In the weeks leading up to the FORTUNE Innovation Forum in New York City on November 29-30, the Business Innovation Insider is pleased to present a regular series of Q&As with innovative thinkers in business and academia. In this Q&A, Mary Kay Haben, SVP of Open Innovation at Kraft Foods, outlines the strategic rationale for the company’s new innovation program.

Q. Kraft recently announced an open innovation strategy that will solicit ideas from consumers about innovative ways to package and sell Kraft products. Can you describe in greater detail how Kraft is structuring the program and what types of results it expects from the program?

Mary Kay Haben: Recently Kraft embarked on an ambitious Open Innovation Strategy to augment and transform our innovation efforts. The purpose of Open Innovation is to better enable the organization to receive ideas from the outside and connect with potential external alliance partners. The expected outcome is improved speed to market, improved R&D leverage and hopefully more breakthrough innovation. Kraft is soliciting outside ideas against articulated needs (i.e. we search for stuff we know we want or need). In addition, we are accepting and vetting unsolicited ideas that may meet unarticulated needs via our InnovateWithKraft.com website. Further we are also looking for ways to transfer our own intellectual property outside the company through licensing and other arrangements.

For more information on the Kraft Open Innovation program, check out the following links:

Have an idea? Share it with Kraft [Innovate With Kraft]
Kraft and open innovation [The Medici Effect]
Kraft goes experiential [PROMO magazine]
Innovate With Kraft.com [All this Chittah Chattah]

Open innovation at Kraft foods? [Manage to Change]
With open innovation, no idea left behind [CNET]
Kraft Foods and Crowdsourcing [Mass Customization & Open Innovation]
Kraft tightens filter on customer innovation [Marketing & Strategy Innovation]

Beijing-based artist Wang Qingsong spent the summer of 2005 putting together this amazing triptych. In the first photo, a group of hundreds of Chinese demonstrators appear to be rallying against the arrival of Western multinationals in China. In the second photo, you can see the mess and debris created by the protesters. Finally, in the third photo, you are able to see the other side of the banners - they are actually product endorsement banners for a number of Western brands! In his own words, Wang Qingsong explains the significance of the work:

“The triptych gives the viewer three very different images of the same road and landscape. In this work, I use this outdoor landscape setting polluted by “demonstrators” to pose questions such as “What Is Coming?” “Who Is Coming?”, “How Does It Come?”, and “Why Is It Coming?”…. “Why Is It Happening On The Same Road?”Are the crowds generating slogans, garbage, or commercial advertisements? Historic changes of diverse impact often take place simultaneously, while seemingly going down one and the same path. But one thing is certain: The middle road, littered with garbage rather than people, appears silent, but one can see smoke and fire in the distance, hinting at some struggle, chaos, uncertainty or disputes either having come just before or just after the people.”

Need any more proof that China is a country of contradictions?

[image: Come!Come!]

At its first-ever Technology Innovation Showcase in Chicago, Motorola outlined its vision for the future with a wide array of new products and technologies. According to Motorola executives, the mobile phone will be at the center of the next computing revolution, but the product will likely look and feel a lot different than it does now. Anyway, PC Magazine has extensive coverage of the types of new products that Motorola is working on — like a robotic, avatar-based tech support assistant; boxes that light up different colors to reflect the level of interest in products; biodegradable cell phone casings; and new set-top cable/satellite boxes for the living room. Motorola is also working on a version of “social TV” for consumers:

“Motorola’s Social TV demonstration showed a cable box that merges television and instant messaging to let communities form by snarking and sniping about the latest episode of Project Runway on screen, as they’re watching it. If you’re bored, you can also see what your friends are watching (with their permission) and change channels to join them.”

[image: Motorola is Hot]