John D. Wolpert

11 Ene John D. Wolpert

John Wolpert is a senior executive intermediary at The InnovationXchange Network (IXC). An initiative of the Australian Industry Group Tyree Foundation, launched with support of the Australian Government and State Governments of NSW, Queensland and Victoria to improve collaboration and commercial outcomes across the boundaries of industry, government, academia and research (triple helix model).

John is a former lab director of Extreme Blue, IBM?s incubator for talent, technology and business concept innovation. He is also the originator of the Bridge methodology used by IXC Intermediaries. His work on the subject of innovation has been published in the Harvard Business Review.

I met John in the Conferència Internacional Innovació3: Emprenedors, Tecnologia i Territori , held last October by TecnocCampus Mataró, where he was one of the keynote speakers.

What follows are some of his main ideas on innovation.

Innovation is not just about research. IXC has learned that the most important factor in finding and exploiting new growth business opportunities is not invention but intention.  Your intentions may not involve research at all.  They may be to capture a new market, or improve your manufacturing process.

The case of IBM’s alphaWorks, which I oversaw for two years in the late 1990s, shows the power of open innovation. In early 1996, IBM’s Internet Division realized that the company had developed many promising software programs in research that had yet to be commercialized. As an experiment, the division created a public Web site called alphaWorks on which it posted the programs, hoping that outside companies and developers would contribute valuable ideas about bringing them to market. Anyone could download the programs with a 90-day evaluation licence from the company [?]

One IBM researcher, who had been trying for years to find a compelling use for his program, received ideas from a developer at another company through alpha Works. That helped him take his research in a new direction, eventually leading to the development of a critical component for the multibillion-dollar business integration systems market [?] Whitin eight weeks, the once ignored program has become a key IBM product. [ Excerpt from John D. Wolpert , «Breaking Out of the Innovation Box», HBR On Point Enhanced Edition, August 01, 2002].

We recognised despite the best efforts following Chesbrough’s Open Innovation, there were ongoing difficulties finding and exploiting connections between legally separate entities. This resulted in the development of a new business methodology, called Bridge, using trusted intermediaries to bridge the gap between the old, closed regime and a totally open regime.

IXC is, in a sense, a talent agency for alliance, business development, and commercialization teams. IXC is the first knowledge exchange to provide, through the use of its unique Intermediary Service, a secure, managed environment for connecting insights, technologies and opportunities between firms, universities and government agencies.

IXC Intermediaries work inside member firms and research organisations under a strict code of ethics, with the task of searching for and creating connections for business partnerships and the commercialisation of research.

 General view of the TecnoCampus’s International Conference, in which John Wolpert was invited

Under the confidential structure of their engagement, our Intermediaries are able to access each member?s intellectual property and R&D base in order to learn what they need and what they can offer. When an opportunity is established, IXC Intermediaries help members engage directly.

In 2004 pilot program, IXC successfully established a Life Sciences Cluster with companies and public organisations with converging interests, including IBM Healthcare, Johnson & Johnson Research, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, the University of New South Wales and seven Melbourne-based listed companies (Acrux, Avexa, Amrad, Biota, Cytopia, Starpharma and Virax).

Within months, IXC Intermediaries identified 24 business opportunities, leading to 10 new collaborative research and business development engagements. There are currently some 90 ongoing investigations in progress.

Since the pilot program IXC recently announced that, with the support of ResMed, Johnson&Johnson, and IBM, it will double the size of the Life Sciences consortium and connect it to consortia of firms with converging interests in the medical devices, smart building and smart manufacturing sectors and is also examining the feasibility of deploying intermediaries into venture capital funds in Australia and the USA.