I am currently doing research for a white paper and a webinar on harnessing the global talent pool to accelerate innovation, and I need your help to add to the case studies I’ve already gathered. Here is the premise:
As more industries become commoditized and innovation becomes more of a focus, organizations are being forced to move beyond a talent ownership mindset to a talent attraction and engagement mindset.
There are many reasons for this. In the United States this includes a growing percentage of researchers approaching retirement age and post 9/11 immigration policies that make it increasingly difficult for foreigners to come to this country to study and work. The intersection of an aging scientific workforce, tighter immigration policies, and a growing need for innovation to reinvigorate the economy is causing more organizations to make plans to engage talent outside their four walls. But this is not just an American problem…
Forward-thinking organizations are now seeking to harness the growing numbers of retired scientists, unemployed experts, and underemployed talent around the world to generate ideas, solve problems, and further the goals of the business.
This begs the question:
What is your organization’s external talent strategy?
Or, how does your organization plan to leverage the brains outside your four walls to achieve its goals?
Please leave a comment or contact me to share your story.
I’ll be sharing the results of my research and my thinking in a FREE webinar on December 13, 2011 and then later in a white paper in the new year.
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The clock is ticking on the congressional “supercommittee” – a panel comprised of six Republicans and six Democrats charged with issuing a plan to balance the nation’s budget. The bipartisan gathering has only four days until their deadline to submit such a plan. But how well can they, or anyone, innovate while the clock is ticking?
I had the opportunity to hear Mark Synnott speak of how despite the enormous risk he undertakes in his climbing explorations, that the thing that scares him most is the possibility of slipping on easy ground. When he is attempting a difficult portion of a climb, he is always thinking about what his exposure to risk is, but on easy portion it is easy to forget to take proper precautions. Yet, when it comes to his kids Mark thinks he is probably one of the world’s most over-protective parents, but at the same time he wants to inspire his kids to be curious about the world.
Peter Diamandis talked about how we need to ask where a breakthrough should be possible and focus on structuring an innovation challenge to help harness people’s curiosity to push past current obstacles in thinking or execution. Peter has learned first-hand that small teams are amazingly powerful, and talked about how big organizations focus on reducing risk by throwing lots of money and resources at a challenge. On the flip side though, when you put a box around a challenge with a small budget and a small team, then that small team of people will know the traditional approach will fail – and try a different approach.
In speaking with David Gallo about exploration of the seas, he spoke about how when we oversell a danger like climate change in the media, it is damaging – there is no plastic island the size of Texas in the middle of the ocean. But there is a chemistry change in the ocean, a soup, a film leads to us eating our own garbage as plastic, flame retardants, and other runoff embed themselves in the tissue of the fish we eat. We have changed the temperature and the chemistry of the oceans, and anyone who has an aquarium knows that’s a bad idea.
It is has been just a little over two months since we launched Innovation Excellence, and thanks to your great support, we already have cracked the 
“Shell has long been on the cutting edge of innovation, and we are proud to bring them into the X PRIZE family, supporting a prize group that advances innovation, exploration and tomorrow’s discoveries,” said Peter Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation. “We are closely aligned in our goals to motivate and inspire brilliant innovators from all disciplines to leverage their intellectual capital to explore new frontiers that could result in significant global achievements.”
