Wellspring Blog

The Seelbach Hotel, located at the heart of Louisville, Kentucky, is not only known for its elegance, but as an American architectural treasure visited by gangsters (Al Capone), writers (F. Scott Fitzgerald, who used the hotel for inspiration in “The Great Gatsby”) and presidents, with a history of... Read More

Its not often you go to Mars. But I spent the last week there and, while its very very hot from a temperature standpoint, the technology and infrastructure are the more impressive aspects. Read More

One might not think that Open Innovation and food have a whole lot in common, but I learned that’s not the case at all. The Institute of Food Technologists’ annual showpiece, the IFT Food EXPO, was recently held at Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center and I had a chance to stop by. With... Read More

Thousands of people flocked to Techweek Chicago last week and I am happy to say I, and others from Wellspring Worldwide, were among them. For those not familiar with Techweek Chicago, the event is a great opportunity to check out the latest in technology and innovations here in Chicago and the... Read More

I was lucky enough to be able to attend the “Ten Types of Innovation” book launch party last night since it was held at The Institute of Design in Chicago, the first design school in the U.S. with a Ph.D. program, and an organization that we share a building with! Read More

I was looking for more information on how well ideation processes work this week, and I came across a great study by Karan Girotra, Christian Terwiesch, and Karl T. Ulrich at University of Pennsylvania was called “Idea Generation and the Quality of the Best Idea”. They ran a clever experiment to... Read More

Pfizer and the NIH have taken sides on who owns background intellectual property (IP) rights to the blockbuster arthritis drug Xeljanz. Its undisputed that Pfizer invested over $1B in the drug, and its undisputed that Pfizer and NIH had an joint R&D contract, called a CRADA, in place during the... Read More

Working with a client recently, a senior R&D leader was asked how many people in the company report to her. She answered 20. On an organization chart, she’d be right. But in the innovation world, the correct answer is close to 60. Read More

R&D has not typically reported on the process they use to generate new innovative ideas, but more often the results. Prior to the advent of the Open Innovation as a business activity R&D had no reason to report on the amount of external collaborations or external partner’s contributions to research... Read More

The results also show that being highly effective at idea conversion is more important to financial success than being highly skilled at generating ideas. - Booz & Company - 2012 Survey of the Global 10001 Read More