Lessons from The BRITE ‘10 Conference, Part 2: Culture Eats Strategy for Lunch

This week I attended the third BRITE conference in New York City. In this post, I’ll convey many of the things that I learned during the second session of day one. To read yesterday’s post about part one of day one, click here.

The first speaker was Dwayne Spradlin, CEO, Innocentive. His company helps companies find innovative solutions to business problems by crowdsourcing innovation challenges to its member community. Among his points:

• Innovation is a function of employees, customers, vendors, supplies
• In easily my favorite quote of the day, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” Extremely well put.
• Brands are going to go open as well.
• On the US health care system, a US doctor told him recently, “If you can explain it to me, I can fix it.”
• For innovation to happen, it’s critical to get people involved at an early stage.
• Organizations are notoriously bad at asking questions and solving problems on their own.
• Engaging communities is important, as is understanding how to ask questions.
• Companies should not filter their own communities; all communities should work on all problems. Problems are often “six disciplines” away and …

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