Babak Forutanpour on how to start a grass roots innovation program in a big company

babak forutanpourHow do you start a grassroots innovation program within your company?

On this episode of the Big Bang Podcast we interview Babak Forutanpour, Founder of Qualcomm’s FLUX employee-run open innovation program and creator of @TheAryaBall.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to interview Babak to find out the story behind FLUX. In a wide ranging interview he shared with me his experience in starting an innovation program inside Qualcomm, as well as the fantastic results they’ve achieved. What started as an 8 person experiment, four years later is a global initiative.

Below is the audio of our conversation.

Here are a few questions we discussed with Babak:

  • How do you start a grassroots innovation program inside a large corporation?
  • What are the goals of such an innovation program?
  • What process, if any, did you develop to come up with ideas as a group?
  • What were the main the obstacles, if any, that you had to overcome to get traction with this initiative?
  • What advice do you have for established companies that want to start an innovation program/think tank like Flux?

Have experience with employee-run open innovation programs that you’d like to share?

Awesome! Let us know on Twitter @jorgebarba and @adrianpedrin.

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The Big Bang is a weekly podcast. Tune in every Tuesday for more discussions on what’s possible; be sure to subscribe on SoundCloud.

Intro audio is by Arturo Arriaga, outro audio is Candyland by Guy J.

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