MIT Sloan Management Review

Relationships between a company’s R&D and marketing departments aren’t always cordial — but they can be improved, according to a new article.

Andrew Lippman of the MIT Media Lab discusses the problems associated with trying to build products that will have appeal for a long time. The alternative? Build architectures that allow people to build their own products.

Two pieces of news:
1) Some companies are trying an approach to launching products that involves less up-front market research and more experimentation in the marketplace.
2) Innovation is on the agenda of the U.S.’s new CTO.

We’re all familiar with the power of volunteer contributions in the open source software movement. Now companies are finding additional ways to work with volunteer contributors.

Mick McManus, CEO of a company called MAYA Design, offers some interesting reflections on the state of product innovation during the current downturn.

Technology Review  has published an interesting article about the increasing popularity of open-source hardware — and its use by companies ranging from Nokia to start-up Chumby.�

Looking to spark innovation in your R&D workforce? Look for employees who are motivated by intellectual challenges — but not by job security.

Cisco yesterday announced the winner of its first global innovation contest, the I-prize. More than 2,500 contestants from more than 100 countries competed for prize money — by submitting ideas that could potentially form new billion-dollar businesses for Cisco.�

The economic news of the last few weeks has been grim. But things may not necessarily be so bad in the start-up sector. Opines venture capitalist Carl Weissman in a recent posting on Xconomy, "The investments that I am making...a

First there was open source software. Now, Scientific American reports, there's an open source prosthetics community working on better artificial hands and arms.   The reason? In the United States, the number of amputees missing an arm or hand is too small to justify a lot of commercial research and development.�

A fascinating recent article from Fortune describes how Bombardier, a Canadian company that makes trains and airplanes, has developed a locomotive that solves a key problem that has held back rail logistics in Europe: Dealing with the wide variety of rail systems, specific to different countries, that cover Europe ” and that have slowed freight trains' progress across the