During the recent two-day Birds of Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event in Hong Kong, Brightidea captured insights on Innovation from a few prominent attendees posing the question, "What do you believe your biggest challenge is to drive innovation?".

The insights are featured in a four-part video series. This spot features Andre St-Martin, Director Lead Innovation Specialist at Emerson, talking about the challenge of bringing ideas to the next step of development. See more of what he has to say in the video below.

Join other Innovation Leaders and connect, share, and gain insights on best practices in innovation management through the BOF community. Want to attend a BOF event? Register for the upcoming BOF hosted by Kraft coming up in August 2011 here.

In April 2011, China Light and Power (CLP), one of the leading power companies in Asia, hosted Brightidea's latest two-day Birds of Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event in Hong Kong. Bringing together experts and innovators from throughout Asia, the intimate conference allowed for discussion of innovation challenges and sharing of best practices.

During the event Brightidea captured insights on Innovation from a few prominent attendees posing the question, "What do you believe your biggest challenge is to drive innovation?".

The insights will be featured in a four-part video series kicking off with the response from Wayne Pales, Head of Group Technology & Architecture at CLP discussing the need for an interactive idea-sharing platform to reach out to all of the company’s 7,000 employees. Check out more of what he has to say in the video below.

Join other Innovation Leaders and connect, share, and gain insights on best practices in innovation management through the BOF community. Want to attend a BOF event? Register for the upcoming BOF hosted by Kraft coming up in August 2011 here.

On June 23^rd, GE celebrated the end of the yearlong Ecomagination Challenge with an 8-hour Ask Anything live online forum featuring some of the world's leading innovators including Tim O'Reilly, Bre Pettis, Andy Spade, and Yves Behar. Over 8,000 viewers followed the event and had the chance to submit their questions via Twitter. They also watched as five final winners each received $100,000 Innovation Awards. With over 75,000 participants Ecomagination marked one of the biggest open innovation challenges in history, it broke records, and dozens of companies received parts of the $200 million available for funding.

Brightidea's founder and CEO Matt Greeley participated in the event in a lively dialogue about the foundations of innovation with Lisa Margonelli of New America Foundation, Ann Hand of Project Frog, and inventor Saul Griffin. Asked to give insight on the importance of crowdsourcing ideas, Greeley said, "We can now tap into this "super-mind", if you will. Of course you need sophisticated tools to make that all happen, but the fact the GE has invested over $130 million in the ideas, proposals, and businesses that came to them, shows that there is real value in the crowdsourcing innovation model." He also described how companies like GE stay ahead of the rapidly increasing pace of change by opening up their innovation processes to the public, while making the corporation's resources and funds available for external innovative developments.

The development of green technologies was the focus of another forum discussion in which Tim O'Reilly, co-founder of O'Reilly Media, defined two of the most important considerations for companies: attention to user behavior and the need to design "products to be hacked". He also pointed out open innovation pitfalls for organizations, like the need to design "systems with a few simple rules and with extensibility in mind from the start".

Yves Behar, founder of design and branding firm fuseproject, joined the conversation by examining how open innovation is changing business practices. He concluded that "crowd participation drives what defines brands, and consumers are more likely to use a product if they had more options in designing it. He added that given the chance, people will "always participate."

The Ecomagination Challenge has become much more than a contest for GE as its themes of open innovation and sustainable, clean energy have become ingrained in the company's business philosophy. Although this may be the end of the challenge, it is just the beginning of GE's commitment to driving sustainable growth through collaborative innovation.

The business value of enterprise collaboration software has been a hot topic in the Enterprise 2.0 discussion.

A McKinsey survey among 3,249 executives across industries found that companies that use internal social media applications achieve measurable benefits such as faster access to knowledge, reduced communication costs and quicker access to internal experts. This increases the productivity of day-to-day operations, and can also help accelerate innovation.

At Brightidea, we believe that innovation is a social process that requires continuous collaboration for best results. Making it easy for employees to collaborate around ideas is therefore a major step toward innovation success.

We are excited to announce that we have teamed up with Yammer, today's leading enterprise networking application, to expand Brightidea's set of social features and give ideas more visibility throughout the enterprise.

With the integration of Brightidea and Yammer, instant updates from your internal Brightidea challenges will post automatically to your Yammer activity stream.

The benefits?

• More participation and engagement
• Better visibility into current innovation challenges
• Increased productivity through streamlined communication

Find out more here and speak with us for further information on how employee engagement can drive innovation!

We began discussing the GE Ecomagination Challenge last July and the time has come for the final announcement of winners, marking the close of the online challenge. Get ready though because tomorrow, GE will be hosting a celebratory event: a live 8-hour Ask Anything online conversation where people can dialogue with today's leading innovators.

Going with the challenge's theme of open innovation, this virtual open forum will give the global public a chance to dialogue with some of the world's most creative innovators, including Yves Behar, Tim O'Reilly, Bre Pettis and Andy Spade.

Join GE's live 8-hour Ask Anything online conversation: Thursday, June 23, 8:30am-4:30pm EST

Live Event Streaming at: http://www.ecomagination.com/

Submit questions via Twitter to @ecomagination #AskGE. Join us June 23 from 8:30am-4:30pm EST for a celebration and lively discussion of GE's revolutionary Ecomagination Challenge.

Brightidea's founder and CEO, Matt Greeley, will also be a featured participant in the "Innovation In Society: The Birth of an Idea" segment at 1pm EST.

It's been an exciting year with the Ecomagination Challenge, with millions of dollars awarded to innovative companies striving for a clean energy economy. GE's commitment to eco innovation and financial support has allowed these companies to better fund projects and see their ideas come to fruition. Brightidea has worked closely with GE in developing an online community powered by Brightidea software for the "Powering the Grid" segment of their challenge. With this platform, GE was able to manage the thousands of ideas submitted, which were later judged by its panel of experts, so as to choose viable ideas to receive a part of its $200 million award money. We have been truly honored to be a part of such an amazing initiative that is dedicated to positive change, and creating a better tomorrow.

Recently, China Light and Power (CLP) hosted Brightidea's Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event in Hong Kong. The event brought experts and innovators from around the Asia Pacific Region to share ideas about their innovation processes and challenges. This exciting tour continues with Kraft hosting our next BOF in August. Check out the below insightful recaps and links to full video presentations by CLP, Nielsen, Amadeus, and THINKERGY!

CLP's CIO Joe Locandro examines one of the biggest challenges discussed at the event: the need to work with the region's unique culture so as to foster a sense of community amongst all employees and encourage open idea exchanges. Many Asian countries have a hierarchical culture that is conveyed within business relationships where employees simply agree with their supervisor's ideas with little to no input, which is not conducive to driving others to voice their ideas. Locandro sought to appeal to everybody within the company by establishing a Facebook-style community powered by Brightidea software, which is accessible to everybody at CLP. The community utilizes crowdsourcing in which the masses judge and moderate ideas, as well as a rewards point system with prizes. Take a look at a video of the presentation here.

Dale Preston at Nielsen sees motivation as the biggest challenge in developing an online community where employees can share their ideas, so he started the initiative offline by holding an interactive "Innovation Day" in which the company learned about the importance of innovation. Preston admits that initially take up was slow, but soon enough people began getting excited by sharing, supporting, and building on ideas on the company's Brightidea-powered platform. Seed capital also aided in motivation, as Nielsen had cash up for grabs for those who submitted the best ideas. Check out a video of Preston's entire presentation here.

This post is part of the Innovation Management Practitioners Blog Series.

Innovation is never easy, and the Financial Services industry is far from a safe haven for the common challenges faced by all organizations. These days, the concept of 'financial innovation' has come under scrutiny, see one example in an Economist debate on the subject here. If you pull back and consider what financial innovations have contributed to overall growth and societal well-being, through improved services, protections, access to capital, etc.- it is hard to pinpoint the current state of innovation in the financial services industry. One of the industry's greatest innovations, securitization, proved to be unsuccessful when its method of pooling various types of debt to investors was abused and aided the resulting housing market decline. While there are no doubt roadblocks, and unfortunate examples of innovation gone wrong will continue to grab headlines, there are still many positive examples of improvements and positive steps forward that indicate innovation is alive and well. An increased focus on collective problem-solving, and purposed collaboration among stakeholders, backed by a commitment to streamline and optimize the actual process of innovation through smarter management, better technology, and a renewed commitment to openness, are rising to meet ever-changing needs.

Challenges

Innovation is on the mind of financial companies. A McKinsey Global survey found that 67% of executives in the financial-services industry view the need for increased innovation necessary to meet long-term and short-term performance goals. However, there are organizational struggles that prevent companies from structuring their innovations and seeing them through. The survey states that "around 70 percent [of executives] rate their performance as poor or merely adequate in the following categories: establishing clear incentives to innovate, setting clear targets and metrics for innovation initiatives, prototyping ideas for rapid commercialization, systematically providing funds for innovation projects, and developing a network of external partners." The innovation process can be a long one, especially in the eyes of financial companies looking for short-term execution with short-term financial results, therefore very few companies have dedicated budgets and organizations towards a formalized process for the generation of ideas, their evaluation and eventual implementation. While many organizations regardless of industry face the challenges mentioned above, there are additional hurdles which Financial Services has to address.

There tends to be a lot of incremental innovation because banking is a highly commoditized industry. Incremental innovation itself isn't a bad thing and is often undervalued. However, if it's the only option, you're in a dangerous situation since the less your customers are able to distinguish you from the competition, the higher the likelihood that they will simply choose the lowest priced option. This results in smaller margins and lowers the ability for all but a few to compete.

Financial Services is also heavily regulated which provides a whole host of issues ranging from limiting what new products can be offered to who you are even allowed to communicate with. For example, when looking to their internal audience for ideas or feedback, some organizations can't reach out to their entire employee base. Through issues such as SEC regulations, certain parties within the same organization aren't even allowed to collaborate which limits the quality of content in those discussions.

Security is also a major concern for everyone from the large institutions to the individual customer. CIOs are kept up at night worrying about data leakage which can result in huge fines from the SEC not to mention a risk for the enterprise as a whole. Individuals worry about everything from to their bank passwords getting in the wrong hands to identity theft.

Success Stories

Fortunately, there are a fair amount of success stories, many of which are the result of the industry's relatively high level of investment in technology. For example, Mint.com features a free user-friendly online platform that allows users to manage their money from multiple financial institutions. These services have existed for generations, but without leveraging the internet, they were previously only available to those with means.

Motivating a large number of individuals to come forward and share their ideas about breakthrough innovations can be a challenge. We've discussed the different types of incentives and rewards that can be utilized to spur employee engagement for innovation-generating campaigns before, and certainly found many examples of creative and down-right effective methods.

EllisDon, a leader in Canadian construction, recently launched an initiative to harness the power of purposed collaboration and ideation with prizes up for grabs. Known for innovation,  the company designed and built the world's first retractable roof stadium in 1985 and is now evolving its innovation processes, supported by Brightidea software, to further tap employees to source breakthrough ideas and streamline idea implementation. Its 'Uprising' initiative is designed to encourage employees to present and vote on game-chaning ideas for construction industry. To motivate people to participate, the project has been set up as a challenge, with a prize of a luxury Caribbean vacation available to the person who submits the best idea.

"The very nature of construction is a collaborative and information centric process. However, most of this collaboration and information lives (and dies) on jobsites miles and miles from one another," stated Chris Zakrajsek of EllisDon. "Using the Brightidea Platform we are enabling some of the best and brightest in the industry to work together -no matter where they are." 

Submissions will be judged on how viable they are to being cost-effective, the feasibility of execution, and how the desirable the idea is to the market. One of the most popular ideas looks at the need to better connect and follow through with customers through all stages of a projects execution. Meanwhile some ideas focus more simplistic, tactical ways the companies can increase its brand presence in the industry and beyond.

"The construction industry has seen major changes in recent years. EllisDon is taking the first big step towards managing that change. By implementing Brightidea's Innovation Pipeline System, they will be one of the first large construction companies to embrace crowdsourcing and innovation management, " states Paul Tran, Director of Business Development and Strategic Partnerships at Brightidea.

'Uprising' is the beginning of a larger plan at EllisDon to launch other innovation initiatives, some publically facing, backed by a thorough process for evaluation and implementation supported by Brightidea software. The company intends to remain a global dominate player in an evolving industry that must adapt to technology (just think of what the ipad has done for architects and project managers who work on site) through strategically emphasizing knowledge, and ideas as a source for differentiation. Getting better at innovating, and expanding the source of potential game-changing ideas from just a few to the many, is an obvious step in that direction.

To learn more about Brightidea software, schedule a one-on-one demo today with an Brightidea Solutions Expert today.