Wellspring Blog

Sometimes, when a breakthrough technology emerges, expertise is concentrated in a small group of specialists, and one or two regional ecosystems dominate the landscape. In the past, tapping into that knowledge base might have meant attending a few conferences, working the Valley’s network, and then... Read More

For innovation teams, establishing academic partnerships is a promising investment in the future of its R&D efforts and long-term viability as an organization. As the competitive pressure increases, it becomes increasingly important for innovation teams to identify promising new technologies before... Read More

For most organizations, the R&D pipeline represents the aspirations and goals of the company. As such, it is typically the sole source of future product developments and potential innovation, as most organizations do not fully realize the potential of external innovation to complement their... Read More

Within the innovation space, one of the key points of expansion is the application of leaps in information technology to the physical world. Just as the internet revolution brought about change by networking computers, another similar revolution seeks to bring about change by networking and... Read More

While the innovation prowess of the top-performing companies are well known, the “big business” side of the market only represents one-third of the $30 trillion dollars in private sector gross receipts. The mid-market, representing another third, is largely defined as firms with annual revenues of... Read More

Maintaining an innovation network is easier said than done. With 150 scientific articles, 720 patents filed, and 80 startups founded every 30 minutes, even the most lavishly staffed innovation teams cannot parse this level of data. Read More

Industrial agriculture is a highly complex operation. We've practiced agriculture for some 12,000 years, and in that time have continued finding innovative ways to feed a growing population. Dow AgroSciences is very open about the complexity of their R&D pipeline. They told Grainews in 2016 that,... Read More

There's a reason research and development funding accounts for about 3% of GDP. It's the same reason Amazon, despite already being among the world's leading global enterprises, spent $22.6 billion on R&D last year, and why the pharmaceutical industry as a whole dedicates 18 percent of its entire... Read More

There’s a seismic shift underway in the nature of innovation management. All the momentum that was once with the wealthiest, most resource-rich enterprises has changed hands; it’s now at the command of organizations that pay the closest attention to externally originating innovation opportunities. Read More

Crowdsourcing isn’t new as an innovation technique. We can find large-scale examples of it going as far back as the 1700s, like when the British government offered more than $26,000 to whoever could figure out how to determine longitude at sea. It’s the way we go about crowdsourcing that has... Read More