Open Innovation Exchange

We watched the powerpoint presentation with great interest this morning. During the presentation we were really struck by how closely it related to our replication project of the Unique Coffee Bar (youth cafe model) here in the East Midlands. 

Unique Coffee Bar is a 100% sustainable youth drop-in project supported by an Alternative Education social enterprise. We developed the Unique Network last year which has the aim of assisting other communities in setting up coffee bars similar to the Unique Coffee Bar in Newark. For more information on the network project see 'Unique Network'

We are currently working towards opening 5 Coffee Bars within the East Midlands in the next two years with a further 15 planned in the future. We currently have two communities who are close to opening (late this year/ early next year) and three others in the pipeline.  read more »

We now have a strong model for ways we can manage connections between innovators, replicators, delivery agents, investors and service users, supported by mentors.

However, a lot of innovation is also seeded by chance connections. People meet, talk, inspire each other, try things ... stuff happens. That's reflected in blog posts and comments here. Michele Martin recomends looking at networks, and Geoff Ashton picks up the theme referencing The Tipping Point. An anonymous commenter says cut the complex models, give us 10 words to talk around.  read more »

It might be helpful to look at some resources on the formation and nurturing of networks as part of this process. There's a great paper on nonprofit networks called Net Gains:

http://www.in4c.net/index.asp?lt=net_gains_download

I also wrote a series of posts on this a few months ago (scroll to the bottom to start):

http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog/networks/index.htm...