Personal Blog
A link to the Flare Innovation Impact Matrix was shared by fellow friend Fenno Verdaasdonk. In this article I will describe the Flare Innovation Impact Matrix and try to look at connections with business model generation and corporate effectuation.
What or who is Flare Innovation? Flare Innovation is a “collective of experienced innovators and specialists operating in the wider field of innovation and new product development”.
Some time ago I attended the event “Innovatie management op het Microsoft-platform” where I could experience a cool intersection of open innovation and information technology.
CXS B.V., a joint venture between Campana & Schott and Corporate Project Solutions, shared a case study at a marketleading pharmaceutical company, where they’ve build an innovation management solution build up-on Microsoft Project Server 2010.
Let’s start with a quick look at the term innovation (and some of its context). 🙂
A formal definition of open innovation is discussed in the article “What is open innovation“. I’ve argued there that the term open innovation has innovated itself, with a more recent view on services focused innovation.
The open innovation funnel is a visual model that describes the inflows and outflows of knowledge. The starting point on the left is the ideation phase, with lots of different ideas and knowledge sources. These ideas travel different routes through the funnel, however the result is going to market in an actual product or service.
Keep the open innovation funnel in mind, because it will help you understand the different building blocks of the innovation management solution build by CXS B.V.
The PowerPoint slide above describes the initial situation and context of the case study. You can see the different IT system building blocks:
The most interesting part for me was the connection of different IT systems (like the pieces of the puzzle) including the SAP ERP systems with financial databases.
In this PowerPoint slide you can see each of the IT system building blocks as modules in a Microsoft SharePoint environment.
The open innovation funnel has stage-gated characteristics given the different building blocks of IT systems. A highly interesting scientific paper about stage gated innovation funnels is How companies are reinventing their idea-to-launch methodologies (Cooper, 2009).
The formal system architecture is shown in the PowerPoint slide above.
First a core platform of Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft SQL Server.
The second layer on top of the core platform consists of Microsoft Project Server 2010 and Microsoft SharePoint 2010. The ability to create (custom) SharePoint workflows suits the stage gated model perfectly.
The third layer is the front-end to the end-user and consists of Microsoft Project 2010, a SharePoint Portal and a Microsoft Project Web App. Web Apps are known from Microsoft Office 2010, where the Word-, Excel-, PowerPoint- and OneNote Web Apps allow you to create documents from your browser onto your SkyDrive cloud storage (and edit them).
In the first PowerPoint slide you could see the innovation management solution also consists of a connection with financial databases within SAP. Remark that a lot of large international firms use SAP technology for Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).
Perhaps less known is the fact that Microsoft and SAP have a strong partnership for more than 20 years with one common goal: Create customer value.
[…] close collaboration has led to the development of joint solutions, such as Duet Enterprise™, and the continued optimization of Windows™ and SQL Server™ platforms for SAP. Today, thousands of companies around the world depend on these SAP and Microsoft solutions to effectively run their businesses.”
However in the solution architecture you can see that CS Connect facilitates the integration of the Innovation Management solution based on Microosft Project Server 2010 with the (financial) databases in SAP. You can read more about CS Connect and its features in the following CS Connect Brochure.
CXS B.V. has added extra reporting modules to Microsoft Project Server in order to provide the neccesary management tools for Project Managers and Portfolio Managers. The whitepaper Reporting with Microsoft Project Server 2010 is a must-read when you want to learn more about this aspect of Microsoft Project Server.
It is really cool to see an innovation management solution that is based on Microsoft Project Server 2010, that supports the complete life cycle of a pharmaceutical product (from idea to realization).
According to the CSX team has this innovation management solution shortened time to market of pharmaceutical products and lowered the corresponding costs. The innovation management solution has helped to increase interaction and transparency between the different departments that each add their piece of value to the end product.
Personally I do see similarities with the open innovation funnel, so I could see scientific theory and practice coming together in a single solution. Furthermore there was a great and open discussion with the different project managers and innovation managers who visited this TechNet Masterclass and the people from CSX B.V. who actually build this innovation management solution.
Overall it was highly interesting to see an end-to-end innovation management solution build with Microsoft Project Server 2012, Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and other technologies from the Microsoft Platform.
In this article I will try to answer the question “What is a business model?”. I will use a formal definition from Alexander Osterwalder and dive into tools and concepts that might be of use when you start playing around with innovating your (company’s) business model.
What is Open Innovation? Professor Henry Chesbrough shook up the business world with his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology back in 2003.
In 2006 professor Chesbrough released another book Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape and in 2011 Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era.
This illustrates that the open innovation field has innovated itself, and therefore I would like to focus a on the (research) question “What is open innovation?”.
Let’s start with a definition from the University of California, Berkeley – Haas School of Business website:
“Open Innovation is the use of purpose inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate innovation. With knowledge now widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research, but should acquire inventions or intellectual property from other companies when it advances the business model.”
Open Innovation is not only about getting knowledge and ideas into the company boundaries, but also about outflows of knowledge and technology to various markets.
During the fifth European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse, professor Chesbrough emphasized the importance of the business model.
“A business model describes the rational of how an organization creates, delivers and captures value.“
Advancing the business model sounds like business model innovation as defined by Osterwalder et al. (2009).Osterwalder et al. (2009) provide a tool, the business model canvas, to help advance or innovate the business model !
The open innovation funnel could be seen as the visual model of the open innovation definition above.
The open innovation funnel will help me position open innovation research articles, but helps furthermore in the process of developing new business models.
Finally I would like to invite you to watch the following interview with professor Chesbrough, in which he briefly explains the change from product focused innovation to service focused innovation. 🙂
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbiJ_9W7UHM&w=570]
“Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Haas Center for Open Innovation, rethinks the concept of open innovation to tackle a new economy. In his new book, Open Services Innovation (2011), Chesbrough offers the tools to apply service-focused innovation to avoid what he calls ‘the commodity trap.'”
Enjoy innovation !
Last week Facebook announced the release of Microsoft Docs -a collaborative project of Microsoft and Facebook- during the Facebook F8 conference.
In addition to the Microsoft Docs introduction of Lili Cheng, General Manager of FUSE Labs, you can read the following description of Microsoft Docs on the Fuse Labs website:
“Discover. Create. Share.
Now you can discover, create, and share Microsoft Office documents with your Facebook friends. Built using Microsoft Office 2010 – Docs for Facebook provides the best possible document service for the Facebook environment.
Docs gives you a great, flexible social–productivity experience. You can decide who to share with… from privately creating, editing, and collaborating around docs, all the way to public sharing on the web. You can upload or start doc online, have someone help you edit it, incorporate feedback, and then share it with the world. Docs can be viewed and edited directly within a web browser – or, with a single click, you can edit them more richly and powerfully through the Microsoft Office software on your PC or Mac.
Seamless integration with Facebook means that the service is all about sharing your documents. Finally docs can be friendly too!”
On the Microsoft Docs website you can find two video’s: (1) Welcome to Docs – Video Tutorial and (2) Getting Started for Docs – Video Tutorial. These video’s should give you a basic impression of the capabilities of Microsoft Docs.
Furthermore I would like to recommend a Microsoft Docs hands-on tour article published on PCWorld by JR Raphael, a contributing editor @ PCWorld and and the co-founder of eSarcasm. The article consists of pictures of the different steps of the document lifecycle.
Matt Singley, Senior Director of Social Media Strategy for M80, the leading provider of social media marketing and digital publicity services to Fortune 500 brands, has written an excellent article about Microsoft Docs as well and has some interesting feedback to share:
- “You can visit the site and download existing homepage docs, but unfortunately full participation is still limited to beta users that have received an invite code. That means that until you are in the beta test group, you cannot actually upload anything…too bad.
- I should also mention that I tried this site in four browsers: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Chrome. It worked great in all of them except Chrome initially; I got a compatibility error in the Google-born browser.”
Just like Matt Singley and Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Customer Strategy @ Altimeter Group and Columnist for Forbes CMO Network, I expected this result from the strategic Microsoft Facebook partnership as an attempt to compete with the Google Docs service.
Mary-Jo Foley, Editor from the All About Microsoft Blog on ZDNet, describes Microsoft Docs as “a version of Office Web Apps tailored for Facebook users“, while she furthermore states in the ZDNet article:
“Office Web Apps is going to be available to different sets of customers in different ways, Microsoft officials have said. Business users who want to run them inside a company on their own servers and/or via a Microsoft-hosted server will be required to pay some still-unknown subscription fee.”
Therefore I do think that it is fair to conclude that the Microsoft Docs vs Google Docs comparison is clearly wrong, since this is a different product offering aimed at a different target audience. I would decribe Microsoft Docs as a derivative of the Microsoft Office Web Apps that serve the more “general” market. I think it would make more sence to make a comparison between these two services !
Pat Kinsel from FUSE Labs also addresses the comparison with Google Docs in the Microsoft Docs overview on the website:
“There are other services out there that let you create and collaborate on documents. And there are others that support sharing, discussing and discovering documents. But what makes Docs special is it’s the only service that supports the complete document lifecycle. That coupled with seamless integration of Microsoft Office 2010 and Facebook makes Docs the best possible document service for the Facebook environment.”
Microsoft and Facebook have already sucessfully teamed-up in the past, for example with the development of Facebook for Windows Phone that brings the Facebook experience to your Windows Mobile powered smartphone.
If you think about Microsoft Docs from a more abstract level, than it is the combination of the world’s leading Office suite with one of the most powerful global social networks. A clever combination that might result in a new market opportunities for both Microsoft and Facebook. However I’m trying to think a little more about the business- and revenue model behind, mainly because of the currently advertising driven Facebook network.
John Obeto, Microsoft MVP and owner of Absolutely Windows, proposed an integrsting question in this context: “Will Facebook expose the contents of the docs on docs.com to advertisers?“ Are revnues mainly created on the continued advertising model with the resulting yes answer to the question above, or will Microsoft simply get a license fee for leveraging the Microsoft Office Web Apps ?? Remark also the quote from the Mary-Jo Foley article that Microsoft Office Web Apps will be available in different ways to different sets of customers.
Business users might use the more traditional Microsoft Office Web Apps as an extention of the Microsoft Office 2010 software on the workstations and notebooks, while I wouldn’t be surprised to see Microsoft Docs, as a more consumer oriented offering, become part of the well known Windows Live bundle.
However these are just some thoughts and with the current information available there are no insights in the mid- and longterm goals of this start-up project. Furthermore the comparison of Microsoft Docs and Google Docs is clearly wrong, mainly due to the derivative character of Microsoft Docs. In order to complete the wrap-up I would love to hear your thoughts and invite you to sign-up for the beta of Microsoft Docs. Twelve of my friends did also sign-up as you can see in the screenshot above.
UPDATE
Takeshi Numoto, Corporate Vice President, Office Product Management Group, just published the article “Cloud creates new opportunities for Office: thoughts on Docs.com for Facebook” with his thoughts about- and the explorative nature of the Microsoft Docs approach.
“FUSE Labs works in partnership with product and research teams to ideate, develop, and deliver new social, real-time, and media-rich experiences for home and work. FUSE Labs experiences give users new ways to create, connect and collaborate with the people, information and ideas that matter to them.”
In this short article I would like to bring Exnovate, the highly interesting Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation, to your attention.
Back in 2008 I was fortunate to attend the fith European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse, where I first experienced the importance of the “business model”.
During the this Masterclass I was able to meet, experience and work with both professor VanHaverbeke and professor Henry Chesbrough. Both are the co-founders of Exnovate, as you can read in the about us section of the Exnovate website:
“Exnovate, the European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation, originated from the pioneering work of prof.dr. Wim Vanhaverbeke together with prof. Henry Chesbrough and other domain experts.”
The picture above shows an overview the Exnovate website, with the section “Exnovate in a nutshell” that provides a little more extensive description:
“Exnovate is a platform for companies and knowledge intensive organizations that are practicing open innovation. In particular, Exnovate serves as a clearinghouse and network platform, linking together the international community of companies, academia, governments and service providers. Since most knowledge and best practices on open & collaborative innovation are scattered around in different organizations, the platform can significantly speed up the learning process of the partners involved. In addition, Exnovate can help create and valorize knowledge on open & collaborative innovation, hence bridging the gap between theory and practice.”
On the left side of the website, below the Exnovate logo you can see a number of arrows, that provide additional information for a specific group of actors in the Open & Collaborative Innovation field:
While VentureLab Twente is aimed at entrepreneurs in “assisting high-technology, high potential start-ups to develop and reach their full potential”, I can see similar concepts of connecting practitioners, researchers, experts and even venture capitalists. Exnovate however is focussed on the Open & Collaborative Innovation expertise.
Professor Frank Piller, who I was fortunate to meet during a masterclass @ Webster University in Amsterdam, wrote in the article “Exnovate and Open Innovation Forum: Two New Open Innovation Community Sites” on his Mass Customization & Open Innovation News blog:
I found three features especially useful:
- A list of case studies on open innovation for teaching;
- A list of academic papers on open innovation, most with a link to download
- A list of people working in the field;
Despite the fact that the list of academic papers isn’t completed yet (assumption since download links are missing), I really like this section and downloaded some papers that interested me. If you are interested in Open Innovation I can certainly recommend the academic paper list.
I would like to recommend you to read the Exnovate vision, mission and strategy.
Such a European Network of Excellence on Open & Collaborative Innovation is highly valuable no matter if you are from a company, university, government, service provider or a venture captital firm. The amount of knowledge and experience on Open & Collaborative Innovation in such a Network of Excellence is tremendous !
I was able to meet and experience professor VanHaverbeke and professor Henry Chesbrough. Combining their drive and passion for Open & Collaborative Innovation with the high quality of the European Masterclass on Corporate Entrepeneurship & Open Innovation with Henry Chesbrough & Kenneth Morse, I can only conclude that the Exnovate Network of Excellence will be game-changing for many people out there !!
