John Wolpert Joins BIF's Research Advisory Council

I'm thrilled to announce that John Wolpert has joined our research advisory council. He will also be a storyteller at the BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit in October. John is an experienced practitioner of innovation having led IBM’s “Extreme Blue” business & technology incubator in Austin, Texas. Most recently, he was engaged by the Australian Industry Group to build an organization that helps innovators in different companies work together. Through John's stewardship, the InnovationXchange (IXC) evolved into a global organization with operations in the UK, the US and Australia.

I first heard about John back in 2005 through an article called The rise of the corporate clergy. An early pioneer of open innovation, he was spearheading a growing network of independent go-betweens or ’intermediaries’ in Australia whose mission was to enable groundbreaking ideas that transcend corporate boundaries without compromising intellectual property. This concept should sound familiar to members of our BIF community. In like-minded fashion, the IXC was structured as a non-profit, non-commercial entity which gave it a neutral advantage for achieving networked innovation.

John is back in the states now, consulting on a variety of new projects. He's also blogging regularly at TheThreePercent. He calls the blog a "support network for innovators." His point-of-view on innovation is refreshing ~ it's based on the idea that only three percent of any population is actually innovating (as opposed to inventing or improving).

Inventors have their own societies. Improvers - people who make the existing game work better - are well accepted. But innovators, the three percent, are often alone, isolated, misunderstood. We don’t solve problems so much as we pioneer new ones. Innovators don’t just invent new tools - we use them to change how people organize themselves, do business, and live their lives. That might be great in the long run, but it’s usually trouble for somebody in the short run.

Management gurus might tell you that anyone can be an innovator, and we wouldn’t argue with that…but if innovating involves changing the rules of the game, then perhaps it’s a good thing that only a few souls happen to be doing it at any given time. ~John Wolpert

I'd like to extend a big welcome to John as he joins our amazing advisory council. It's one thing to start something and another to make it work ~ his experience in successfully bridging barriers will undoubtedly add tremendous value to our BIF mission of enabling collaborative innovation. Glad to have you part of our BIF community John.

RELATED
Head to John Wolpert's blog TheThreePercent
Read his article Adding Intention to Invention (This is a pdf)
Learn more about the InnovationXchange

And of course - learn more about the BIF-4 Collaborative Innovation Summit and how you can register. In addition to John Wolpert, we've got one heck of a lineup. Don't miss this exciting 2-day event.

Posted May 15, 2008 09:45 AM by Chris Flanagan | Permalink