One of the more interesting trends I have noticed is the trend to try to "operationalize" innovation. I think that a lot of companies are tired of investing in R&D with uncertain retruns. By it's nature, innovation is somewhat speculative. But we are seeing companies start to adopt processes aimed at making innovation more predictable and repeatable. Can product innovation, product development, and engineering be operationalized like manufacturing has been as it transformed from art and craftmanship to a repeatable discipline?

Case in Point - Open Innovation
Last year's Product Innovation Summit identified a number of companies focusing on new concepts like "open innovation" to try to leverage 3rd parties for new products and technologies. This year's Product Innovation Agenda 2010 report confirms this trend. Not only are Best-in-Class more likely to be adoption techniques to leverage knowledge and ingenuity in their own products, many leading companies that haven't yet tested these processes are planning to adopt them between now and 2010. I will not claim to be any kind of expert on these processes, I'll leave that to people like Henry Chesbrough, although we do have some additional research planned on the topic for later this year. But I believe this is a part of a larger trend.

Sourcing Innovation
The idea of relying less exclusively on internal innovation is not a brand new concept. Many pharmaceutical companies (and software companies) for that matter, have begun the "wait and see" approach with new technologies and new products. They may have their own products in the mix, but on highly speculative areas they can either choose to spend their millions in R&D money on ten speculative products - resulting in anywhere form zero to (maybe) three hits. Or, they can let smaller, entrepreneurial companies (with their venture capital dollars) take the risk. True, they may have to spend more for the winners. But the losers are free, because they lost someone else's money. And while the chances that they can afford three winners are small, the chances that they end up with zero are, well, almost zero.

Winning the Product Innovation Ballgame
The ability to get predictable returns from the process are comforting for a lot of executives and shareholders alike. Let the VC companies take the risk, and let the leaders leverage the victories of the winners. For baseball fans, most people love a player that can hit predictable "on base" percentages instead of the home run sluggers that strike out a lot. The home run sluggers are fun to watch, but the on-base players consistently win ball games.

That's all I have for now. I look forward to your comments, have you resolved to give open innovation a try this year?