Chapter 4: Ideagoras

"Marketplaces for Ideas, Innovations, and Uniquely Qualified Minds"

This chapter begins with the story of Werner Mueller, a retired and passionate chemist and woodworker who built facilities in his home to "spend a half day on each passion" and who stumbled upon InnoCentive, a website listing challenges needing answers. The authors state "Werner Mueller and the story of InnoCentive points to a deep change in the way companies innovate" (p98). And, that Proctor and Gamble is leading the consumer products industry because "the company is constantly innovating" (p106).

Consider the questions posed by the authors on p.115 in the context of education:

"What do our customers need today? What will they need in the future? How can we complement or add value to our existing projects and services? What new market opportunities present the greatest opportunities for growth? As we develop new ideas, what can we deliver internally? What should we source externally? Are there exciting new clusters of innovation happening that we can tap into? Where can we work closely with partners to create even more value? Which external acquisitions can we turn into deeper and broader collaborations?"

A growing number of companies are engaging their customers in product design. The authors urge companies to use ideagoras because they "lower the cost of communicating, collaborating, and transacting and could completely revolutionalize the way firms conduct R&D" (p 121). Internal innovation will not be enough in the growing world.

Do you think schools and education could be improved using ideagoras, or open innovation? How beneficial could it be to "harvest external ideas?"

3-2-1: List 3 new ideas you have about ideagoras; 2 reasons you believe this is important to you or education in general; and 1 thing you might "do" differently as a result of your discovery.