It's a buzzword branded into new MBA graduates and a term bandied about high-rise boardrooms. Innovation has wormed its way into everyday business lexicon. Some of Chicago's largest companies have made the practice an internal discipline, and are crafting the city into a hub of innovation in the country.

"There is, in Chicago, something quite different than what you would find in Texas or Boston or Silicon Valley. People in different industries get together, they fraternize,"Dan Miller, publisher and executive vice president of The Heartland Institute, told Xinhua Wednesday. "It's part of the culture, part of the air in the Midwest in Chicago that results in innovation."

In 2002, Miller co-founded the Chicago Innovation Awards with Thomas Kuczmarski, senior partner and president of consulting firm Kuczmarski & Associates, in order to change the city's reputation as flyover country. Locally-headquartered corporations like Accenture and Orbitz are overcoming their size to lend a hand to Chicago's reimagining.

The challenges of being big

While a small business-owner can deliver an innovation to market within weeks, it may take years for a corporation to identify a valuable idea and siphon it through research, technology, testing, and communications departments. "Sometimes the more people, the more ideas," says Luke Tanen, current director of the Chicago Innovation Awards. "But it can also create obstacles and bureaucratic red tape."

The challenges may be many, but the benefits are limitless. Accenture, with approximately 181,000 employees in more than 120 countries, is as difficult terrain as any. "Our biggest challenge as a global organization is how to recognize it, see the good stuff, surface it, and share it," says Mike Redding, Global Director of Technology Labs, the department responsible for incubating new technologies, which currently include cloud computing, digital marketing online, and social CRM.

Accenture maintains three programs aimed at encouraging internal innovation. The Breakthrough Innovators Program, awards employees with monetary compensation and peer recognition based on number of patent applications filed. The Ken Ernst Innovation Awards, spotlights inventive client work by Accenture consultants. Last, the wiki-based Accenture Innovations Solutions Network, or Innovation Grapevine, allows 4,000 users "to jointly participate in ideation."

Redding's department cites the same rationale about its locale as the largest publically-traded company in the area, Abbott. " Illinois is the world's 12th biggest economy -- and is home to more than 440 corporate R&D facilities and more than 200 academic, government, and nonprofit research institutions," says Abbott communications director Kelly Morrison

Fifteen percent of Abbott's international employee roster is located in Illinois, and according to Morrison, Abbott will be delivering more than 75 new or next-generation products over the next five years. The company has already won five Chicago Innovation Awards with products like rheumatoid arthritis drug HUMIRA and baby-friendly formula packaging.

Performing the innovation hat trick

Now in its ninth year, the Chicago Innovation Awards will receive more than 400 nominations and award 10 companies at a grandiose ceremony, a far cry from the program's first run, a small after-work hotel fte.

Winners are judged on three criteria: existence, value, and market response. "First of all, does the product exist or is it in somebody's mind?" says co-founder Miller. "Second, does it meet an unmet consumer need? It doesn't have to be profitable, but it has to produce revenue. Third, has it triggered a 'me too' response from other companies? We have to see that other people are trying to get in the market as well."

Aircell won an award last year for Gogo Inflight Internet, a service that enables Wi-Fi connection on commercial flights. "It was a vision that grew from the CEO on down, and it was an everybody-pitches-in sort of effort," says Eric Lemond, Director of Product and Platform Management at Aircell. "There was a phase of the company where we had about half the employees flying between New York and L.A." Eight major commercial airlines have already signed up for Gogo, including Chicago-based United Airlines.

AdEffx Suite is comScore's winner in last year's awards, a program that measures the effectiveness of online advertising after consumer exposure. "It's a service that originated with many different brand surveys and developed over the years," says Andrew Lipsman, Senior Director of Industry Analysis at comScore. "We still exhibit a lot of the elements of a start-up company where you're constantly looking for new applications and new ways to use the platform of data that you have." ComScore recently released another technology called AdEffx Smart Control, which measures the response curves for individuals based on the number of times they were exposed to an advertisement, then derives the control variable of influence.

Both Lemond and Lipsman attributed Chicago's community as being supportive of entrepreneurial projects. "When we started up Gogo, we evaluated several cities, and Chicago stood out," says Lemond. "There's a wealth of experience here."

Creating a cutting-edge city

Online travel company Orbitz claims first-mover innovations like the matrix display, price assurance guarantees, and a corporate travel management tool that won a Chicago Innovation Award in 2004. "If we hadn't come up with those ideas, that 10 billion dollars in travel would belong to our competitors," says Mike Nelson, president of the Partner Services Group of Orbitz Worldwide. "Ideas come from all over. A great idea can come from someone like me or someone who is a telesales agent."

Last year, Aon, the global risk management and insurance brokerage firm also headquartered in Chicago, developed the Global Risk Insight Platform, or GRIP. The technology gives brokers and clients real-time information and data about insurance buying around the world. "One of the real values of the Aon GRIP platform has been our ability to create a platform that translates language from one country to the next, and analyzes it on a global basis," says Maureen Burm, Chief Operating Officer of Aon Brokerage Group.

Despite their global scopes, both Aon and Orbitz have aligned themselves with one of Chicago's homegrown innovation programs supported by Mayor Richard M. Daley -- the Chicago Academy for Advanced Technology (CAAT). The high school opened last fall with 150 freshmen, who will be pipelined into the technology industry through mentorships and internships with more than 80 corporate partners. CAAT, an enterprise ensconcing government, private industry, and non-profits, is one item on the wider agenda to fashion Chicago into a center of innovation.

In April, Daley hosted more than a hundred mayors and international government officials at the annual Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum under the theme, "New Partnerships for a New Economy: Driving Innovation in Cities." Tens of millions of dollars have also been funneled through a digital resource program for underserved communities in the city, as well as a job training program that aims to create an information technology corps to serve the many potential employers in Chicago.

"So many companies are headquartered here and have a large presence here; it's really a melting pot," says Tanen. "We're a leader in the Midwest, but who is to say we can't be seen as a leader in the entire country?" 

(Source: Xinhua)