Wellspring Blog

A friend of mine, let’s call him Dave, is the Director of Emerging Technologies at a F500 company. The week after Thanksgiving, he told me something remarkable. Read More

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

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