Categoría: Congresos

Dr. Curtis R. Carlson, President and CEO, Stanford Research Institute (SRI International)

A non-profit organisation located in the Silicon Valley. What have they done? computer mouse, first internet logon, HDTV, artificial muscles, electronic banking… And they have a lot of partners with which sharing innovation and best practices.

Innovation is the only path to growth and prospeerity, environmental suistainability and security. And we can all innovate, because, after all, we all have customers. We live in a world of abundance: there are no limits to ideas and creativity in the Knowledge Age, but we have some challenges.

Fast (exponential) growing: computer power, www users, information generated… a lot of new opportunities and the power of social groups. Because, actually, the world is flat: anywhere is accessible. Examples of innovation and good practices in China: Biopolis.

Current situation: threading the needle (tunnel again) only 1 out of 100 ideas gets the end and are actual innovations. The rest are lost. Some myths:

• it’s all about creativity
• entrepreneurs are risk takers
• only a few people can innovate
• discipline destroys creativity
• shareholders come first
• it’s the employee’s fault

Innovation practices 3.0:

1. v1.0 Ford: cost, cost, cost
2. v2.o Deming: quality, quality, quality
3. v3.0 Knowledge-Age: value, value, value

How can we do that? Success is determined by innovation metrics. Five disciplines of innovations

1. Important customer & market needs
2. Value creation
3. Innovation champions: no champion, no project, no success
4. Innovation teams
5. Organisational aligment

And they are multiplicative. if one of them fail, all fails. It’s critical to detect and cover unset user’s needs faster than the competence (to transform ideas into products). Again: speed is the key for innovation. But it’s not only about the approach, is NABC (need, approach, benefit/cost and competition) And this is an iterative process.

… and open innovation is a good example.

Well. I have to go and I can’t attend the second part, I’m sorry. Anyway: no one is talking about open innovation, so I think that they haven’t chosen properly the name of the conference :-( Innovation, yes, but open?… I don’t think so.

This is a session about how university and companies can collaborate to innovate.

Dr. Jan-Anders Manson, Ecole Polytechnique Féderale de Lausanne (EPFL)

A very big difference in the investment in US and Europe. Our (european) partners usually are big companies, but the majority of companies are SME. 80% of manufacturing industry in EU is traditional, focused on conversion via raw material, labor and energy. There’s a big difference in market capital and No of employees in Hi-Tech companies, so there is in their creation time.

What universities can do to inprove innovation and contribute to the creation of new companies? One key concept from universities is support to their best entrepreneurs, by (i) encouraging the enterpreneurial mindset, (ii) offering a network of competences and (iii) providing financial grants to develop an idea.

Explaining a lt of examples of tech transfer with companies that show that this approach works. Anway, it doesn’t seems a very «open» approach. A good example of collaboration, implication of students in project development and solving real-world problems, promoting innovation inside university. But I consider it is a closed and ‘traditional’ approach.

Dr. Andreu Mas-Colell, Professor of the Universitat Pompeu Fabchecked in indexra.

The European Paradox: Europe does not innovate enough in spite of its first-rate science. Why? not enough expenditure in R&D (proposed 3% PIB, don’t reached) and transmision rigidities from the ‘knowledge’ sector. But the diagnostic is not complete: Europe is not the first, but the secondUSA is the first).

The challenge in Europe: The VII Framework Program. The difference with previous one is that this is a diversification exercise: 15% in the European Research Council. But compared with NSF and NIH is very (too?) small. Its emerging doctrine: the three R’s: Retain, Repatriate and Recruit

Mr. Tom Hockaday, Managing Director, Isis Innovation Ltd.: Technology Transfer from the University of Oxford.

Technology is a cost; you don’t make money from technology. So Universities need business to comercialise its research. But they are very different (a chalk is not a cheese).

Again, as in the first case, I guess that is a closed innovation (transfer) model, based on licenses to finance the research. I am a bit dissapointed. I was waiting for an innovative viewpoint for innovation.

At the end, is just a list on nunbers and a description of how Isis works. Nothing specially important. To conclude, univ and business exists for different reasons but they can benefit from working together. This is not easy, so skilled intermediaries are needed.

Henry Chresbrough, the father of all of this. talking about Open Innovation at the Open Innovation & University Conference.

Current paradign: a closed innovation system: a lot of ideas and knowledge that have to be transformed, ‘standarised’ for current production models to reach the market, loosing a lot o possibilities. The process is an one-way-in and one-way-out process: from science -> development -> market.

Which sources of information have we nowadays? Public repositories, as Google or the Public LIbrary of Science. Faculties are anpother good source of infromation and knowledge. Kowledge monolopies are over: industry, the Academia, Journals, USPTO (patents) recipients and, of course, the WWW.

Internal R&D is still needed: it helps to recognised external sources of knowledge, it identifies gaps and holes (they can be sourced outside-outsourcing-) and it enables integration os individual pieces (service?) into a larger whole (it sounds to me gvery close to agent-based systems).

Smallest companies are investing more and more in R&D in the last five years, while largest ones keeps their investent at the same levels. What changed? Five things:

• increasing mobile trained workers
• more capable universities
• dimished US hegemony: Finland, Taiwan…
• erosion of oligopoly market positions
• enormous venture in venture capital (3 orders of magnitude y barely 30 years)

What’s new? An Open Innovation Paradigm: many inputs: internal and external technology bases, tech. insoircing… and meny outputs: licensing, spin-offs.. It’s a tunnel (embudo) with many holes. Each in-way can fill different gaps in the process (some kind of spin-ins). And new information arrrives to new markets or even the market of other firms.

The example of IBM: besides its internal tech base, they used Java and LInux (external tech. base) for their products. And they reach other markets with its licensing OEM and ODM program. Other samples: Procter&Gamble.

How can companies gain access to these ideas?: (1) cultivating relationships with academic researchers and institutions (I like this one ;-): odd and funny critters to manage, with different motivations (money is not the most important thing) (2) knowledge discovery processes: tech scouting, idea «hunts», innovation prizes (as Google Android Developer Chalenge or the Lunar X Prize), internal tech fairs and innovation communities. Very «wikinomical».

A couple of good questions: Can you depend on a continued supply of good external ideas? Can competitors get to those ideas as well as you?

Just to finish, the logic of Open Innovation:

1. Good ideas are widely distributed today. No one has a monopoly on useful knowledge anymore
2. Financial managers must play poker, as well as ches, to capture the values in false negatives
3. Not all of the smart people in the word work for us

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Tags: openinnovation, wikinomic, google, ibm, science, unviersity