Interview – Emily Lutzker from OpenInvo

We had the priviledge of talking to Emily Lutzker founder and CEO of OpenInvo a company which aims to connect people who want ideas to people who conceive them. Emily explains some of great features of OpenInvo including the extensive work the company has done ensuring both the idea generator and seeker are protected. If you are a bit of a garage inventor like myself I highly commend checking OpenInvo out. It’s simple and free to create an account and you can begin posting your ideas straight away! Best of all you have the peace of mind that your ideas are protected, and you get the opportunity of showcasing your innovations to businesses who can best commercialise them. Please check out OpenInvo at http://www.openinvo.com/

OpenInvo Questions

Hi Emily welcome to Embody 3D it’s great to have you with us! Could you please give us a little background about what you do and your part in OpenInvo.

I’m the founder and CEO. Before I launched the company I was an artist. I made sculpture, video and performance work. I also was an academic, lecturing in a couple of Media Studies programs, in New York (at the New School) and in Israel (at Beit Berl College in the New Media and Games Development programs). I worked in various types of media, as a producer for video and web and as a graphic designer. I have always had the problem of having too many ideas for stuff – whether it is a gadget, a tv show or a business. My friends always said to me, “Why don’t you do this business or that?” I had an art career and didn’t want to go into any of those businesses. Then one day my now co-founder, Eyal Fried, says to me, “Why don’t we have a business out of selling ideas?” It’s the only business I ever wanted to be the owner of.

I always run into this exact issue…I have too many ideas and I don’t have the time or expertise to get them off the ground. I had the pleasure of exploring OpenInvo by getting an account up and running and I just love the simplicity of the interface. How did OpenInvo get started?

After the initial conversation with Eyal, it took LOTS of research, talks with intellectual property attorneys and product developers and people in business innovation. Then with a bunch of scribbles on torn up pieces of paper and some badly written information the site began to take shape. For the visual side of it, I worked with an Art Director who was my boss at my first graphic design job years ago – Susan Sears. She’s the kind of fantastic typography geek that’s a dying breed. We roamed exhibitions and bookstores in NY, trying to figure out what the site should look like and then tag teamed it on the computer while the other conjured up some elaborate lunches. I think there is some unexplored correlation between chopping vegetables and visual design – I just can’t put my finger on it.

Haha I think vegetables are the food of ideas! OpenInvo aims to close the gap between people/businesses who have good ideas and people/businesses who seek good ideas. Could you outline more specifically how OpenInvo works, the services it provides and the main point of difference about OpenInvo?

There are different ways that companies are tapping into outside sources for innovation – either corporate initiatives (calls for solutions and ideas), or what I call “first generation” open innovation platforms. These first gen-ers work a few different ways: either a challenge > solution model, offering t-shirts or ipods for the contributors, or require that the creator of the idea bring the product to market, or maybe the participating crowd votes on what they think is the best new thing. All of these had some good points, but we didn’t think any of these satisfied the needs of creative people with great ideas, nor did they provide real value for innovation. We wanted to satisfy the Idea Seekers and the Idea Providers on a few levels. For the Idea Providers, we wanted to have a way to have them fairly compensated and valued for their ingenuity. Also, we wanted to offer collaboration tools and simplified intellectual property solutions, and various options to how the project is further developed after the initial idea. On the Idea Seeker side, we wanted to offer a more sophisticated way to find and organize concepts than data-mining, or trudging through patent clearing houses, as well as offer both computerized filters and human service to support the innovation process. What we came up with for OpenInvo is the system you see now, albeit in it’s infancy. Idea Providers create an account, upload ideas, rate the confidentiality level themselves, and choose to collaborate or not with other Idea Providers. For the Idea Seekers, they get their own dashboard where they can save ideas they like, discuss with other Seekers on their account what they want to develop or purchase, they get alerts when ideas in their industry come into the database, and also one of the OpenInvo representatives contacts the Seeker if something that might be specifically interesting to them emerges. On both sides, pretty substantial legal agreements are in place. We don’t show any ideas to anyone unless the Provider agrees. The Seeker has no “use rights” for any form of an idea whatsoever unless there is a deal in place. It’s basically a complex system of NDA’s and non-compete agreements. And on top of it, we track everyone who looks at every idea and keep a log of it.

How does OpenInvo evaluate ideas submitted on the site? Does every idea get valued? What happens if the designer/inventor believes their idea might be undervalued?

We were very lucky to work with an economist who is part of our advisory board, Jessica Horewitz, on our idea valuation system. We basically have a model where we input how developed the idea is, what the user will pay for end product, how big the market is and a few other variables. The model produces a price range that we use as a jumping off point. We then make an educated guess as to how much it would cost a company to develop the idea in house, and use that as a comparison to get us in the right ball-park. Of course, we want to get the best price for the Idea Provider as well as make an idea cost effective for the Idea Seeker. It’s a negotiation. And if someone doesn’t like the offer for their intellectual property, they can always refuse the deal.

At Embody 3D we have readers from all over the world, can anyone seek or submit ideas onto OpenInvo? Is there any criteria to join?

There is no criteria to join as an Idea Provider. We want ideas from people from all over! Right now the system is only in English, but I foresee us adding other languages in the future. We don’t accept all Idea Seekers who are not based in the U.S. The foreign companies are accepted on a case by case basis.

If someone submits an idea to OpenInvo is their idea protected privacy-wise? Secondly if someone submits an idea how does patenting work, who owns the intellectual property? Is the designer/inventor able to still carry out a patent on an idea after submitting it to OpenInvo?

All privacy on OpenInvo is user controlled. No one sees any content that is uploaded to OpenInvo unless the author specifies that the information should be seen, and to what specific groups. We will accept ideas with patents on them, or without. The Idea Provider owns the intellectual property until a sale is made. Ideas are editable at any time, so if a patent is issued after the initial upload to our system, the Idea Provider should update the idea so that we can re-evaluate it.

Designer/Inventor Related Questions

What is your advice for industrial designers/inventors who have a great idea and want to submit to OpenInvo but are a little unsure how to best present the idea? How important is presentation when it comes to pitching an idea?

By going through the OpenInvo Idea Wizard, most of the content becomes automatically formatted for online presentation through our system. We do encourage images, video and other files to accompany the OpenInvo questions. We try to present the idea as best we can, and if we think there is something you could do to improve your presentation, we’ll probably drop you a note.

Does an idea have to be fully developed or can it be in its initial stages? Do you think it’s worth developing an idea as much as possible before submitting?

You can start an idea in the system just with a couple of words. We can’t pitch it that way, but immediately it gets put in the system so that you can continue working on it at a later date. Sometimes we get ideas that are just a few lines – which is in rare cases enough, and others have patents and full drawings on them already. It’s really up to the Idea Provider how much time and attention they can commit to the development process at the get go. The hard question for anyone with a project, “Would you rather have $10 for that growing tomato plant today or $100 for all the tomatoes you might harvest next season?” But we hope that Idea Providers are surprised: we worked hard on asking the right questions about the ideas right on the platform, that might even facilitate the development process. And like I said before, when an idea is edited or there are additions made to it, we re-evaluate it and adjust the price and other aspects accordingly.

What do you think makes difference between a good idea and a great idea from the ideas already submitted on OpenInvo?

I love to see visual files attached to ideas. There is nothing that explains your vision better than an image. Great ideas come in all shapes and sizes – things that are game-changing, useful, improve our lives, or just make solve a particular problem.

Industry Related Questions

Do you find there are certain industries in particular that seem to have rapid innovation at the moment? Are there any growth industries that designers could potentially tailor their ideas for?

I could easily answer with technology, bio-tech, medicine, but I think the challenge is to make the so-called “boring” industries exciting. So many of them need innovation! Especially the ones we think are stuck like banking, or real estate. But in terms of markets, I see the baby boomers getting on in age and there is a huge potential there to reinvent and redesign products and services for them. Also, what will we do with the publishing industry? And how can we bring good design, healthy food and sustainable energy to people in an affordable and convenient way? These problems are a good place to start with idea generation.

We have the exact same health care issues in Australia with an ageing population; and likewise healthy living and sustainable energy is on everyones minds from consumers to politicians.

America is of course at the heart of the recent global financial crisis. Has this caused businesses to invest more in innovation, seek ideas and potentially re-evaluate their business strategy looking forward?

I always say, “crisis brings opportunity.” Perhaps I need to elaborate on that… The opportunity is one for change, for innovation — not only in business, but for culture and thinking as well. What happens with a crisis like this one is that trends, habits and values that maybe we didn’t even realize we were nurturing or harbouring, reveal themselves. The crisis offers people a new perspective, and therefore an opportunity for change and innovation. Now is a time to rethink those old assumptions. I do think it’s necessary for businesses to constantly innovate – crisis or not. We see how the brands with the most staying power in the market constantly evolve – see Madonna or Apple. Time and people, therefore markets are not stagnant, they evolve, and so must business to survive. I don’t know what the statistics are that exactly correlate to the financial crisis, but companies are recently looking for better ways to tap into global talent for innovation, and fantastically innovative Proctor & Gamble has actually made it a goal to get more than 50% of their ideas from outside of P&G labs. Although I’ve been told that corporate marketing and advertising budgets have shrunk with the financial crisis, R&D spending has been steadily on the rise in the past few years.

Thanks Emily for spending the time to talk with us today. It’s been fascinating hearing your vision for OpenInvo and an American perspective of innovation and the economy. Do you have any final words for the readers of Embody 3D?

I’m really excited to be working with designers who have great ideas. One of the core values for OpenInvo is to be a bridge between people in the creative industries – the “right-brained” thinkers – with business. Often those two groups don’t speak the same language, but when they can, great things happen. We want to be that translator. And just you wait to see how the OpenInvo platform itself innovates! We have big plans, and are expecting more and more opportunities of all different kinds for the Idea Provider community.

Thanks Emily! Remember to check out OpenInvo at: www.openinvo.com

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