Derek Lowe writes the very very good and very highly read In the Pipeline blog. Derek has a way of getting right to the point with a nice blend of bluntness and sardonic humor without being mean spirited. Sometimes his posts just make me smile. Here's one such post from today on the topic of Open Source discovery.
I'm actually a backer of the concept and think that companies really should try to explore its potential -- by testing and operationalizing it. However, Derek makes a good point in his blog. Too often proponents on the topic - provide a lot of talk but don't seem to be able to deliver the concrete actions or proof of concepts.
Maybe this post hit home a bit more as I received the following note from a colleague commenting on a current discussion on "open innovation" in one of the innovation groups that I participate in. My colleague wrote:
To me it's unbelievable how little capability to analyze things have most of the people who are posting comments on that discussion group!!! They got "stuck" into that Soft skills topics they can read in books of Change management, Leadership, etc, but when it comes to Hard skills and concrete innovation they do bla-bla-bla...
Presumably it is hard to articulate the "hard innovation ideas" as they are hidden in the ball of fuzz that Derek refers to in his post. Maybe we need to contact Rush to help us find the answer as he seems to know a lot about Fuzzballs.
Posted by Bruce Lehr July 29th 2010.

