BQF Innovation

The annual BQF Innovation Seminar was held in October at the Latimer Conference Centre.  The speakers included Mike Carr, Chief Scientist at BT’s research labs, Philip Anderson, Chairman of the Global Business Partnership Alliance, Kevin McFarthing, Global Director for Strategic Alliances & External Relations at Reckitt Benckiser, and Paul Sloane, head of the BQF Innovation Unit and author of the Innovative Leader. 

Mike Carr emphasised that innovative ideas can come from anywhere so you have to set your antennae to hear ‘weak signals’.  He pointed out that when it comes to research and development, finding the right question is harder than finding the right answer.  And he warned that a good idea can be thwarted at any stage of the adoption process. 

Philip Anderson discussed what makes for successful and unsuccessful business collaborations.  He shared various research findings.  Key among these were the need for shared value systems, objectives and mindsets.  He stressed that relying on the contract and the SLAs were not routes to success.  What was needed was development of trust. 

Reckitt Benckiser is a highly innovative, global company in consumer products with sales in 180 countries and net revenues in excess of £4billion.  Their brands include Cillit Bang, Vanish, Finish, Dettol, Strepsils, Airwick etc.  Kevin McFarthing explained how they have structured ‘RB-Idealink‘ to facilitate open innovation with alliance partners who have appropriate technologies, products or licensing opportunities.  They have strived to make the process easy for potential partners with simple submission processes on their website. Paul Sloane chaired the conference and gave a talk in which he stressed the need for leaders to develop the vision, culture and processes that facilitated innovation.  He gave examples of how this is done with examples from Google, Virgin, Granada, Alessi and Haier. 

The BQF Innovation Unit has regular informal meetings throughout the year as well as its annual conference.

 

 

 

 

Paul Sloane

The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will take
place on Monday November 26th from 4 to 6.30 pm at
the BQF offices in Westminster.  The topic is the
innovation value chain - all the elements of generating
ideas, evaluating ideas, prototyping innovations and
then rolling out the successes.  In small groups we
will explore which areas represent the weakest link in
the value chain in your organisation and what you can
do about it.

We have some room for non-members to attend but
we are limited to 40 delegates. 

More details and booking form.

There is still time to book for the half day conference at the Latimer Centre in Chesham, Bucks on the morning of Wednesday 3 October.  It is entitled - Sharpen your Innovation Skills.  It is a great opportunity to hear leading speakers, to learn new skills and to network with senior executives who share a passion for innovation.  Click here for the brochure with full details.

Paul Sloane

The BQF annual innovation conference will take place on Wednesday October 3rd at the Latimer Conference centre in Chesham Bucks.  The title is - Sharpen your Innovation Skills.  It is a morning event and we have a strong line-up of speakers including:

Mike Carr, Director Research & Venturing, BT Group Technology Office
Philip Anderson, Chairman, Global Business Partnership Alliance
Paul Sloane, Head of the BQF Innovation Unit
Kevin McFarthing, Global Director for Strategic Alliances, Reckitt Benckiser.

More details will follow shortly but please put the date in your diary and you can reserve your place by booking here.

I look forward to seeing you at the conference.

Paul Sloane

I am running a Master Class on Creativity and Innovation on June 26 in central London.  It will improve your innovation leadership skills and give you a range of practical techniques to help generate, evaluate and implement great ideas.  Details here.

We had a fascinating meeting on April 20th on the subject of Open Innovation.  To paraphrase Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation is a systematic business model for combining internal and external ideas to make innovation happen.  Andrew Gaule explained how the model works and quoted case studies including Tate and Lyle and Proctor and Gamble.

Kevin McFarthing, Global Director of Strategic Alliances at Reckitt Benckiser, explained how his company was directly encouraging external contributors to collaborate on inventions and innovations for their product range. 

RB Idealink is their initiative to publicise their intent and to invite alliances for innovation. They are looking for partners with technologies, products and brand licensing opportuntities.  They specifiy a list of areas in which they are interested in ideas - e.g. bleaching, dyes, fragrances, non-wovens etc.  Once an idea is submitted they guarantee to respond in less than three months.

For more details see the Idealink website.

If you want to see copies of Andrew or Kevin’s presentations please ask me or Pat Myles.

The meeting concluded with a lively discussion on what is stopping more companies from investing in open innovation.  A lack of leadership commitment to the open approach was identified as one of the key barriers.

Paul Sloane

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The next meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit will be on the morning of Friday 20th April. It will focus on the topic of Open Innovation. We will review how you can harness external resources to help drive your innovation. We are fortunate to have an eminent speaker, Andrew Gaule.

Andrew Gaule is the founder of the H-I Network (formerly the Henley Incubator), a thought leadership forum comprised of senior executives from some of the world’s leading organisations. He is the creator of several management concepts now in use at organisations such as Unilever, DHL, BOC and the Health Protection Agency: Andrew is the author of ‘Open Innovation in Action – How to be strategic in the search for new sources of value’ which includes case studies from H-I Network clients P&G, QinetiQ, Shell, DSM and Tate & Lyle. Andrew has also been a co-author on many H-I Network reports, including: Corporate Venturing; Rewarding Entrepreneurial Talent; Innovation Performance Measurement: Striking the Right Balance; and A Review of Leading Global Corporate Venture Units.

The location in central London will be advised shortly. Please book your place using the BQF events page.

Paul Sloane