Wellspring Blog

As the effects of COVID-19 continue to ripple through the economy, many tech scouting teams are facing a new and evolving reality. As a wide variety of industries are racing to keep the core business intact, new innovation projects have taken a backseat. We’ve seen many teams re-order their... Read More

Imagine you are the leader of a newly formed External Technologies Sourcing team at a large company in the heavy equipment industry. A product group has come to you, asking for help. They are building a new generation of self-repairing machines. Progress has been made, but the product group lacks... Read More

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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

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

The tech scouts we work with have shared their deepest fears and past blunders. Here’s some strategies to avoid the same fate: Read More

Technology scouting remains vital for the innovation of organizations, yet you do not consider yourself to be a tech scout. Maybe you should. Although it may not be in your job title, tech scouting is most likely embedded in your job description. Even though there are few dedicated tech scouts,... Read More

“The Biotech industry is, by its very nature, a live representation of the trophic cascades and a field that ruled by pure Darwinism,” as I noted at the “start-ups and tech transfer” roundtable session during the American Society for Cell Biology in San Diego, CA last year. Read More

Identifying cutting-edge technology is simply the first step of technology scouting. The key to effective tech scouting is to capture the right opportunity at the right time. We assembled a list of five tactics to help you streamline your process. Read More