Syneratio

Connect with the most promising students, researchers, or companies, browse through millions of research papers, and find & accelerate the knowledge of tomorrow.

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Inspire2Live - Syneratio honoured to be keynote speaker

We are proud and honoured to announce that we are invited to be keynote speaker at the Inspire2Live congress next Thursday (11 February 2016). Inspire2live is an independent patient advocacy organization that makes a difference for cancer patients: a charity organisation to achieve the best possible cancer care and the best possible access to cancer care. Inspire2Live is the initiative of Peter Kapitein, founder of the Dutch famous ‘Alpe d’HuZes’annual charity event for cancer research, that started with $350,000 worth of sponsoring contracts, growing five years later towards $30M annually. The reason why we are invited to speech, is that Inspire2Live and Syneratio have a mutual vision on the world of science: Scientific knowledge should be extracted faster from laboratories to the ones who need it the most. In case of Inpsire2Live: the patients. Only when scientific knowledge will be shared and used accordingly among stakeholders in all processes around cancer as a disease, innovation is possible. As Inspire2Live dictates: Let’s get cancer under control. One of the key issues is to break down the scientific silos. The data that was collected for, e.g. prostate cancer goes into the silo where it can only be used for prostate cancer. This data should be networked and be integrated to a broader scale for the fight against cancer. Inspire2Live optimizes research and stimulates international cooperation in research to take care of knowledge sharing among stakeholders (patients, doctors, etc.). We both break down the silos in research and healthcare and stimulate multidisciplinary collaboration. Members of Inspire2Live have invested a lot of energy and time during the last years in setting up cancer research in cooperation with patients, clinicians and researchers and always with the aim of implementing the best cancer care and the access to the best cancer care in various countries. John Locke (1632 – 1704), the famous English philosopher once said: “The improvement of understanding is for two ends: First, our own increase of knowledge; secondly, to enable us to deliver that knowledge to others.” Let’s enable us to deliver that knowledge to others, the ones who need it the most! For us at Syneratio, if we could change even a tiny bit in the lives of patients suffering from cancer, we would be honoured. Let’s use all of that data for that basic purpose: People from around the world active at our platform, the millions of scientific articles present and a multitude of cross-functional links between these data entries, just to accomplish this mission to improve people’s lives in a different way.

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Earlier knowledge sharing helps society

Roy van Lith recently received his master degree in Marketing Management. “This Master Degree is definitely an addition to my college degree,” he says. “Now I have both the practical and theoretical knowledge in marketing.” To get his master degree, Roy conducted research on the willingness to pay from companies, students and academic researchers. In this Expert Story we’ll address his research, trends in marketing and his future goals.

Gathering data

A struggle for Roy during his research was gathering data. “But during my research I found out that other students struggle with the same problem: they need many participants in surveys and experiments for their research to be reliable. As well as researchers, they’re willing to pay to get the required amount of participants and for the number of questions asked in surveys,” Roy adds. “That’s where Syneratio could provide in: making it easier for students and researcher to get the number of participants needed.”

Mind the gap

“Another thing I found out through personal interviews was that there’s a gap between business and researchers,” Roy tells me. “Researchers publish for top journals because the universities demand it. It takes up to four years for their research to be published, whilst the most important results are know after a short amount of time. These results should be published earlier so companies can use them to innovate and improve products.”

“Society benefits from early access to research”

“Early and fast knowledge sharing is important. If a research is conducted on social media, we can read the results in four years. The question is: is it still relevant then?” Roy asks. “If universities are more open to Open Access, as researchers are, the research results could be implemented much earlier while they’re still relevant. If valorisation occurs earlier it helps both science and society!”

Up close & personal

There’s a change happening in the world of marketing and communication, according to Roy. “Companies realise now that mass communication doesn’t always work. They use new ways to approach their customers. With location based messages that pop-up when you’re near the store, of with personal discounts adjusted to your buying behaviour,” he explains.

“More sales thanks to effective location based messaging”

“This way, companies can constantly respond to the customer’s needs to get more sales. This new way of approaching is already booming in the United States, and in Europe it’s used more and more.” Big brands such as McDonalds and Starbucks already use location based messaging to boost sales.

Looking at the future

“I’m an ambitious person, yes,” he says. “I want to keep learning, keep on growing, that’s very important to me. Preferably at one company, on the condition that there are opportunities for growth within that company. I don’t think jobhopping is very good for your career. My goal is to learn all different facets within a company and climb up the career ladder to become Commercial Director. My first step on that ladder is the management traineeship sales and marketing that I’m starting with soon,” Roy concludes.

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Interview in Global Innovation Magazine

Jorin Aardoom was interviewed last month by the Global Innovation Magazine. This is an innovation-focused magazine where they take a look at innovators and innovative products around the globe. To keep that in mind, we are happy with this publication in this magazine with such reach around the globe. This article gives insight in our product and into the people behind our business and ideas. Global Innovation as a magazine itself was launched stating “(…) the magazine was started with a simple desire: to spread the excitement of innovation.” Syneratio was also found to spread the excitement of innovation! You can read this article for free (of course) by clicking this link:

http://www.globalinnovationmagazine.com/issues/nov2015/#30-31 

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The rise (and need) of innovation centers

According to several studies, between 50 to 90 per cent of new products end up being financial failures. Even truly innovative products often do not make as much money as organizations have invested in them[1]. Moreover, 90% of all companies believe that their ‘time-to-market’ is too slow with new (innovative) products [2].

Opportunities to innovate

A good reason to look for new opportunities in order to succeed instead of failure! A study by Capgemini Consulting[3] (Innovation Game) shows the rise of innovation centers all over the world. A conventional innovation center is a team of people and a physical location. The mission of innovation centers is to pioneer and test new disruptive solutions for the customers, testing new business models and technologies that advance their position in the market. Innovation centers are looking at making significant impact to the overall business and not just incremental changes. As the moment, 38% of the largest 200 companies (by revenue) have set up Innovation Centers. Silicon Valley is the most popular area for innovation centers due to the available technology companies. The main goal of an innovation center is to gain access and exposure to latest technologies (65%).

“Innovation Centers provide access to latest technologies”

Innovation centers have proved their value to many companies, for example AT&T[4]. The innovation center of AT&T has significantly cut the time from idea to launch of a new product. An intensive collaboration with startups has delivered successful solutions such as a personalized video bill service and a self-optimizing network. We are happy to see such a rise of innovation centers. It reveals the need of innovation and the need to collaborate. Innovation centers provide opportunities to startups to work actively with the company to test (startup) products. The startups also gain from mentoring and the availability of mature processes to test their innovations. Unfortunately, the study by Capgemini shows that a lot of innovation centers fail (80%-90%). It is extremely challenging to make a success of innovation centers. One of the challenges is to create a cross-functional team, of which the composition needs to be diverse. “It is about bringing the right people along the journey at the right time and having the right integrated teams that include the business working on ideas together.”

“Syneratio is the Digital Innovation Center”

At Syneratio, we believe that there is more knowledge outside of your organization than within your organization. Our platform connects organizations, managers, researchers, and students which you don’t know yet. One of our strengths is that this will occur digitally. Innovation is possible without a physical barrier due to our digital infrastructure. The advent of this kind of digital hubs will create new innovation ecosystems. It is for the traditional innovation centers to tap into a great opportunity to re-energize their innovation capability.

Sources:

[1] https://hbr.org/2003/09/innovating-for-cash

[2] Oracle, “Understanding the Best Approaches and Tools to Manage the Complexity of Innovation”, 2013

[3] http://ebooks.capgemini-consulting.com/the-innovation-game/Standalone_Infographic_Content_Innovation_Centers_main_22_7_15_v2.pdf

[4] Capgemini Consulting and Altimeter Analysis

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Brussels, Lisbon, and Philadelphia: Speeches!

Last month was quite busy for our team. Our ideology has hit the political debate too now, since we have given (keynote) speeches at the European Parliament in Brussels, the Féani Engineering Congress in Lisbon, and the Berkshire Hathaway reception in the Greater Philadelphia region, PA, USA. In Brussels,we spoke about a number of topics, among others the Startup Landscape in Europe, to create a more fertile ground for innovation and R&D. Later, In Lisbon, two earlier keynote speakers mentioned ‘there is a need for a Virtual R&D platform, for all stakeholders in the process of knowledge creation and innovation to collaborate more with each other’. Hereafter, we had our speech coming up, and the timing and fit in the debate could not have been better. In case you have a brilliant idea about improving the world of research and development and want to take a stand: Feel free to send us a message or request using [email protected], and we’ll publish your view here in this series of “Expert Stories and Blogs”. Last week, we went to the USA to elaborate our options for a branch office there, since Syneratio is currently expanding exponentially in now more than 30 countries throughout the world… Stay tuned: more about this Business Trip, and don’t forget to compete in our share the love competition to earn cash prizes!

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Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.

Drew Houston, Dropbox.

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Innovator checker

Check if you are really an innovator: 1. Are you curious and able to come up with original ideas while the rest is stuck in creativity? Yes or no? 2. Do you have the courage to take real risks in everyday life with your career, reputation and money? Yes or no? 3. Are other people prepared to follow you when you take them on a path no one ever took before? Yes or no? 4. Do you change your mind and pivot your idea when it doesn't work and is proven wrong? Yes or no? 5. Do you persist and make it reality, even when everybody tells you it can't be done and you failed the first seven times? Yes or no? Are you an innovator? Please visit our website www.syneratio.com and become a part of our platform!

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Expert story: Jaap Bakker

This Expert Story is a special one: Jaap Bakker recently graduated from the Eindhoven University of Technology. To get his Master Degree in Operations Management and Logistics, he did research for a wholesale and logistics company in the field convenience products. Research topic: cargo hitching. “Cargo hitching is about creating synergy between private and public transport when it comes to delivering cargo,” Jaap explains. “Lots of public transport companies have spare capacity in their vehicles. With cargo hitching, that space is used to deliver cargo, like packages. Public busses drive the cargo to the city’s train station, where taxi’s with spare capacity deliver the packages to the delivery address.”

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Cross-functional Innovation is vital

Dr. Dave Richards has an impressive resume: co-founder of the MIT Innovation Lab, formal Global General Manager at Nortel Networks, formal Global Director of Partnerships at Oracle, the list goes on and on. After he graduated as a psychologist from the University of Toronto, Canada, he wanted to be an academic, a professor at a university. Instead of teaching students, he is now an authority on strategic innovation, a valued writer and a frequently asked speaker at conferences and workshops.

“We learned from each other’s mistakes and this way, we saw new ways to improve innovations and their success rates”

“The founding of the Innovation Lab happened during lunch actually,” Dave tells me. At that time he worked as Global General Manager of Nortel Networks and was asked to review the budget spend on universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During a lunch with Eric von Hippel, a professor at MIT,  they came up with the idea of a lab, where people would be able to conduct research. “When we started the lab, it functioned more as a forum for bragging, telling each other how great our innovations were and how smart we are. But after a while something changed. Instead of sharing how great we were, we shared our greatest fears and failures instead of our successes,” Dave adds.  This led them to some powerful insights. “We learned from each other’s mistakes and this way, we saw new ways to improve innovations and their success rates,” he explains to me. Thanks to these insights, they were able to make the MIT Innovation Lab a multimillion dollar organisation.

Valorisation and cross functional innovation

According to Dave, valorisation is a critical aspect of research and innovation. “You have to apply insights in order to keep improving. It’s basically what we were doing in the Innovation Lab. As for valorisation: I do think we are underperforming relative to our potential. Human nature is so much greater than we experience! There are massive opportunities for improvement,” he claims.

“We are underperforming relative to our potential.”

“That’s why cross-functional innovation is vital: the best innovations happen when you have diverse groups and when they engage effectively. But then again, it’s not just about cross-functional innovation but also about open innovation: collaborating outside your own organisation and across different industries and sectors. Then you have the most potential for value creation.”

Researchers’ struggles

In his book ‘The Seven Sins of Innovation’ Dave provides a practical approach to improve innovation. “I’ve always wanted to share some key insights from the MIT innovation Lab, but the challenge was finding the time to do it,” he says on the subject. His book provides a new definition of innovation. “In my opinion,” Dave explains, “innovation means creating more value than you have to invest to create it.”

“Researchers struggle in communicating and relationships with others”

With his many years of experience in research projects and innovation, Dave knows better than anyone what researchers and innovators struggle with. He shares his insight on these key struggles with me: “The answer to that question is one word really: relationships. There are several specific problems that occur in different types of relationships, whether you look at leadership or how information is shared, or communication between departments. They all boil down to relationships, and I see these problems, which have to do with human nature and the human mind, continue to undermine a lot of innovation efforts and continue to limit the effectiveness,” Dave explains. “That’s why I’m excited about what you do at Syneratio, you’re creating links and relationships and opportunities to collaborate. That’s fertile ground for innovation and delivering tangible value, for example decreasing the time to market.” When I ask Dave why he considers himself a serial innovator, he replies: “I’m constantly looking for new ways to create value, to improve and to collaborate. I just can’t stop innovating.”

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In this series we'll speak about updates regarding Syneratio, it's business, and the developments around our ideology. Also, we offer the stand for promising researchers, business directors and innovative students to tell their story! Feel free to contact us in case you have a brilliant idea/vision about improving the world of (scientific) research, development, and scientific education and write your 'Expert Story'.

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This is a blog devoted to problems of managing innovation generally, and open innovation in particular. Before I define that term, let me introduce myself. I’m a professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas Business School, and a former manager in the computer disk drive industry in Silicon Valley. When I worked [...]

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I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

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“The value of knowledge doesn’t exist, because it depends on its connections and context, rather than the raw knowledge itself: It is Emergent”

https://syneratio.com/ideology

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