The Product Pulse

I recently attended the 2nd Annual Open Innovation Summit organized by the World Research Group in the "City of Broad Shoulders," aka Chicago.

The event was small in terms of delegates, but rich in content about how to commercialize on innovation. Perhaps one of the most interesting presentations of day one was given by Clorox who shared that they actually collaborated with their competitors at Proctor & Gamble to create the Glad® ForceFlex® trash bags, with Clorox taking 80% of the profit and 20% going to P&G -- a true example of open innovation at work.

From large corporations to small innovation teams, most delegates I spoke with wanted to know how they can speed innovation to drive better business results through collaboration with both universities as well as other companies -- including competitors. It’s clear that most companies know a successful future depends on innovation today. In the past your options to innovate were limited. You could develop your own innovation process, or buy it from someone else. Now, you can partner with outside resources via open innovation.

This two-day event offered a healthy mix of experts including Stefan Lindegaard, whom I was honored to meet. Stefan Lindegaard literally wrote the book on open innovation. Author of "The Open Innovation Revolution," Stefan shared his insights and was extremely open to discussing this topic with anyone who approached him. You can learn more about Stefan at his blog. He was mentioned in nearly every presentation and rightfully so, given his passion, experience and insight about open innovation.

A lot of people can talk about open innovation, but it's another thing entirely to make it really work. If the buzz from this summit is any indication, we can all expect more and more leading companies and brands to increase their open innovation efforts.