incentive2innovate

i2i Speaker Spotlight: Rev up Your Company’s Innovation Engine with Candor by Keith Ferrazzi

2009-07-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

I spoke at the X PRIZE Foundation’s incentive2innovate (i2i) Conference last month in NY. But when it was my turn at the podium, my take was that a conference about collaboration and innovation shouldn’t be dominated by one way communication – so as usual, I got the audience interacting with each other. Also as usual, my emphasis was on the need to be CANDID.

When candid exchanges between people collide, the fusion generates entirely new insights, new ideas, and new approaches—what we collectively call innovation, where value is created—that might never have been considered independently. Candor gives us the ability to take risks, preparing us to solve problems collaboratively—both at work and in our personal lives—with better results than we would ever have achieved alone.

So the question is, how do we create a culture of candor in our workplaces? For one, we need the core mindsets of Generosity and Vulnerability to create what I call a “safe place” where we can trust each other to be honest.

But also, whether or not you’re officially a leader in your workplace, you can create a tremendous impact on its culture just by showing others the value of inviting in candor. With that in mind, here are some specific tips for drumming up some candid feedback in your life and work.

1. Find People You Respect

We can’t be candid with everybody—nor would we want to be. Which is why we should each find or create a workplace where we're surrounded by people whom we respect. What do I mean by respect? It comes down to acknowledging another person’s uniqueness, value, perspective, and wisdom. If you don’t respect someone, believe me, they’ll sense it, and it will be impossible to establish a safe place between the two of you.

2. Create the Opportunity

To open up a dialogue with another person and ask for his candid feedback, you might need to tee things up in advance of a meeting with an e-mail, so your friend or coworker has time to ponder what he might say beforehand. Here’s an example: “Jim—I was hoping you would do me a favor. You know I’m gunning for that promotion. Frankly, I could use all the advice I can get. I really respect your opinion. You see me every day—would you be willing sometime to give me a half-hour of candid feedback about what I do well, and what I am less strong on, from your perspective?”

3. Make It Clear Any Feedback You Get Is a Gift

Express your gratitude when you receive feedback. What you’re asking for is a gift—of time, honesty, and thoughtful feedback.

4. Acknowledge Your Faults

Don’t try to pretend to be something you’re not. Most of us know, deep inside, what’s holding us back. By acknowledging that you have things to work on, you make it much easier for others to be honest with you. You might begin: “Listen, I know I’ve got plenty of stuff to work on, but I hoped you might be able to point out a few things in particular that I could focus on.” By acknowledging up front that you’re imperfect (who isn’t?), you pave the way for another person to be honest with you.

5. Tell the Other Person What You Plan to Do with the Advice

You’re not asking for advice to put the other person on the spot, or to “test” her. You’re certainly not going to get angry or defensive. Make clear that you’re simply gathering information and you'd like his or her honest opinion.

6. Don’t Tell Them What You Want to Hear

My advice is to begin generally and wait for the other person to make the first move by coming up with something specific. If she hems, haws, and otherwise resists giving you targeted feedback, say something like, “Really—I mean it. I would be deeply appreciative.” Then pause. A pause is a very effective way to encourage others to respond—most people will do anything to avoid an awkward or embarrassing silence. Be sure you don’t start by leading the witness—by identifying your faults and asking the other person to confirm them. You’re after candor here, not an echo effect.

7. Ask Specific Questions

Once the other person has given feedback, it’s okay to bring up specific examples about yourself that you want to get reactions to. For example, you may say, “I think I may come across too strong. What do you think? Do you recall any specific examples?”

8. Take It or Leave It—but Deliver on Safety

Remember that asking for criticism doesn’t mean you have to act on it. Criticism is what it is: candid feedback from someone you respect and whose opinion matters to you. Ultimately, you decide how or whether you use or act on that feedback. When I disagree with someone’s perspective, I simply say, “Thank you,” or “I appreciate hearing that.” If I’m confused, I’ll ask for clarification—before thanking the person once again!

Keith Ferrazzi is the author of "Never Eat Alone" and "Who's Got Your Back." For more information, please visit www.keithferrazzi.com.

Reid Hoffman Keynote at i2i

2009-06-09T10:11:00.001-07:00

A brief portion of Reid Hoffman's keynote talk at incentive2innovate, day 2.

Photo Gallery: incentive2innovate Day 2

2009-06-09T08:51:00.001-07:00

Naren Pendyal of BigFatPrize.com Reflects on Day 1 of incentive2innovate

2009-06-09T04:17:00.001-07:00

Naren Pendyal of BigFatPrize.com talks about the first day of the incentive2innovate conference.

Student Volunteer James Meickle: Thoughts on incentive2innovate Day 1

2009-06-09T04:13:00.001-07:00

Google Lunar X PRIZE fan and incentive2innovate student volunteer James Meickle tells us briefly his thoughts on space exploration, incentive prizes, and the first day of incentive2innovate.

incentive2innovate day 1: reception photos

2009-06-09T04:08:00.001-07:00

A gallery of photos from the reception after day 1 of incentive2innovate, featuring a short talk by J. Craig Venter, X PRIZE Foundation Trustee.

incentive2innovate Day 1 Photo Slideshow

2009-06-08T14:56:00.001-07:00

We just wrapped an excellent day of talks from a startlingly fascinating group of speakers. I can't speak for everyone here, but I can say that I am truly impressed at the pedigree of talent and inspiration here. I sure want to change the world, don't you?

Some reactions from the crowd: Edmond Bina

2009-06-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

X PRIZE cameraman and editor Edmond Bina gives his thoughts after the first couple hours of incentive2innovate.

Don Tapscott, author of Grown Up Digital

2009-06-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

A bit of Don Tapscott's discussion of how the new generation of technologically proficient people will shape the future of the web and media.

Some Photos from Day 1, early

2009-06-08T10:52:00.001-07:00

A complete photo gallery of day 1 of incentive2innovate is here, but here are a few choice shots from the beginning of the session.

Keith Ferrazzi, Ferrazzi Greenlight

Amir Dossal, United Nations

Matt Bross, BT

Greeting from Robert K. Weiss

2009-06-08T06:50:00.001-07:00

A video greeting from X PRIZE Foundation president and vice-chairman Robert K. Weiss.

Welcome to incentive2innovate

2009-06-08T05:02:00.001-07:00

The big day is finally here. Today the X PRIZE Foundation is happy to host incentive2innovate, a gathering of global leaders in business and technology to discuss how businesses and organizations can use the powerful tools of open collaboration and incentivized competition to drive innovation.

If you aren't able to attend in person, you can follow along on this blog, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

First Trip to the United Nations Building

2009-06-07T12:51:00.001-07:00

Today the entire conference team made a trip to the United Nations to check out the space and go through some logistics. I managed to snap a bunch of photos that I hope will give you some idea of what the space looks like. Can't wait to see it tomorrow, when all of those seats are filled.

Inside the UN

2009-06-07T10:25:00.000-07:00

The United Nations Building

2009-06-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

No flags are flying today.

incentive2innovate Preparation is in Full Swing

2009-06-06T14:00:00.001-07:00

I've finally arrived in New York City (and so has most of the i2i staff). We're all hard at work getting everything ready for Monday, and we think you're going to have a blast.

Here's the whole staff, hard at work:

Some Photos from New York City

2009-06-05T09:44:00.001-07:00

Several X PRIZErs have already arrived on site in New York City, and they've been sending in the photos. I personally can't wait to get there (I'll be traveling Saturday), but it looks like they are getting the United Nations space all ready to go for Monday. Check it out.

Marc Schulman, Director, Event Management at X PRIZE, takes a call from the United Nations building.

Statue outside the United Nations

The room where incentive2innovate is being held.

X PRIZEr David Locke checking out the space.

David and Stephanie have a little fun. Are deputies always shorter?

Not 100% sure what to make of this, but then the United Nations building is really subject to its own rules since it is technically international territory.

Stephanie, the calm before the storm.

Ready to Innovate

2009-06-04T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Mike Fabio, and I'm the Google Liaison for the Google Lunar X PRIZE, our $30 million incentive prize to land a private robotic mission on the surface of the Moon. I handle most of the online and social media outreach programs, and I'll be attending incentive2innovate as a guest blogger and content aggregator (expect to see me running around with a camera a lot).

There are many many ways you can start following along before the conference, and most of these channels will be even more active as the conference finally arrives. Here are some links that might be helpful:

Follow on Twitter: @i_2_i (I'll also be sending some tweets from the Google Lunar X PRIZE Twitter account, @glxp)

Subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog. I'll be posting photos and video throughout the conference.

Become a fan of X PRIZE on Facebook. Much of the content here will be syndicated there as well.

Stay tuned for a lot more great stuff in the next few days as people start rolling into New York City. The wonderful Stephanie Schneider (one of the masterminds behind this whole show) just sent me this teaser photo:

See you in New York!

i2i Speaker Spotlight: Alph Bingham, Founder, InnoCentive

2009-05-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

"Prize-Based Innovation from the Solver's Perspective - and Why it Matters"

The use of prize incentives to motivate problem solving is well established. While some debate continues vis-a-vis effectiveness, especially in contrast to more traditional modes of research and discovery, most of that analysis has been from the 'receiving' end of the spectrum, that is by the proposed 'users' of the innovation. Less so, has 'effectiveness' been addressed from the inventor's or contributor's perspective.

Perhaps it seems all too obvious. The solvers of such puzzles as the Longitude Problem or a Millennium Problem must surely be motivated to work in exchange for the substantial cash reward; it's no more complicated than any employment contract. Of course, people do things for lots of reasons. I think, over time, that prize systems have evolved to meet specific NON-CASH interests of the solvers and it would be interesting to see how two systems have developed, characterized by InnoCentive on the one hand and the X-Prize on the other.

To generalize, the X-Prizes have large cash awards (multiple millions of dollars) and the InnoCentive prizes (referred to as 'awards' or 'bounties') are considerably more modest... in a typical range of tens of thousands of dollars. At first blush it would seem that the X-Prize would dominate if problems were tackled solely on a return basis. In reality, I think this is probably not the case. While the X-Prizes are substantially larger in amount, the challenges to which they are attached are complex and expensive to execute against. It would not be surprising to imagine that more than 10 million dollars was consumed (even by just the winner) in the work that led to the awarding of the Ansari X-Prize for space travel. More akin to a Nobel prize, the X-Prize has a very well publicized existence: when the prize is offered, as work progresses, and when the final awarding takes place. This public footprint serves not only to motivate for reputation and notoriety but it likely helps 'SHAPE' the research agendas of individuals and institutions as they derive benefit from the publicity associated with working on a public, important problem.

In contrast, the smaller InnoCentive bounties are not individually publicized, the 'Seekers' do not receive an advertising benefit and the cash amounts, while important and substantial, are not likely to be 'front page stuff.' Of course, even in these more modest circumstances reputation and notoriety play a role. Folks like to succeed where others have tried and fallen short. There is healthy competition among chemistry professors just as we might find among actors, politicians, executives or athletes.

InnoCentive-type awards are intended to elicit a response via a different set of motivations and produce a different outcome than large public awards. While a 25 million dollar Earth Prize might shape a research agenda, a $40,000 InnoCentive award likely will not. What it WILL do is appropriately broadcast a challenge of a scale more adaptable to the resources of numerous individuals and small team efforts. Thus, the diversity of approaches to the problem is magnified many fold, and the likelihood of finding a solution - especially a very novel solution - goes up with this massively parallel attack on solution space.

In an InnoCentive-type model, larger problems are not ignored, but they are broken down into this "bite-size" scale and solutions may then be re-aggregated to larger applications. One advantage solvers see is that the greater number of problems, available at any moment, allows solvers who deliberately set out to tackle a bounty-based challenge (i.e., retirees not ready to hang up their minds or students looking for a flexible opportunity) to scan the choices available, and "swing only at the pitches they think they can hit."

Prior to launching InnoCentive, the concept was reviewed with several researchers to determine whether they would even have any interest in participating. A Stanford professor replied, "...I'd never set out to work only on a problem I saw posted -- but, I'm always looking for new ways to synthesize dehydroamino acids, and I'd be happy to put 'your' compound in 'my' table." (i.e., in a scientific publication). Ultimately it was about challenges that aligned with his interest and existing motivations. (Of course, he indicated that he would cash the check and that the bounty amounts needed to be fair in exchange for the information sought.)

Finally, there is one last thing that needs to be said for incentive prize systems that I feel has been overlooked in many of the effectiveness commentaries. It is true that innovation is often "for mankind." But we can never forget that it is also "BY mankind."

A few years ago I followed Tom Friedman on a speaking platform shortly after the publication of "The World is Flat." As he walked through the notions of Globalization 1.0 to 3.0, I realized that systems like InnoCentive were specifically addressing this 3.0 phenomenon. (As a brief reminder: 1.0 was the globalization of nations, 2.0 was the globalization of corporations and 3.0 was the globalization of individuals.)

Friedman pointed out that a billion people had just shown up to the global party and wondered about their new position and roles. I would have to say that the vast majority of the challenges posted on InnoCentive are problems that would otherwise be unknown to the many fine minds around the globe. Brilliant thinkers in Argentina, India, Poland, Russia, Mexico and Bulgaria wouldn't have contributed because they'd have never been given the opportunity to do so. In the past, those problems would be assigned to isolated research groups either internal to a business or to carefully selected partners. Getting on the 'partner' list is no mean feat and most of the awarded solvers in InnoCentive's history (OVER 470 prizes awarded!), would never have seen the problem, let alone solved it!

Alpheus Bingham will be speaking at i2i, to see the full program and list of speakers, please visit www.incentive2innovate.com

An Invitation from Peter H. Diamandis

2009-05-18T16:18:00.001-07:00

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, successful serial entrepreneur and Chairman & CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation on the benefits of attending this exclusive event.

_______________________________________

Join us at i2i: Enter the word "VIP" at www.incentive2innovate.com for a discounted ticket price of $975, saving 50% off of the registration price.

Announcing the new i2i collaborative format:

We invite you to join us at the United Nations for an exclusive innovation congress of cutting edge innovators and corporate stars from business, nonprofit and government.

This is a unique opportunity to engage in a dialogue with some of the world's top minds in innovation and explore how open collaboration and incentivized competition can help your company. Confirmed attendees represent C level executives from a broad range of companies in public, private and non-profit sectors. Some of the leaders joining us for this conference include:

• Arianna Huffington, Co-Founder and Editor-In-Chief,Huffington Post

• Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director, White House Office of Science & Technology Policy

• Reid Hoffman, Founder & CEO, LinkedIn

Specifically, this exclusive conference will provide you a chance to collaborate with your peers and hear compelling real world solutions in innovation.

Please visit incentive2innovate.com to check out our updated agenda and see the new speakers we have confirmed. We look forward to seeing you in June.

For more information visit us at www.incentive2innovate.com

incentive2innovate Interview with Dr. Peter H. Diamandis

2009-05-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

This interview was first posted at Perspectives on Innovation, the InnoCentive blog.

Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, chairman and CEO, The X PRIZE Foundation, joins us to share more about the upcoming conference.

Hi Peter. Thanks for talking with us today. Can you tell us, what is the goal for the i2i conference?

The X PRIZE Foundation is a recognized leader in bringing about “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.” The i2i conference is an extension of our efforts to create such breakthroughs in the business, government and nonprofit worlds. The conference goal is to showcase and drive dialogue around two powerful yet underutilized tools that can create fundamental breakthroughs within an organization’s walls to positively impact their bottom line performance, the economy and the world.

The X PRIZE Foundation, BT and the John Templeton Foundation have seen first-hand how these tools can be used to bring about radical changes for humanity, spur the development and growth of new industries and generate innovative ideas and technologies from individuals across the globe. We want to increase awareness and usage of these tools within the business, government and nonprofit communities to help them improve the pace, cost and quality of innovation. We’ve brought together a dynamic group of innovators who, through a series of breakout sessions, will do exactly that.

Who is the audience for this conference, and what should they expect to learn?

We invite forward-thinking c-suite executives (CEOs, CTOs, CMOs, etc.), foundation, political and academic leaders, and social entrepreneurs to attend i2i. Attendees will gain an opportunity to network with peers and listen to and discuss compelling real-world solutions to some of the biggest problems organizations face in today’s economic downturn. Attendees will walk away from the conference equipped with a better understanding of how to use open collaboration and incentive prize competitions to develop practical methods for creating a culture of open innovation, concrete ways to leverage limited resources, and applications to help them drive innovation while improving bottom line performance.

What actions do you hope attendees will take in the future as a result of attending the conference?

After i2i, we hope to see more organizations looking for innovative and cost effective business solutions through incentive prize competitions. We hope they recognize the value in sourcing new ideas from employees outside of the normal decision-making chain and are better equipped to tap into the creativity of the general public.

What is the connection of the conference with the United Nations?

The United Nations Office for Partnerships and The X PRIZE Foundation share a common vision to solve some of humanity’s greatest challenges. We believe the UN is the best forum to synthesize our parallel visions.

One of the breakout sessions will focus on healthcare. How was this focus selected?

Day one of the i2i conference will focus on introducing open collaboration and incentive prizes. Day two focuses on the practical application of these tools within various industries, of which healthcare is one. The healthcare industry was chosen because of our current focus on launching a prize in this area.

Experts agree that the U.S. healthcare system is in great need of innovative solutions to increase healthcare value and improve the health of our nation’s population. To address this issue, we’re planning to launch later this year a $10+ Million Healthcare X PRIZE with our partners WellPoint, Inc. and the WellPoint Foundation. During our healthcare breakout session, J. Craig Venter, founder and president, J. Craig Venter Institute;Samuel R. Nussbaum, M.D., Executive Vice President, Clinical Health Policy and Chief Medical Officer, WellPoint, Inc.; Yury Rozenman, head of Strategy and Marketing, Healthcare and Life Sciences, BT; will highlight concrete ways the healthcare industry has used open collaboration to spur advancement. The speakers will also explain how the soon-to-launch Healthcare X PRIZE is expected to revolutionize the industry.

Thanks Peter.

To learn more about incentive2innovate or to register to attend, visit www.incentive2innovate.com.

i2i Speaker Spotlight: Dwayne Spradlin, President and Chief Executive Officer, InnoCentive

2009-04-28T12:58:00.000-07:00

“A Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Now is the Time to Implement an Open Innovation Culture”

Every day new proof points confirm that adopting an “open” innovation culture delivers better innovations, faster cycle times, and improved economics. Many forward-thinking organizations embraced “open” in past good economic times and have created sustainable competitive advantage for themselves. These organizations moved cultural and political mountains to make this happen and for them “open” innovation will pay enormous dividends in today’s down economy.

But what about all the other organizations that must now think differently in order to survive? They continue to cling to dated ideas that they must invent, control, and own every aspect of their existence. They have erected legal, cultural, and political roadblocks to engaging the rest of the world in their businesses and are now paying the price. They desperately need “open” innovation, but are reacting to this economic crisis by “hunkering down” and will miss the opportunity to embrace change. Therein lies the challenge: they must learn to be “open” during a time when their business has the least will to think differently.

The reality is that organizations do not change until they are forced to do so. We are faced with unparalleled opportunity and need to rethink and reengineer the fundamentals of our businesses. Smart organizations will use this crisis as a catalyst to drive institutional change. “Open” innovation embodies the notion that in the new economy, marketplaces are emerging for ideas that will fundamentally challenge the conventional thinking in areas that include ideation, research, product development, collaboration, and even intellectual property. Businesses that act now will emerge stronger in more ways than one.

In this new world, organizations don’t seek to limit the number of minds focused on a problem to a select few, instead they enlist thousands or millions with a passion to make a difference. Diversity of thought and access to vast networks of qualified minds becomes the valuable currency, replacing the closed monolithic approaches that define many of today’s organizations. This “Open Innovation” reaches outside of the four walls and attracts everyone eager to participate in advancing the cause - solving the problem.

Imagine a time when FEMA or the Red Cross is able to tap peoples everywhere on demand for ideas and implementable solutions in times of emergency, Los Angeles seeks new approaches to reducing traffic congestion or a corporation undertaking to design and deliver to market better products designed by scientists, entrepreneurs, and even their existing customers - none of whom may work for them. Open innovation marketplaces will literally be the clearing houses for connecting myriads of needs to literally millions of creative, inventive, and “uniquely prepared” minds and organizations from all over the world.

At InnoCentive, we are committed to being at the forefront of this change. Our partners post Challenges in a wide range of areas including life sciences, chemistry, applied materials, business, engineering, mathematics, computer science, and food science. Through our pavilions, we focus on areas of global importance like clean technology, renewable energy, global health, and public policy. With a firmly held belief that incentives hold the key to harnessing and focusing the vast collective talent pools available worldwide, we will drive innovation everywhere there is the potential to make a difference.

Dwayne will be speaking at i2i, to see the full program and list of speakers, please visit www.incentive2innovate.com

i2i Speaker Spotlight: Charlie Brown, Executive Director, Ashoka’s Changemakers: "Opening A New Door"

2009-04-20T13:37:00.000-07:00

Changemakers | Open Sourcing Social Solutions

Solutions are all around us. The problem is that the market place makes it hard for us to discover them. Ashoka has been finding these solutions in the form of social entrepreneurs for nearly 30 years in every corner of the globe. About 5 years ago we started to explore ways of combining our ability to find world changing people and ideas with emerging global access to the Internet. The outcome was Changemakers, an ongoing, online market of competitions, solutions and the resources needed to bring great ideas to life. Over the past several years we've hosted over 20 competitions, revealed over 4,000 thousand innovations solving the world's critical problems in over 110 countries and opened the to social innovation door for partners ranging from National Geographic to Nike.

Our competition process hinges on leveraging Ashoka's deep knowledge base in the field of social innovation to understand the issue and frame a competition, then combine that framing with a community of thousands of the world's most creative and impactful social innovators. We make as much as possible transparent online so entrants can see each others entries and anyone can help those entries improve. It's a process similar that of the open source software community only we open source social solutions.

Over the past few years a few questions have consistently emerged which give you an idea about why open innovation, competitions and our model are powerful. I'll cover a few here quickly:

"Why would anyone enter a competition where you only win $5,000?" The answer is no one enters a Changemakers competition or any other, for the most part, to win the money. People enter for the thrill of solving a problem and connecting with a community of problem solvers. They also enter to get access to the market of philanthropic and private finance investment. While Changemakers competition winners receive $5,000, we had over $25 million invested in Changemakers entrants in 2008 alone. The competition is the conduit to the marketplace.

"Isn't it unfair to hold a global competition online when so few developing countries have Internet access?" We believe that line of thinking is wrong. Many of our finalists and winners come from remote villages in Ecuador, India, Uganda and lots of places where the Internet may not be as available as, say, Palo Alto. What's more interesting is that our winners are selected by public vote. That means that rural Indian solutions are mobilizing thousands of other rural Indians to vote for their entry. While an online competition won't reach everyone you'd be amazed how much the Internet -- through a laptop, Internet café, kiosk, or mobile phone -- is already a part of everyone's life.

"Why do Nike and Citi sponsor these competitions?" Experience has told us our partners are truly looking to leverage the power of technology, competitions and a network of global innovators to help them be global problem solvers too. For folks like Citi, they are searching for the new financial products servicing the largest pool of new customers at the "bottom of the pyramid". They started the competition knowing of a handful of potential investees and ended the competition with over a hundred potential investments in India alone. For them it's about going to market faster and with the right partners that will help them navigate unique customer needs and solve challenging social problems at the same time.

All these questions reflect how fast the world is changing and the power of new innovative models to help us solve problems. When Ashoka created Changemakers our goal was to amplify the rate at which social innovation goes to scale. And we wanted to do that by creating a very simple, easy to use online marketplace driven by competitions. The result has been lots of hard work, tons of fun and thousands of innovations gaining exposure, collaborating with each other and accessing the resources they needed to solve problems.

For Ashoka this has meant opening a new door to finding and spreading our community of social entrepreneurs. For our partners it's meant a new way to innovate and find innovative partners or investments. For the rest of the world it's opened up a whole community of solutions that wouldn't exist without the power of prizes, the Internet and the Ashoka network.

Charlie Brown is the Executive Director of Ashoka's Changemakers, an online community that "open sources" innovative solutions to entrenched problems worldwide and builds communities of action to support them. Before Changemakers, Charlie spent three years building the architecture for Ashoka's global community of over 2,200 Ashoka Fellows and directed three policy focused Ashoka initiatives.

Charlie will be speaking at i2i, to see the full program and list of speakers, please visit www.incentive2innovate.com

Innovation From Around The World :: i2i Speaker Spotlight: Marthin de Beer, Senior Vice President of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group

2009-04-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

I've often said that the "wisdom of crowds" will allow us to look beyond our own walls and borders, and enable us to harness new ideas and innovation that we may not have known existed in our own backyard. And that's just the approach we took and how we found our winners of the Cisco I-Prize contest.

When we decided to externalize our I-Zone Wiki, and run the I-Prize contest back in October 2007. I don't think any of us would have guessed that within the first 3 months of the announcement, we would witness thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators from over 104 countries brainstorming online, sharing their ideas, forming new teams and collaborating in a global forum. The ideas we received ranged from telemedicine and energy management to new forms of communication and automotive networking.

Our winning team, Team AKS, comprised of husband and wife, Anna and Niels Gossen out of Germany and Anna's brother, Sergey Bessonnitsyn, located in Russia. They proposed a new approach to using the network as the platform to help enable "Smart Grids" that will provide visibility, manageability and, ultimately, optimized control of energy consuming systems to drive energy efficiencies. Their business plan was notable for its combination of technology and business model innovation.

As they were located in two different countries, the team relied on Cisco's Collaboration portfolio, consisting of Cisco TelePresence, Unified Communications Suite and WebEx Connect, to brainstorm their initial idea, collaborate on the business plan, and then virtually present their idea to Cisco.

Team AKS is proof that distance and borders did not inhibit their ability to collaborate and innovate. As with their idea and many others, innovation can be done on an old idea or even business process, but we must keep in mind that innovation will always be required to keep pace with change and stay ahead or even drive market transition.

Just as energy is the basis of life and ideas the source of innovation, so is innovation the vital spark of all human change, improvement and progress.

Marthin de Beer is the Senior Vice President of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Group (ETG) as well as a member of the Cisco Development Council. He is also executive co-chair on Cisco Video and Smart Grid initiatives and an executive member of the Cisco Sports and Entertainment Board.

Join us at i2i, for the opportunity to connect with Marthin.

He will be presenting on Open Collaboration & Open Innovation.

"And the winner is..."

2009-04-15T15:17:00.000-07:00

The McKinsey & Company Report. “And the winner is…” Capturing the Promise of Philanthropic Prizes was released March 3, 2009. The Report concluded that incentive prizes are a unique and powerful tool that should be in the basic toolkit of many of today’s philanthropists. The recent renaissance of prizes is largely due to a new appreciation for the multiple ways in which they can produce change: not only by identifying new levels of excellence and by encouraging specific innovations, but also by changing wider perceptions, improving the performance of communities of problem-solvers, building the skills of individuals, and mobilizing new talent or capital.

“Well designed prizes carry a strong element of theater that makes them newsworthy and media friendly. This messaging and brand-building potential is attractive to corporations looking to burnish their image or wealthy donors seeking to signal their arrival.”

Paul Jansen of McKinsey & Company will be presenting the findings of this report on i2i Day 1 - Monday, June 8th. Join us to discuss the power of prizes.

Click here to download full report.