Shanghai Research Institute of China Telecom has chosen IBM's (IBM) Innovation Factory to support collaborative innovation and accelerate the development of emerging telecommunication services for the Chinese market.

Made in IBM Labs, Innovation Factory can help accelerate the innovation process through open collaboration based on Web 2.0 social networking. IBM Innovation Factory is designed to capture the innovation process from idea creation to commercialization, speeding up co-creation among employees, partners, software developers and subscribers through online communities.

Over the past six months, STTRI partnered with the IBM High Performance On-Demand Solutions Labs and IBM China Research Lab to successfully launch Innovation Factory as the platform for China Telecom "Innovation Works," a tool to facilitate enterprise innovation activities. It will support the second Innovation Contest at STTRI, which encourages institution-wide collaboration to rapidly scale up production of new ideas for service offerings. Innovation Works encourages STTRI employees to continuously innovate by sharing new ideas, partnering with other employees and providing real-time feedback on ideas.

The strategic partnership between STTRI and IBM, which started in 2005, is a natural extension of previous joint research and development programs between STTRI and IBM's China Research Lab. CRL helped STTRI launch its first innovation contest in 2006. Through this successful collaboration, both sides decided to take the partnership to the next level.