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Many business gurus consider relentless innovation to be the United States' only remaining edge in a global marketplace marked by labor arbitrage and the competitive threats posed by exploding economies in China and elsewhere.

Tom Koulopoulos, the author of a new book, The Innovation Zone, and the founder of the Delphi Group, says, "While some progress is being made on the innovation front, too many U.S. companies still under perform when it comes to driving the type of sustained innovation needed to meet this competitive threat. On the other hand, many corporations are looking at operational innovation as a way to cope with the complexity technology brings."

In his book, Koulopoulos demonstrates how organizations can create and sustain a culture of innovation. Koulopoulos, who writes a blog called The Innovation Zone (http://www.tomkoulopoulos.com) says that if public and private organizations are serious about taking the lead in innovation and re-invigorating the marketplace and U.S. economy, they must move behind the hype of innovation and apply proven techniques and processes. His book provides a how-to-do blueprint for innovation process methods that organizations can put into practice. He says, "We need to stop singing innovation kumbaya and start delving into the practice and science of innovation."

Koulopoulos' insights about innovation have received wide praise from luminaries such as Peter Drucker, dee Hock, and Tom Peters who called Tom Koulopoulos' writing, "a brilliant vision of where we must take our enterprises to survive and thrive." According to Peter Drucker, Tom's writing "makes you question not only the way you run your business but the way you run yourself." He is also editor of the Delphi Report, a quarterly journal for business and technology leaders.

He sees signs that organizations are embedding innovation in their business practices, and that they have devoted both financial and staff resources to innovation. He says, "It's surprising to me that more companies actually are putting people in positions of authority with respect to innovation. They are not necessarily new people; they are folks that are already on staff, but they also are carrying that [innovation] badge."

In this second Enterpriseleadership.org podcast, Koulopoulos talks about the following:

• the status of technology efforts in the U.S. corporations;
• the challenges of IT innovations in global corporations;
• the ways companies have used IT in innovative ways;
• the need for corporate education programs in innovation;
• the things CIOs and CTOs need to do to get involved in corporate innovation; and
• the way his organization works with clients to drive corporate innovation.

Bio

Tom Koulopoulos is the founder of the Delphi Group, a 20-year-old Boston-based thought leadership firm providing advice on leading edge technologies to global 2000 organizations and government. He sold Delphi to Perot Systems in 2004 and today serves as managing director of a global innovation lab.

During the past two decades Tom Koulopoulos' works have introduced core industry concepts, frameworks, and vernacular that describe the impact of technology on business. These things include Single Point of Access, Touch Points, Digital Control Rooms, Business Operating Systems, Corporate IQ, Information Value Chains, and Smartsourcing.

InformationWeek named him one of the industry's most influential information management consultants. Koulopoulos' insights on the implications of IT on global organizations frequently appear in national and international print and broadcast media, such as BusinessWeek, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Economist, CNBC, CNN and NPR.

Tom Koulopoulos' eight books include: Smartsourcing, Corporate Instinct, Smart Companies, Smart Tools, and The X-economy.

Tom Koulopoulos has also been an adjunct professor at the Boston College Wallace E. Carroll Graduate School of Management and a guest lecturer at the Boston University School of management and Harvard University. He is the former director of the Babson Center for Business Innovation.

Resources

Enterpriseleadership.org Podcast - Tom Koulopoulos - The Innovation Zone
http://www.enterpriseleadership.org/blogs/podcasts/2009/06/29/podcast-with-thomas-m-koulopoulos-author-of-the-innovation-zone

Podcast -Tom Koulopoulos on Unemployment, Innovation & the PUMA Personal Transportation Vehicle from Segway & GM, The Wall Street Journal Online
http://arikjohnson.com/2009/04/10/tom-koulopoulos-on-unemployment-innovation-the-puma-personal-transportation-vehicle-from-segway-gm/

IT Outsourcing According to Tom Koulopoulos, Wisconsin Technology Network
http://wistechnology.com/articles/2795/

Architecture & Process keynote: Tom Koulopoulos
http://www.column2.com/2008/04/architecture-process-keynote-tom-koulopoulos/

Production Credits

Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer

Audio Editing by Doug Marcis

In this podcast, Dr. Joel West, an associate professor at San Jose State University's College of Business, talks about the open innovation paradigm for technology development. His teaching and research focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. Along with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke, West is editor of the book, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

Working and living in the heart of Silicon Valley, Dr. Joel West cannot get away from technology innovation. In fact, his course offerings and research at the San Jose State University's College of Business focus on technology innovation and strategic management in technology companies. San Jose State University ranks at one of the top 25 research business schools in the U.S.

Dr. West's interest goes beyond traditional innovation to the concept of open innovation. He defines it as the idea of using the market rather than the internal hierarchy, both as a source of innovation and a way to commercialize innovation. Open innovation also means treating innovation like anything else -- something that can be bought and sold on the open market, not something that happens within a company. He says that a company can no longer depend on its internal resources to drive its innovation efforts.

His research in open source computing led him to look at open innovation and a book on the subject. He was one of the co-editors with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke on the book, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (2006). He also writes several blogs about open innovation, including openinnovation.net, which describes his research and provides comments on other academicians' research projects.

In this podcast, Dr. West explores what powers the concept of open innovation and how it differs from traditional innovation efforts, such as research and development. He says that open innovation raises the question about how those companies that practice it differ from those organizations that have research and development programs. Henry Chesborough explored this in the first book on open innovation published in 2003.

West says, "Companies that practice open innovation will do the same things they did before they adopted it. They might have a research and development department. Chesborough went one step further by looking at the revolutionary nature of open innovation. According to him, open innovation is a process that enables a company to find the best sources of innovation, and to find the best paths to commercialize that innovation. The company might accomplish these goals looking within company and looking outside the company. They might take other paths that they would not have considered if they did not know about open innovation."

Dr. West has two important takeaways for chief information officers, chief strategy officers, and chief technology officers: look for external resources who know how to make your products better or who have new products ideas, and find the best ways to bring these resources into your organization. He says, "You might look at university students, your suppliers and customers, or an open innovation community. You might have to look at all of these possibilities to find out which class of individuals or position in the value chain will provide the best ideas you want. Money does not always motivate people to share their ideas with you. Many people like the idea of a challenge to compete for recognition. You might have a contest to find the best ideas."

Bio

Dr. Joel West is an associate professor of innovation and entrepreneurship at the Department of Organization and Management in the College of Business at San Jose State University. His research, teaching, and industry experience center on global technology industries, which provide the lifeblood of Silicon Valley.

His research findings have appeared in Asian Survey, Information Systems Research, Management International Review, R&D Management, Research Policy, Telecommunications Policy, and The Information Society, among other journals. He has won best-paper awards for tracks of the Academy of Management and HICSS conferences, and has been active in service to the research community. Along with Henry Chesborough and Wim Vanhaverbeke, West is editor of the book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

West earned a Ph.D. in management from the University of California, Irvine.

Resources

Joel West's Personal Blog

http://http://blog.openinnovation.net/2010/02/joel-open-innovation-podcast.html

Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm

http://www.openinnovation.net/Book/NewParadigm/

Production Credits
Elizabeth Ferrarini, Executive Producer
Tom Parish, Host and Audio Producer
Audio Editing by Doug Marcis