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.

Avnet, (NYSE:AVT), a Fortune 500 company founded in 1921, is one of the world's largest trans-national distributors of electronic components and computer products with 10,000 employees worldwide. Using Brightidea software, Avnet steers its business culture towards continual innovation through THINKTank, an social innovation management platform which allows employees to collaborate around ideas that identify and resolve critical business challenges. Change is never easy for large companies, especially ones with long established histories. Avnet's focus on change management, of which THINKTank is a critical part, is a multi-facetted approach to smooth the transition of the company to actively embrace innovation and make it a central part of every employee's day job.

At our most recent Birds of a Feather (BOF) event hosted by Kraft, Terry Cain, VP of Global Customer Engagement at Avnet discussed THINKTank and its successes saying, "We just celebrated 2,600 results worldwide and these are employee implemented process improvements with $93 million in financial audited benefits."

Watch Terry's exclusive presentation, along with his colleague Art Klaum, while they discuss change management and implementing innovation initiatives.

And don't forget to join our BOF Community of Innovation Leaders to get exclusive insights, access, and instant connections to practitioners around the world.

Emerson (NYSE: EMR), is a $21B global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions. The company has been using Brightidea led by the Embedded Computing & Power group to power its innovation management initiatives for the past few years. Recently, Emerson hosted an Innovation and Technology Conference in St. Louis, MO, featuring over thirty presentations on technology, materials, new product development and innovation by various speakers from companies such as Cisco, Verizon, and IDEO. Bob Aylsworth, Chief Innovation Officier for Embedded Computing & Power, shared best practices in innovation management. Brightidea's COO Vincent Carbone also participated in the event by joining a panel discussion on Creating & Sustaining a Culture of Innovation in which he talked about the innovation processes facilitated by Brightidea software.

Emerson is dedicated to innovation, and André St-Martin, Lead Innovation Strategist, has attended three of our Birds of Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) events to learn and share ideas on best practices. At our BOF in Hong Kong, André discussed the challenges in innovation, particularly on the review processes, saying, "one of the biggest challenges is about the balance of expectation of quick results and having to work/nurture/incubate ideas."

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

Watch his exclusive presentation and get insights on Innovation at Work at Emerson.

Emerson (NYSE: EMR), based in St. Louis, Missouri (USA), is a global leader in bringing technology and engineering together to provide innovative solutions to customers in industrial, commercial, and consumer markets through its network power, process management, industrial automation, climate technologies, and tools and storage businesses.  Sales in fiscal 2010 were $21 billion

In this last spot of our video series, Dr. Benjamin Hamilton, Business Innovation & Quality Manager at Amadeus, discusses the challenge of adapting to the different business practices in Asian culture. See how he is addressing the challenge in the video below.

This and our prior insights on innovation from prominent practitioners were captured during Brightidea's recent two-day Birds of Feather Innovation Leaders (BOF) event in Hong Kong where we posed the question "What do you believe your biggest challenge is to drive innovation?".

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.

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 featuring Dale Preston, Managing Director at The Nielsen Company and shares with us a concept of providing a monetary incentive to motivate the sharing of ideas. Check out his interview about the event 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.

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.

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.