1. LONG TAIL OF INNOVATION
IN INTERNAL CROWDS
…a case story of a hidden dream team!
Frank Hatzack and Maria Carlsen
@frankhatzack, @MaCarlsen
Innovation Office, Novozymes R&D

2. WHAT IS THE ‘LONG TAIL’ OF INNOVATION?
Notion that creativity has a highly skewed distribution in inventor
crowds. Breakthrough innovations are usually found in the ‘long tail’
section of the distribution curve, meaning they are rare but highly
valuable.

3. SETTING THE SCENE FOR OUR CASE STUDY
In Novozymes R&D we use
collaborative online idea campaigns
on a regular basis…
Who scores the most successful ideas
…because they have delivered new in such online campaigns?
ideas which turned into projects…
Are they our ‘usual inventors’?
…as well as a few potential
breakthrough innovations. What do high performance inventors
have in common?
Hence, we have started to investigate If they were basketball players, what
a couple of questions: kind of breed would they be?

4. THE CASE AT HAND
Growth Bets 2011 online idea
campaign
ONLINE PHASE
2. Selection
1. Selection
96 inventors
25 top ideas 5 winner ideas MATURATION
222 ideas
Participants were scientists of the global R&D organization, selected by a tiered peer
selection system. There were more participants than the 96 active inventors. Further
details to be published. Due to the highly complex technologies in scope of this campaign
the external crowd option was deselected at the time being.

5. RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN IDEA AND INVENTOR
POPULATIONS IN THE CAMPAIGN:
Does your history in idea posting make you a top performer in the
campaign??
Ideas Inventors
top-category
of 25 ideas 5 winning ideas
with a history of posting
31 ideas on the idea web
?
with no history of posting
65 ideas on the idea web
197
other ideas
idea web: internal idea collection established
over several years. Comprising hundreds of
ideas regarding new technologies and products.
About 70 - 90 ideas are posted each year.

6. LIMITATIONS & CAVEATS
The findings presented here are of highly preliminary
character:
 As of now we only have compared inventive performance
in one campaign with the inventive activity records of
only one other source, namely the idea web
 Clearly, one needs to take into account other records of
inventiveness such as publications and IP to get a more
granular picture (on-going)
 Also, one has to investigate more than just one idea
campaign dataset to confirm presented conclusions
 The inventor population sample studied here is rather
small and all our statements which go beyond strictly
descriptive content have to be taken with a grain of salt…

7. THE FIRST THING WE DID WAS TO TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT
THE INVENTORS WITH A HISTORY ON THE IDEA WEB
Ideas Inventors
with a history of posting
31 ideas on the idea web
?
with no history of posting
65 ideas on the idea web
197
other ideas

8. WE FOUND THAT THE IDEA DISTRIBUTION CURVE OF THIS
GROUP HAD AN ASSYMETRIC SHAPE WITH A LONG TAIL
35
idea web curve
30
25
31 participants in the campaign had a historical record of posting a total of
no. of posted ideas
149 ideas on the idea web over severall years (inventors A to AE)
20
15
10
5
0
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE
inventors

9. A SUB-GROUP OF EIGHT HIGHLY ACTIVE INVENTORS STOOD
OUT: THEY CONTRIBUTED 70% OF THE IDEAS
35
idea web curve
30
25
no. of posted ideas
A ‘High Activity Group’ of only 8 inventors (A – H) contributed 103 ideas to the idea
20 web over the years. Thus, this sub-group accounted for 70% of the ideas.
15
10
5
0
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE
inventors

10. LONG TAIL GROUP: THE REMAINING 23 INVENTORS HAD A
RECORD OF POSTING OCCASIONALLY OR SELDOMLY ON THE IDEA
WEB
35
idea web curve
30
25
no. of posted ideas
20
15
10
Long tail group: 23 inventors (I – AE) accounted for 46 (30%) of
5 the idea-web ideas in question
0
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE
inventors

11. ON-LINE CAMPAIGN OBSERVATIONS:
The ‘long tail group’ outperformed the ‘high activity group’ by
producing more top-category ideas. Also, all 5 winner ideas were ‘from
the tail’.
‘THE BANG IS IN THE TAIL!’
35
idea web curve
30
25
x Top category idea (x= no. of top category ideas posted)
no. of posted ideas
1 Winning idea
20
15
2
10 1
1
5 1
1
campaign curve
1
1 2
1 1 1 1
1
1
1 1 1
0 1 1 1
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z AA AB AC AD AE
inventors

12. IF THIS WAS BASKETBALL…
then ‘long tail’ inventors would be the kind of hidden talent players with
dream team potential which you were almost unaware of.
In the present game they spectacularly outperformed the regulars by
scoring more points with fewer shots per player
… and they did all the slam dunks!
Also, a number of players with no historic record showed up and scored 6 times!
inventors with history on idea web inventors with no
Campaign
history on the idea
stats High actitivity Long tail group
web
basketball terms group (A-H) (I-AE)
inventors players 8 23 64
total ideas shots 49 68 73
ideas/inventor shots pr player 6.1 3.0 1.1
top ideas scored points 4 15 6
winner ideas slam dunks 0 5 0
hit rate shot accuracy 8% 22% 8%
hit probability probability to score 50% 65% 9%
in game

13. WHAT MOBILIZED THE HIDDEN DREAM TEAM?
We are not sure yet but a couple of reasons seem likely:
Monetary or material incentives were not promised and can therefore be
ruled out. Awards were symbolic tokens only.

14. CONCLUSION
There are 5 good reasons to conduct internal online idea campaigns
1. Mobilize the great innovation potential of your less prominent and less outspoken
inventors. Organizations tend to overlook their ‘hidden dream team’
2. Capture their great ideas and turn them into projects for new growth. Allow them to
engage in this process
3. Save costs – online idea campaigns are substantially cheaper than face-to-face ones!
4. Boost an engaging innovation culture across your organization
5. Try out internal crowd sourcing first before you go external – you dodge the IP-challenge
and you may be positively surprised
And there is a sixth one, which is detailed in another slide deck: http://slidesha.re/165rt6w
6. Leverage inventor diversity by engaging highly diverse crowds for optimal outcomes