Wellspring Blog

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 2017 R&D Trends Forecast by the Industrial Research Institute estimates that global R&D investment will increase by 3.4% in 2017 to $2.066 trillion with academic institutions and federal labs making up a significant portion of that total. Government and academic researchers play a critical role... Read More

In the last thirty minutes, 700 patents were filed, 150 scientific articles were published, and 70 new start-ups were founded. Read More

Although open innovation serves as a path towards greater openness in product innovation and organizational growth, it is not immune to the typical failures that can be found within any business system. Failures in open innovation programs don't necessarily mean that open innovation itself is... 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

Is it time to rethink the nearly twenty-eight-year-old technology readiness level (TRL) framework? The TRL is by far the most popular evaluation framework for corporate technology scouts, but although it can easily be applied to a wide range of opportunities, the generality of the system ignores... Read More

The electric utility industry is experiencing sweeping, radical restructuring. Legacy bulk-power grid systems are becoming obsolete. As the bulk-power grid wears out, investment is failing to keep up with deterioration. Add on a growing population and more extreme weather, and the power grid is... Read More

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