Outsourcing: Matthew Heim, President of NineSigma (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you are working more in manufacturing or maybe the health care space?

Matthew Heim: It’s virtually every manufacturing industry that practices open innovation. We work with all types of companies, but of late, the service industry has begun to open up to open innovation, financial services, insurance companies, and the like, and nonprofits that are conducting research in particular areas. For example, we just found work with the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI). We are working with an NGO called LAUNCH that is supported by Nike, USAID, the State Department and NASA to find alternative global energy solutions. There is a lot of other types of organizations that are really starting to pick up as well as the government. Not just the U.S. government, but governments around the world are now participating.

SM: What about information technology? Is that a segment in which you play?

MH: Yes, it is. We do play in the information technology segment, both the from the chip level all the way up to technology solutions and software solutions. We make connections within the high tech sector or between the high tech sector and other manufacturers. For example – this is a well-known case study – Hallmark was looking for the next generation of greeting card, and they wanted something novel, something unique. We were able to find an organization in Germany that provided augmented reality. This is back when augmented reality was in its earlier stage about a year and a half ago. And this was nine months before Mother’s Day. Within that nine months, we found the company. They incorporated this technology into their manufacturing process. They developed cards and launched them just in time for Mother’s Day. [With] augmented reality, you hold a certain shape and the shape on the card and the design on the card are recognized by the Internet camera, and it brings the card to life on someone’s computer screen. These are the different types of connections that we make, again, cross-industry.

SM: And what is your geographical spread?

MH: We are on six continents now. It was five up until just a few months ago. We are active in North America, South America, Europe, of course, Africa, Asia, and now Australia.

SM: And that’s true on both sides of the equation?

MH: On both sides of the equation. We have seekers and solution providers. Solution providers come from virtually every country. There are very few countries that have not submitted proposals to NineSigma. I can’t say that every country has won a project through NineSigma, but we do receive proposals from all over the world on a regular basis. Our solution provider network spans the entire globe. It’s just our client base is typically where there are large industry bases.

SM: How do you interface with your clients? How do you build that client base?

MH: From a business development perspective or from a project perspective?

SM: From a business development point of view.

MH: We have, of course, global marketing initiatives. We have channel partnerships in South America, in Africa, and in Australia that actually have client bases, and they introduce us into those regions. We do a lot of global marketing, Internet-based marketing, email campaigns. We have direct sales, and we have a call center with open innovation advisors who call, educate, and have discussions with people about open innovation and set up appointments. And then our direct sales will go out and talk to them. There are many different channels. We host conferences. We do a lot of conference speeches on open innovation in various segments. I was at the American Chemical Society’s annual conference in Denver talking about green chemistry. There are many avenues for us to get the word out.

This segment is part 3 in the series : Outsourcing: Matthew Heim, President of NineSigma
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