As I moved into my Turning a new page... this year I began to give a lot of thought to what What is Open Innovation? was and of course what it was Open Innovation to me..
Interestingly enough I was not the only person giving these questions thought and several comments came flying in. I think I had addressed most of them except for of course how SAP was going to give the community a platform to share their innovations. Now on one level I think many consider this platform to be an actual technical platform to build on and develop on however I took this to be a "place" or an opportunity to share what they have created and of course why they have created it. In many ways the SAP Demo Jam during the SAP TechEd is the perfect place for this but the masses see only the best ones hit the stage.
Therefore as I am now part of the Technology Strategy group defining SAP's technology strategy as well as tasked with discovering, learning and understanding open innovations taking place amongst our partners, customers, user groups and of course our own employees I decided to come up with a concept that provided the "open platform" for sharing and to reach out to the masses in terms not only what does "Open Innovation" mean to you but what are you building, developing and innovating on with SAP technologies? We'd like you to share what you are doing with us, our intention is to collect this information, analyze and to determine new trends emerging in order to better influence our strategy as we move forward; in short we are asking you our Ecosystem to help us define the strategy by sharing what works best for you and how you are adapting our own technologies to meet your needs.
Over the past couple of weeks I have been hammering out all the details and giving infosessions to our internal teams and of course to external influencers to ensure that we've considered as much as possible as we move forward with this concept.
Dennis captured a conversation we had - a very long conversation actually where he asked some hard hitting questions and challenged me on several points to ensure I was looking at things objectively as possible. I've met with several others as well who both challenged me as well as forced me to defend my premise - I like to think I've done that so now it's time to share with the rest of you.
One of the biggest questions I've been asked "Will this really influence your strategy" and my response without hesitation is "Yes, I believe it will and I will do everything in my power to get the information into our discussions and strategy meetings" - does this mean it will happen or that the influencing will take place - of course I certainly hope so but it also depends on all of you, if you step forward to be recognized and share with us then I have a better chance of making this happen.
So this concept I am referring to is the Innovation Jagd (hashtag: innojagd) and in a Demo Jam at SAP TechEd 2009 to what I did last year for the Demo Jam I will be hosting on-site "castings" in a sense in multiple SAP locations around the world in the coming weeks. I will also be available virtually for those unable to attend in person and the "innojagd" events will serve two purposes; the first of course is to sharewith SAP what you are doing and how you are adapting our technologies to meet different needs and the second is to share your potentional ideas and submissions for the 2010 Demo Jam event taking place in Berlin, Las Vegas and Bangalore this year.
As the innojagd progresses I'll be able to more clearly define outcomes and results to date and of course I will be able to share with you how it has started to influence our activities, and I will of course be sharing as many of the projects as possible with the broader community.
For more information on the innojagd, you can visit the official Wiki page within the SAP Community Network.
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