Open Innovation Exchange

I don't wish to distract the team from preparations for tomorrow's interview at Cabinet Office, but the wonders of automated  ego search alerted me to interest in the Exchange from online community guru Howard Rheingold. Interviewed at the Terra Nova blog, which explore virtual worlds like Second Life, Howard picked up on an item I wrote. He says:  read more »

From Mike Alderson at Open Eye: Chat - Closer encounters of the Third Sector kind:  read more »

As you may imagine, we are more than delighted to be shortlisted as one of four teams for interview, out of 21. We face that interview next Tuesday, June 12, and would really welcome your help. We want some tough questions.
Our interview team will be meeting tomorrow for rehearsals, when we'll try and work out what we want to say, and what we may be asked.
We wondered how best to do that. Do we keep our best ideas to ourselves? Nope. We got so far by doing things in public ... why stop now?
We made a start on some Q and A here. Please take a look, and add any comment, questions - or indeed answers. This is still co-creation.

Insights into when the sort of approach used for the Open Innovation Exchange may work, or not, via Anecdote: When to use open source techniques:

"Nicholas Carr has written a thought provoking piece in Strategy+Business on the limitations of open source approaches. In a nutshell, open source approaches work best when people are refining something that's already been created and where the problem can be divided into chunks so lots of people can work on it at the same time (e.g. fixing bugs in Linux). Creating the idea in the first place is best done by an individual or small group. "

I think that accords with our experience here. The bid development worked because Simon - and Jane - Berry pulled it all together, and other people took a lead on work packaGES. A wider group contributed smaller pieces

As I've written here, Paul Miller from Demos and The School of Everything has picked up on the Open Innovation Exchange and the nomination for the New Media Awards:  read more »

Roland Harwood over at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts suggests that Difference drives innovation...  read more »

We submitted our bid for the Open Innovation Exchange on May 14 2007 - as you can see here. You can download a public version of the bid below. It is complete apart from the figures, which we can't publish because of tender procedures.

There are earlier drafts here, and more about the development process.

We are keeping the site open because we welcome any further ideas around our proposals, and ways in which open collaboration can assist innovation. You can see how to use the site, a site map, and who is here.

If you have ideas on how we can continue to use the site, drop a comment below.

It's wonderful how great stuff can turn up at the last moment to make you feel you are on the right track. I've just posted this across at Designing for Civil Society  read more »