Blue Globe Innovation’s Jonathan Slater believes, ‘Innovation needs to be embedded as a business strategy’

Jonathan Slater, Managing Director at Blue Globe Innovation elaborates on the service ‘Solver Scouting’: an exclusive intellectual property only found within Blue Globe. Read on to know how Blue Globe Innovation is dedicated to solving technical, system, and data challenges around the world.

The key is to accept that the power of the crowd is a global network and not within specific borders.


MEDIA 7: Thank you so much for doing this with us! Blue Globe Innovation focuses on ‘Driving Crowdsourcing and Open Innovation.’ Could you please elaborate on this for our readers?
JONATHAN SLATER:
As a company, we focus on three distinct services that can help our clients shape a bespoke and targeted innovation strategy: challenge design, solver scouting, and crowd management. We focus on bringing cutting-edge technology and new initiatives to our clients, helping them all to realize the potential of their crowds--whether it’s researchers, local business owners, or their own employees.


M7: Which productive strategies do you suggest for businesses to incorporate open innovation into their business plans?
JS:
Innovation cannot just be thought of as an add-on to a business but needs to be embedded as a business strategy both within the business and with partners and external suppliers. The crowd within open innovation can be seen to be an external supplier, helping to reduce research and development costs and time.

Read More: Qualcomm’s John Kehrli says, ‘Our vision is to make all devices increasingly intelligent enabling them the ability to perceive their surroundings


Open innovation is often used to help businesses identify new ideas or create better environments for their employees.



M7: Blue Globe Innovation is dedicated to solving technical challenges for companies, NGOs, and government agencies around the world. How do you execute this?
JS:
Not just technical challenges, but system and data challenges too. Our extensive network and relationships with organizations, networks, crowds, and innovation hubs around the world have enabled us to design and support all types of innovation programs, including Recognition Prizes, Inducement Challenges, Open Innovation programs, Innovation Prizes, Innovation Competitions, Grand Challenges, and Focused Payment by Results Programs. Our team builds on their international experience to inform our approach to new challenges and explore opportunities to build on previous successes. The key is to accept that the power of the crowd is a global network and not within specific borders.



M7: Your new and exclusive service, ‘Solver Scouting’ sounds quite intriguing. Could you please tell us more about it?
JS:
Solver Scouting was borne out of our open innovation work with a variety of clients and the clients struggle to engage with the solvers who could be able to complete the challenges. Existing communities within crowdsourcing platforms are sometimes limited in the level of exposure that they can provide to the challenges, to engage with the individuals or businesses who can solve the challenges. Our ultimate aim is to increase the number of high-quality submissions each challenge we support receives. Solver Scouting is guided by our understanding of working on over 500 open innovation challenges and reviewing over 1000 challenges from around the world. This detailed research and our extensive knowledge challenge focus allow us to target specific solvers around the world. Our targeting is informed by our knowledge that solvers can come from a variety of industries, and especially from tangential rather than directly relevant industries in relation to the challenge. Targeted outreach and translation of challenge materials help to bring in solvers committed to the challenge goals. Growing and developing this service for our clients has been especially rewarding and helped us to make this service exclusive intellectual property only found within Blue Globe.

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Machine learning and custom engagement are the future of challenge-driven innovation.



M7: In your recent article, ‘Pathways to Uptake’, you elaborate on the need for ‘innovation in the humanitarian and development sectors.’ How can it be achieved and what challenges need to be tackled?
JS:
Open innovation is often used to help businesses identify new ideas or create better environments for their employees. But the power of the crowd can be applied to solving the most urgent challenges in our world, and this guides much of our work and the clients we choose to work with. An important aspect of bringing innovation to humanitarian goals is to allow local leadership and attention to local issues. As a consultancy based in the UK, we have to be especially aware when working on initiatives based abroad and ensure ownership and scale-up keeps locals in mind--one particular project we highlight in the article is a local-led effort to create a hand sanitizer in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic using water hyacinth, an invasive species across Lake Victoria.


M7: How do you prepare for an AI-centric world as a Business Leader?
JS:
Machine learning and custom engagement are the future of challenge-driven innovation. Understanding the power of machine learning and the power of data analytics will change the way that the crowd is engaged in the future. We are running multiple research programs at the moment looking at ‘Bias within challenges’ and ‘Future challenges’ and both of these are based on the use of machine learning for the future.

ABOUT BLUE GLOBE INNOVATION

Blue Globe Innovation is an innovation consultancy specializing in open innovation challenges, including grand challenges, recognition and inducement prizes, SME support, and fostering innovation around the world. They work with partners across the globe with the ultimate goal of engaging communities to explore ideas and create platforms for innovative solutions. With a global approach and a passion for the most cutting-edge technology and initiatives, they help their wide range of clients tap into the power of the crowd.

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Blue Globe Innovation is an innovation consultancy specializing in open innovation challenges, including grand challenges, recognition and inducement prizes, SME support, and fostering innovation around the world. They work with partners across the globe with the ultimate goal of engaging communitie...

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