This post is part of our One-on-One at BOF video series featuring interviews from innovation leaders at Kraft's Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event.

Peter Neumann, Innovation Manager at Bosch, a leading power tool and accessories corporation based in Germany, talks with Brightidea about the open innovation. When asked how he defines success, Peter stated, "Well one way is we have an open innovation from one of our Dremel Link group members and we're going to release this product in about another month." 

Bosch is clearly demonstrating the power of open innovation through implemented product ideas and increased customer collaboration where unmet needs and wants intuitively inform the product roadmap.

Find below Peter's full interview.

Join our BOF Community of Innovation Leaders today and get insights, access, and instant connections to practitioners around the world.

This is part of our One-on-One at BOF video series, featuring interviews from innovation leaders who presented at Kraft's Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event.

EllisDon, one of the largest building contractors in Canada, was present with their Web Application Manager, Christine Zakrajsek, to discuss the company's innovation strategies. After her presentation we had a chance to catch up with Christine for a quick interview and when asked about how the company defines success, she responded, "We define success at EllisDon about engagement because we believe that engaged employees are happy employees and happy employees are successful business." Christine continued by saying, "once you get the sharing and the engagement, the innovation almost happens naturally, and once you have that natural organic innovation the ROI bubbles up."

Take a look at her exclusive interview below.

Join our BOF Community of Innovation Leaders today and get insights, access, and instant connections to practitioners around the world.

This is part of our One-on-One at BOF video series, featuring interviews from innovation leaders who presented at Kraft's Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), a leading multinational information technology company, brought their IP and Innovation Strategist, Silvi Steigerwald, to BOF where she talked to Brightidea about the company's innovation portal The Garage. We had a chance chat with Silvi directly about how the company utilizes Brightidea and she said, "We also use it to recognize our inventors and idea submitters too. We try to highlight news, hot ideas, so more than just gathering ideas and collaboration we use it as a communication vehicle."

Watch Silvi's full interview below.

Join our BOF Community of Innovation Leaders today and get insights, access, and instant connections to practitioners around the world.

It's December, the holiday season is upon us and gift giving is in full swing. But, did you know giving a child the chance at a better life is possible this year by doing something other than opening up your wallet? World Vision, a global humanitarian organization, presents an alternative type of gift – one composed of your time, thoughtfulness, expertise and ideas. The organization has recently launched Sponsor a Solution, a Brightidea-powered challenge looking to the public to donate their software development skills to help solve vital technology challenges encountered while providing aid. Technology is critical to World Vision and its field workers around the world as they continually use it to properly communicate and better help disadvantaged children, families and communities around the world.

World Vision handles numerous challenges when facilitating aid and have chosen to focus on the two most crucial areas identified by field workers scattered across the globe: field data and collection and fixed asset and inventory tracking. Since launching, the platform has already received a series of ideas, such as a proposed offline capability to collect children's data and the creation of a mobile app. Sponsor a Solution is currently open for submissions.

Join World Vision and Brightidea in spreading the word and embracing the holiday spirit of generosity by donating invaluable time and ideas to those in need. Post a solution today!

Apart from the main presentations Kraft's Birds of a Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event in Chicago was buzzing with people, discussions and ideas. To give you look at the exciting and an innovative environment surrounding the event, we will be blogging our latest video series, One-on-One at BOF, featuring interviews from attendees.

Heidi Hattendorf, Director of Innovation Development at Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) came BOF event to discuss the company's recent use of Brightidea software and when asked in her interview about the challenges, she responded, "One of the things that we're looking at is, how do we provide the business context around some of the challenges, because you can ask people to innovate and create ideas, but we want them to have relevance, something that's going to be brought to market, something that's important to the company that we're going to invest in."

View the entire exclusive interview below.

Join our BOF Community of Innovation Leaders today and get insights, access, and instant connections to practitioners around the world.

As Europe's largest economy and leader in patent registrations, Germany has been a hub of cutting-edge research and technologies. German businesses traditionally team up with academic institutions to drive technological progress. In recent years, more enterprises have opened their innovation processes to harness the collective wisdom of their workforces, customers, and partners.

Handelsblatt Open Innovation conference is Europe's flagship event on Open Innovation. This year's event in Berlin attracted participants from companies like Bayer, Cisco, Ford, Google, Nestlé and Procter&Gamble who discussed practical knowledge and best practices.

Among the keynote speakers was Matt Asman, Head of Innovation at Cisco Europe. Matt gave a fascinating insight into Cisco's innovation program that has driven impressive results.

As a core discipline, innovation at Cisco is embedded on all levels, from corporate vision to execution. In his presentation, Matt described how people, processes, and technology were taken into account when developing the comprehensive program. Talking about securing internal support and participation, he said: "For innovation managers it is dangerous to lean back. They need to be pro-active and constantly reach out to the company's stakeholders to stimulate collaboration."

Brightidea's software to power the I-Zone, an internal hub for employees to share and discuss ideas. "The I-Zone has been fundamental to the program's success," explained Matt. "It enables us to tap into our employees' knowledge and surface ideas that would otherwise remain unknown."

The results are impressive. The current innovation portfolio that has emerged from the hundreds of ideas submitted to the I-Zone is expected to generate over 360 million U.S. dollars in revenue over the next three years.

Other presentations at the conference included Procter & Gamble's Connect + Develop initiative and Nestle's Sharing is Winning Open Innovation program.

Frank Mattes, CEO of innovation-3, German Open Innovation thought-leader, and Premier Brightidea Partner, also spoke at the conference. In his presentation, he outlined the five key Open Innovation trends in Germany.

The Handelsblatt Open Innovation conference provided participants with hands-on insights from peers and confirmed the value of collaboration in driving – and managing – innovation processes.

According to the National Cancer Institute an estimated "230,480 women will be diagnosed with and 39,520 women will die of cancer of the breast in 2011." With statistics like that, it's not surprising that there exists a strong culture that surrounds breast cancer with an awareness month, a pink ribbon symbol, and numerous organizations to support all those affected by the disease. Real challenges like fighting cancer need a streamlined approach to tapping as many minds as possible with the expertise to collectively collaborate on solutions. Open Innovation challenges, powered by Brightidea software, are effective at sourcing quality, breakthrough ideas and providing pathways to real solutions that can help solve some of the most critical societal and medical issues of our time.

With the stakes high, General Electric (NYSE: GE) joined the movement with the launch of their latest open innovation challenge, Healthymagination: Assembling the Tools to Fight Cancer, looking to the public's innovators for ideas on the early detection and treatment of breast cancer with $100 million pledged by the company to fund top ideas.

Phase one of the challenge just concluded on November 20^th with 518 ideas and 183 comments submitted by over 5,000 users through the Brightidea-powered challenge portal. Through an interactive, social collaborative environment users could submit, comment, share, collaborate, and vote on ideas. In addition, social functionality allowed for hash tag-specific tweets to link to an idea submitted as comments.

The volume and quality of ideas submitted thus far has surpassed GE's expectations and the company plans on launching various challenges looking to, according to the company "empower doctors and patients and enable more personalized treatment for women worldwide." This is just the first part of the Healthymagination Challenge, as winners of the first phase and the announcement of the second phase will come in early 2012. Stay tuned….