Collaborative innovation — a strategy in which manufacturers and retailers partner to create compelling consumer product and service offerings-can help manufacturers and retailers increase their sales and profitability by 15% to 20%.

At a Leadership in Retail and Consumer Products Forum on September 30, 2009, executives at Kalypso, Coca-Cola, Aerosoles and Unilever joined a panel discussion and explored best practices for consumer packaged goods companies, as well as strategies overcoming the roadblocks to successful collaborative innovation. Four key lessons emerged.

Read the full article here.

Large corporations that hope to encourage innovation-something that can be all too easily stifled beneath their layers of hierarchy and lengthy decision-making processes-are increasingly using the internet to create high-tech, interactive versions of the old-fashioned piggy bank for ideas.One prominent existing example can be found at www.mystarbucksidea.com, where customers can post ideas about how Starbucks can be improved. They can also vote on other people’s ideas and communicate with each other and a team of Starbucks employees. Those employees review the posted ideas, select some that appear promising and present to decision makers at the Seattle coffee retailer for possible implementation.

Customer-led innovation is the wave of the future, believes Patricia Seybold, author of the bestselling book Outside Innovation: How Your Customers Will Co-design your Company’s Future. “My research has shown that in the software industry, 50% of high-tech product development is being carried out by customers … using open source,” Seybold said.

Read more here.

Chuck Frey at the Innovation Weblog pointed out an excellent series of video clips from a lecture by Tom Kelly of Ideo to a class of college students at Stanford, in which he shares five essential strategies for cultivating and nurturing personal innovation throughout life.Chuck’s favorite excerpts from Tom Kelly include these:

1. Think like a traveler: When you travel, especially internationally, it’s as if part of your brain transforms into a hyper-aware state, causing you to notice everything. You’re able to observe more and learn more. The trick is to cultivate this mindfulness in your daily life, even when you’re not traveling.

2. Treat life as an experiment: This principle has to do with the risk, with the willingness to fail and to learn from your failures.

3. Nurture an “attitude of wisdom:” This principle has to do with cultivating the fine balance between trusting and distrusting what you know, and to have a constant thirst for new knowledge throughout your life.

4. Use your whole brain: Kelley refers to Dan Pink’s excellent book, A Whole New Mind, which suggests that success in the years ahead will come from our ability to use our whole mind, our left and right brains working together to take us to new levels of performance and creativity.

5. Do what you love: Kelley told students to search out the intersection between what they’re naturally good at, what they were born to do, and what people will pay them to do.

I’m a big fan of Tom Kelly and the folks at Ideo.

Check out the videos here.

Csikszentmihalyi not only has a terribly unpronouncable last name, he is also one of my favorite authors.A post on the Lateral Action blog details a video presented by Mihaly at the TED conference a few years ago. He explains the concept of flow for which he is famous. Flow is his answer to the question ‘What makes human beings happy?’ – ‘An almost automatic, effortless, yet highly focused state of consciousness’ that we can experience when devoting ourselves to a meaningful challenge. Flow can occur during any complex and difficult task, but you won’t be surprised to learn it is often experienced by people engaged in creative work.

The dissection of his talk offers several key insights. All of them tie back to being more happy and fulfilled in life. This is not tantric chant stuff. Mihaly backs up his assertions with sound research and models he has developed through decades of interviews.

Read the post, which includes a YouTube copy of the TED video, here.

Business Week’s Bill Buxton has recently been nagged by a somewhat peculiar thought: In a way, the dogged pursuit of excellence is the path to anything but excellence. As you head down the road to mastery, you may discover that expertise may not be either sufficient or satisfying to achieve your goals or lead a good life.Buxton’s article is thoughtful and he draws several paradoxical – but useful – conclusions about how to keep innovation fresh. Among them, to always remain a learner, and to maintain balance by not trying to do too much at once.

The article is here.

The Idea Champions blog lists fifty actions to successfully establish a culture of innovation. Words are cheap. It’s easy to wax poetic about “culture change.” It’s quite another thing to make it happen, according to Mitch Ditkoff. These 50 things are more than just talking about it; they are tangible ways you can foster a culture of innovation in your organization.Read them here.

Professor of international health at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, Rosling developed a Flash program called Trendalyzer that allows people to easily compare and contrast large volumes of data with animated charts (Google has since acquired the software). He designed the software with his son and daughter-in-law after surveying Karolinska’s top medical students and discovering how ignorant they were about the world.Rosling’s demonstration of the software took place at the latest TED conference is one of the most popular on its web site. During his demo, as large and small bubbles representing countries raced across a chart showing their development over time, Rosling called out their positions like a horse race commentator. The demo raised questions about which countries could truly be considered developed.

Many of you have heard me rave about TED, an annual conference of technology, education, and design. TED never fails to disappoint. Watch this video. You will never be able to look at your boring Excel spreadsheet again!  I guarantee, it will make you feel completely statistically illiterate.  I can’t wait to get my hands on Trendalyzer!

Read the interview with Hans Rosling and see the video here.

Colgate-Palmolive Co. executives and shareholders have something to smile about after a quarter that has most U.S. companies puckering their lips.The company said Jan 29 its fourth-quarter profit rose 20% to $497 million, or 94 cents a share, over the year-earlier period, driven by the introduction of new products, increased prices and cost-cutting initiatives.

“A steady stream of new products across categories and at various price points is driving market share gains here in the U.S. and abroad,” said president and CEO Ian Cook.

Read the details here.