Experience and research tell us five key success principles are seen across the cultures of ‘serial innovators.’ The good news: These characteristics can be adapted for any company, regardless of industry.

Do you suffer from “Innovation Envy”?

Innovation Envy, or “I.E.,” is a pervasive state of mental anguish found most often in executive leaders of large corporations. The condition is characterized by sleepless nights spent pining over your competition’s ability to get that elusive “creative jump,” as well as the nagging fear you will rise the next morning to find your own company has suddenly become irrelevant.

Online marketing has become an important part of the small business toolbox. In order to reach consumers and grow your business, there are a variety of tactics and tools you can use – from online advertising to social media marketing to reputation management and more. Managing all the ins and outs of running a small business is complex, and juggling all the different aspects of online marketing is a responsibility in and of itself.

So, take a minute to make sure you’re not committing any of these seven deadly sins when marketing your small business:

1.) Not Tracking Your Online Advertising 

Can a laundry detergent laced with sunscreen turn your clothes into protection from harmful ultraviolet rays? How about a shampoo that claims to do the same?

As another hot summer looms, consumers are once again stocking up on products that promise scientifically formulated sun protection. Only now, amid a steady drumbeat of bad-news stories about global warming, manufacturers are upping the ante with whole new categories of chemically treated products that purport to block ultraviolet light. The products range from clothing and shoes to makeup and umbrellas. There are even sunscreen bikinis that pledge to shield those patches of skin that they actually cover.

I’m often approached by people who claim to have invented the next big thing, and ask me how much it’s worth, or complain that they can’t find an investor who will fund it. The honest answer is that ideas and new technologies are worth nothing, outside the context of a specific entrepreneur and a specific business plan that meets a market need for a fair price.

Invention is the process of creating a new technology. Business innovation is taking that technology and successfully bringing it to market in a way people want. There is a variation on an old quote that sums it up for me: “Invention is turning money into technology. Business innovation is turning technology into money.”

The landing page is likely the first impression the customer will have of your company. Just like any other first impression, you want it to be a positive one so that your company can continue to grow and customers will continue to knock on your door. Having a landing page attached to a fancy link on another page will do your company absolutely no good if that landing page is ineffective at converting visitors to customers.

Here are 5 tips to building an effective landing page.

1. Build Credibility

For the landing page to be at all effective, credibility indicators need to be found everywhere on that page. Items that promote the credibility of any business are things such as customer testimonials, awards, Facebook likes, reviews and seller ratings.

I’ve just returned from a week in Silicon Valley. As always, I get a lot of inspiration from the way things work and happen in the Valley. It’s appropriate then, that on the day I returned to London, I read an article entitled, “European Startups Need To Get A Valley Education, And Fast” by Julia K Szopa in TechCrunch. While I agree with her article, here’s my own perspective on what works and why.

The main reason for travelling out to Silicon Valley was to attend TiECon 2012 – the annual conference of Indian entrepreneurs from around the world. Here we heard some great keynotes from prominent Indian entrepreneurs in the USA. The two that stood out for me were those by Anant Agarwal, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and director of CSAIL, computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory, with his keynote on organic computing; and Sam Pitroda, adviser to the Indian Prime Minister for public information infrastructure & innovations, who talked about ‘Igniting Innovation in India’.

Many people view Canada as a less populated, snowier version of the U.S.  That’s just not true.  For one, the average Canadian ice skates far better than the average American.  Then, Canadians like their french fries dipped in a cheesy goop called poutine — no ketchup involved.  But wait…  here’s a big cultural difference:   on average, despite claims that Canadian universities lack a commercial focus, as a percentage of total research funding, many top Canadian universities attract as much — if not proportionately *more* — research funding from companies than their counterparts in the U.S.

Michigan State University is stepping up its efforts to turn research into viable startups with the newly formed subsidiary Spartan Innovations, which will help the university’s faculty and students form spin-off companies based on technology developed at MSU, while also building the local culture of entrepreneurship.

“Our goal is to accelerate the formation of companies and optimize MSU research innovations,” says Charley Hasemann (pictured above), executive director of the MSU Innovation Center. “We want to pull together all the pieces that cause entrepreneurial excitement.”

By Nicolas Étienne, Mechanical engineer and innovation passionate

The second day of QSS was held a workshop dedicated to people interested in better understanding the mechanism, logistic and planning required in organizing a similar event at a regional level or at a private company level.

We started sharing basic topics such as the limitations of closed innovation compared to the benefits of open innovation. Based on many innovation references (H. Chesbrough, D. Pink, T. Edison, L. Heward, S. Thomke, F. Piller, 3M, Apple, Honda, IBM) as well as professional experiences in a multinational company and in a research center - we extracted and summarized four key winning conditions for operational deployment success: upper management commitment; internal innovation culture promotion; organizational innovation structure; and intellectual property aspects.

By Jean-Sébastien Bouchard and Philippe Dancause Facilitators, www.grisvert.com

There is no magic in QSS. Well, a little bit of it but most of the success of the approach can be tracked down to a couple of elements. Briefly, we can summarize these elements to the following equation: Open innovation + Social technologies + Regional leadership = Transforming a collection of intelligences into a collective intelligence.

But how can we adapt this success to other contexts? Here are the paths we are developing right now.

1- Problem solving for a single organization Many public and private organizations face problems which have a high social complexity. To address this type of problems, we need to engage the stakeholders, not just the experts. The QSS approach, with the broadcasting of problems, can be useful in these conditions.

By Jacques Brosseau, IDTEQ

IDTEQ stands for the Regroupement pour l’innovation et le développement technologique de Québec (Quebec City association for innovation and technological development) and includes the Centre de recherche industrielle du Québec (CRIQ), the Consortium de recherche appliquée en traitement et transformation des substances minérales (COREM), FPInnovations, the Institut national d’optique (INO), the Institut de recherche et de développement en agroenvironnement (IRDA), the Société de valorisation des applications de la recherche (SOVAR) and the Parc technologique du Québec métropolitain (PTQM).

IDTEQ’s mission is to foster collaboration, support, and complementarity among the various research centres with an industrial vocation (CRVI), SOVAR and PTQM.

IDTEQ’s membership includes 1,200 employees, with 950 working in the area of technological development and of services to the SME sector. During the last five years, IDTEQ members have generated investments exceeding $117M in R&D projects and private companies.

By Marko Torkkeli International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) and Lappeenranta University of Technology

Quebec seeks solutions (QSS) concept proved, second time, to be very effective on implementation of open innovation at regional/local context. Nine challenges posted were very interesting representing great variety of different business areas and thus creating space for interdisciplinary problem-solving. With people coming from different disciplines, living physically not far away, but yet haven no possibility to meet each others in facilitated environment gives a great chance for serendipity. These ‘lucky accidents’ are one of the key ingredients of successful QSS. During the event participants had a lot of opportunities to meet new people and have dialogs on emerging solutions for problems posted.

For SMEs and start-ups QSS gives unique opportunity to learn open innovation principles in practical two-day event and at the same time join into group of seekers or solvers, in best case both.

SMEs and start-ups have several challenges to cope with. They eternally suffer resources scarcity to compensate, they need to look attractive in the eye of large counterparty, and there are issues of trust and reputation to cope with for better bargaining power. Lack of experience on IP and contracting for open innovation may lead, instead of proper value capturing, to value creation only.

The future seems bright for local open innovation event like QSS. Communities and regional authorities may use the concept which has proven its impact in practice for new business and job creation.

I am convinced open innovation concept needs events like QSS. Seeks solutions is emerging and evidence is there, like ISS (Ispim Seeks Solutions)

By Anne-Laure Mention, ISPIM Advisory Board Member and Head of “Innovation Economics & Service Valuation” Research Unit at the Public Research Centre Henri Tudor

The cooperation between Québec seeks solutions and the International Society for Professional Innovation Management (ISPIM) started almost 2 years ago, when the first edition of this solutions lab was launched simultaneously to the 2010 ISPIM Symposium in Québec City.

With more than 6000 members and associated members coming from various horizons (universities and research centers, consulting and private sector firms, innovation agencies) and multidisciplinary backgrounds (business, management, economics, engineering, etc.), ISPIM is the leading worldwide innovation management network which gathers academics and researchers, industrialists, consultants and public bodies with a shared interest in innovation management. Founded in 1983 by Professor Knut Holt, ISPIM produces high quality scientific and educational material and organizes events in view of facilitating knowledge sharing and development in the field of innovation management and ultimately, supporting innovation capabilities in both private and public sector organizations.

By Frank Piller, chair professor of management and the director of the Technology & Innovation Management Group at RWTH Aachen University, Germany

I have to admit that I was very skeptical. Before the first edition of the "Seeks Solutions" approach taking place in Quebec of Local Open Innovation in Dec 2010, I didn't believe that ten tough technical problems can be solved from about 220 people in just one day. Luckily, I was wrong, and "Quebec Seeks Solutions (QSS) 2010" became a large success. (http://mass-customization.de/2010/12/from-market-places-to-problem-places-report-of-the-quebec-seeks-solutions-conference-a-new-method-fo.html).

So this year I was much more optimistic. The team behind QSS 2012 again did a great job in organizing an outstanding event. And the solution process even worked better. Out of the ten projects, all but two were solved, and also for the two remaining problems, important ideas for a path towards solution were developed.

By Christophe Deutsch, R&D Manager at Telops (www.telops.com) and Quebec Seeks Solutions strategic advisor

I am very proud of this second edition of Quebec Seeks Solutions (QSS). All the nine seeking companies have left with very interesting solution potentials after a two day working session. Around 160 participants have worked hard on technical problems going from the optimisation of the green coke calcination process to the manufacturing of fur boots.

In order to help those less familiar with the open innovation concepts, QSS started with 3 presentations on the topic. Frank Piller, Richard Bendis and Marko Torkkeli have given an excellent overview of different aspects of open innovation.

After this more traditional introduction people went to the laboratory space in order to better understand the problems and to try to bring solutions. Here are a few outcomes of the second edition:

1- Networking outside the “normal” network: the seeking companies have met people that they would never have thought of contacting themselves. Furthermore these people were interested in their problems much more than just in selling them their capabilities.

A seeker told us that, before its QSS experience, he would never have expected that the problem he was facing could interest someone (he thought the problem was not technical enough)!

Download a PDF of the presentation.

Here’s a good way to experience the Seeks Solutions approach! Three problems related to innovation management will be treated during the one hour and a half workshop on June 19th at the ISPIM conference in Barcelona. We will use the intelligence of experts from all around the world to solve them. Visit the ispim.seeks-solutions.com website to learn more and come to see us in Barcelona to experiment a Seeks Solutions event. The workshop will be led by Jean-Sébastien Bouchard (Grisvert), Christophe Deutsch (Telops) and Frank Piller (RWTH Aachen University).

On May 15th during the first day of QSS 2012, the partners have launched a beta version of an exchange and collaborative platform destined to support QSS events - www.quebec-solutions.com This platform will be used as an important tool to develop local open innovation communities based on the "Seeks Solutions” model.

Asentri (www.asentri.com) channeled the willingness of the partners to complete this tool and pass another milestone by completing the global service offer of the "Seeks Solutions” model. It is now possible for organisations to submit problems throughout the year, discuss them with the QSS community and propose action plans.

This platform is part of the "Seeks Solutions” model, which can generate a multitude of convergences on a local, national and international level. This tool also allows for year-round collaboration to maximize value for organizations before and after QSS events.

Sunday lived up to its name this past weekend, as countless skywatchers in the western U.S. took in a rare annular solar eclipse. An annular eclipse occurs when the moon passes directly in front of the sun but its apparent size, from Earth's perspective, is too small to completely cover the solar disk. During the May 20 eclipse, the moon covered as much as 94 percent of the sun, leaving a narrow "ring of fire" in the sky. (The apparent diameters of the sun and moon change over time; this is especially true for the moon, because its distance to Earth varies significantly over the course of its monthly elliptical orbit.)