How to Tell If Your Organization is Committed to Open Innovation
The term Open Innovation can is often used in a very subjective manner, so measuring its degree of implementation in one organization compared to another is difficult.
However, Open Innovation does have a less subjective definition per Henry Chesbrough. It is the organizations ability to use purposive inflows and outflows Video Games knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use Game Boy Lights,Shields,Magnifiers innovation, respectively. Joel West, one of Chesbroughs key open innovation collaborators, WII Video Games it as using the market rather than internal PC Video Games to source and commercialize innovations.
In our work at Oval Ideas, Inc. with technologies-products companies that have implemented Open Innovation or Connect and Develop behaviors, we find a number of key best practices in place that fit with and support Chesbroughs definition and model.
In terms of results, these companies are finding 2-3 times more viable product ideas outside now versus their results 2-3 years ago.
We have observed four key behaviors as indicators that a project is an open innovation paradigm project.
1)The CEO Supports Open Innovation Practices on the Project. The CEO has set a stretch goal for the percentage of R&D ideas to be sourced from outside the company, and has funded the business to be able to meet this goal.
2)The Organization Structure Supports Open Innovation on the Project. Roles such as Global Competitive Technical Intelligence and Technology Brokerage are staffed and available as matrixed business functions to the project. These experts participate iteratively in the full product development life cycle. They assist and enable the product development team to source and commercialize technology ideas using the external ideas market.
3)The Companys R&D Ph.D.s Are Using Open Innovation Business Intelligence Tools to Support Their Ideation Process. Global IP strategy workups implement Chesbroughs recommendation of rendering IP in terms of how it fits to add value to a specific Business Model, ie, a visualization of each patent in terms of how it fits the specific technology stack. R&D staff can rapidly mine for IP in terms of the problem to be solved, and who best to buy it from or sell it to.
4)The Company Has a Business Practices in Place that Rapidly Resolve Open Innovation Go or No-Go Decisions. Technical and Business Risk Scoring Grids of candidate Open Innovation Ideas are in place that enable rapid cross-functional rating of viability and priority for in-sourcing and out-sourcing of product ideas.
Greg Narog, SVP Marketing, Oval Ideas, Inc.
Oval Ideas is a provider of software tools and methods to technologies products based companies, helping them visualize and validate global technology innovation and product strategies in a market context. http://www.ovalideas.com/rdtechstrategy.html
Knowing beats guessing.
