The Solver’s Edge

Keaton Swett, an Enabler: In open Innovation, repetition is the mother of success

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Hello solvers,

Welcome to The Solvers Edge Podcast, the podcast that takes you on a journey of why, how, and when does open innovation matter.

I’m your host, Iliriana Kacaniku and today I am excited to talk to Keaton Swett, the co-founder of MindSumo, an open innovation management platform.  Keaton is both an innovator and an enabler.  He challenged himself with solving a big problem – showcasing student talent beyond resumes so employers recognize and hire them for demonstrated skills and value.  He solved this two-sided problem by co-founding MindSumo, the crowdsourcing innovation management platform for Millennials and Gen X problem solvers.  Since then,  the platform community has grown to over 800,000 solvers from top universities around the world and has hosted over 3,000 challenges for over 100 of Fortune 500 companies.

During the conversation, Keaton reminds us that:

  • Open innovation is not a one-time Band-Aid solution to your problems. Open innovation yields best results when applied as a repeatable process within the organization.
  • Open innovation is not a one-size-fits-all solution.  Depending on what your company needs are, customize each challenge in order to source the right innovative solutions to the problem.
  • Open innovation challenges will match you with talent that may never come under your radar. By centering the challenges on the problem you aim to solve, you convert them into a marketplace of potential employment, for both you as an employer and solvers as potential employees, whom conventional recruitment channels may never reach.

    • And so, if you’re a student:

    • Consider solving problems posed via open innovation challenges to demonstrate to your potential employers what you can solve and the value you bring to the table for  them.

      • What about you? What learnings did you take from this conversation? Feel free to share them with us at [email protected]. We would love to hear from you.   In the interim, follow us on Spotify, or Apple Podcast, or Google Podcast and subscribe to our newsletter so you do not miss out on our next episodes.

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      The Solver’s EdgeBy Kaptivate LLC