Open Innovation - Knowledge Pills

Open Innovation: Objective

This pill aims to build a clear understanding of OI, how it is a natural evolution from closed and collaborative Innovation, and which are the most critical elements of OI, e.g., co-creations, accelerators, and incubators.

Pill Structure

1. Innovation: Disruptive Innovation, Stage-Gate Process/ Funnel
2. Evolution of Innovation Management, from Closed to Collaborative to Open Innovation
3. OI: Internal vs. External R&D, Archetypes of Knowledge Transfer and Governance
4. Open Innovation Key Elements: Accelerators, Incubators, Co-creation, Crowdsourcing, Crowdfunding

Open Innovation: the reason for being

In a recent HBR Article on OI, the authors state:

Collaboration can obviously save human lives, but it can also produce huge benefits for companies — even though it’s often overlooked in normal circumstances. For more than a decade, we’ve studied open innovation and have taught thousands of executives and students how to innovate in a more distributed, decentralized and participatory way. The classroom response is usually, “My company needs more of this!” But despite the enthusiasm, companies rarely follow through. We have also witnessed how companies have used hackathons and other forms of open innovation to generate heaps of creative ideas that never reach the point of implementation, leading to frustration among employees and partners. At many companies this kind of distributed, decentralized, and participatory way of innovating remains an ambition that hasn’t yet come true. [..] Open innovation has the potential to widen the space for value creation: It allows for many more ways to create value, be it through new partners with complementary skills or by unlocking hidden potential in long-lasting relationships.