think this is an important lesson on brand engagement. Whether it’s crowdsourcing, social media, or word of mouth marketing, make sure you are spending dollars on campaigns and communities that will appreciate your product. I can’t imagine Zone Bars will notice an increase in sales after all of the effort they dumped into SxSW. A far better option for them would have been to hand out zone bars at a track and field competition, or maybe along the running paths during the summer.

All in all, SxSW was great. I heard from a number of industry thought leaders, introduced friends from all over the world to each other and made a bunch of new contacts I’m looking forward to following up with. I only with I could have stayed for the cool bands.

Tomorrow’s leaders may need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable

Preparing for the 4th Annual Open Innovation conference coming up April 7 – 9th, our team got talking about what we could share with Intuit, General Mills, GlaxoSmithKline, Nestle, Motorola, Merck & Co., NASA at the event that would be worth their time?

We talk to businesses every day about cross-enterprise crowdsourcing. Mostly we get asked about the how to’s and ROI of open innovation for seeking research or technology breakthroughs, new product and service ideas, testing and building world-leading brands, and anticipating consumer and citizen preference and behaviour trends.

Truthfully, these business cases for crowdsourcing are pretty common sense.

What we notice is relatively uncommon though is an understanding that crowdsourcing isn’t about getting more people participating in business as usual, it’s about how we need to change what’s usual about business to get more people contributing. Shifting to open innovation means evolving how organizations identify new strategic direction, manage knowledge and input, and form real relationships with people not just as employees. We’re not the only ones observing this – Boris Pluskowski blogged a warning “Is there a lack of innovation or originality in the innovation practice itself?”

Let me come clean here. I’m a member of the “has been” generation – the over 35 crowd. I have been caught on video ranting that I’m too set in my ways to fully embrace gmail after a decade plus on Outlook. I relate to a love of mastery versus uncertainty - big time! But as so many of us have learned – we cannot change our odds of succeeding without changing anything at all.

So when we have some time to workshop on innovation with GM, Nestle and Nasa here’s what are going to talk about:

Where is all this going? – The enterprise-wide opportunities of open innovation

- Talent scouting: How will tomorrow’s bright minds want to contribute to your organization – as employees and outsiders?
- Venture financing: How can open innovation take the risk out of choosing the up and comers most worthy of investment in your space.
- Testing: Whether you need to test a mobile app globally or a new drug with select patients, how can going open take speed and cost out of your business?

Some things to brace for and embrace:
1. Key contributors need not be employees, so you won’t control them so much, nor will you own them exclusively.
2. You may receive a multi-million dollar product or venture idea from a guy you known mostly as lapdoglover – judge the invention not the userid (remember it might be his kid or grandkid that picked the ID for him)
3. It’s not having a digital suggestion box that invites the world that’s game-changing, it’s the ability to apply crowd effort and technology to filter statistically most-likely-to-succeed ideas to the top, fast, so you can have them in market first and faster.

4. Information management and governance just went warp - If privacy and IP ownership make your fists clench, sign up for some serious meditation and laughter therapy ahead (and get involved with us in the thinktank: IBM Information Governance Council)

Hope to see you at the conference in Philadelphia. Introduce yourself!