Scouting for Innovation, a blog within a blog

I know there's a name for it when you blog about someone else's blog, but I can't remember what it is...
However, well-known innovation blogger Stefan Lindegaard picked up on a study that I also found noteworthy. The study is called Scouting for Innovation in 2009, and it's by NERAC, a global research firm.

Stefan blogged about it better than I could have, and since tech scouting is a growing activity for members of our community, thought this would be of interest: Scouting for Innovation.

Stefan says "the findings in the report fit well into a key thing being discussed in the open innovation community right now; the real effects of open innovation are due to behind-the-scenes activity rather than flashy portals and idea-generation campaigns.

The report has lots of great insights and the authors want to highlight these conclusions:

Innovation scouts acknowledge a general lack of formal knowledge of the process of scouting, including how to find and evaluate ideas.

The more integrated a company's products are into other companies' products, the higher the likelihood that scouting is considered important.

There are many different approaches for implementing innovation scouting, with companies using internal innovation scouts, external partners, third party scouts, and consultants.

Most companies operate with a small cadre of scouts, usually fewer than six resources.

The scouting role is not always confined to internal R&D departments within an organization, but instead is often jointly sponsored across multiple business units.

Innovation scouts use many methods for finding new ideas, with competitive intelligence the most prevalent source of ideas.

There's a lot more, but you can read Stefan's blog or download the study results.
Also I'd be remiss if I didn't mention our own Tech Scouting resources, including our upcoming workshop in April led by Jay Paap, one of the top gurus in the field.