How can you complement internal R&D with open innovation?

Typical misperception in open innovation is that it's just about pooling resources; it's actually about creating synergies and structures where the combined output exceeds individual contributions. Remember, 'Great things in business are never done by one person...' (Steve Jobs)

But in the beginning, we need to introduce what is open innovation: "It is a concept that deals with the strategic philosophy around where and how a business goes about developing and commercializing innovations, particularly those involving a new capability or technology" as per GInI

Open Innovation is about sharing information, and sharing is about good networks. I think first comes the network, than open Innovation. Open Innovation is not about to open your secrets. It is about collective challenges.

Open Innovation permite que sua organiza??o incorpore conhecimento e capacidades externas, de maneira rápida e muitas vezes a um custo muito mais baixo.

Quite simply technological cycles are becoming shorter and shorter and new knowledge is constantly being generated. This, compounded with the globalization of the economy means companies need to adapt both their offers and means of delivering their offers in a much more agile way than previously. The traditional "make or buy" paradigm now co-exists with a need to adapt and react to markets and competitors faster than it can sometimes takes company to do it internally. Open innovation is all about understanding that a company’s core competitive advantage should be rooted both in nurturing it’s strategic skills and activities AND collaborating with it’s ecosystem to acquire new knowledge if it proves to be a faster / more efficient.

It is not so much a question of ratio in absolute terms. As a rule of thumb, the farther an R&D project is from a company's core business & core competencies, the more acceptable it is to have it externalised. The most obvious risk of externalising R&D is contractor / partner dependency. This can be mitigated with strong transfer technology agreements. But even then a lot of the expertise will be in the hand of the original company and team, which is a risk. If 90% of your R&D projects are externalised and none of those touch your core competencies / business, you should be fine. If only 10% are but they do... it's much trickier.

Da forma similar aos processos produtivos, a decis?o sobre o que deve ser outsourced passa pela identifica??o do que é estratégico. O estratégico deve ser mantido e/ou desenvolvido internamente. Open Innovation pode ser a forma, inclusive, para criar a competência interna, através da posterior incorpora??o de pessoal externo.

The question is less how to balance them and more how to make them work together. The only way to achieve good results is if the various approaches and resources work synergistically - which I have rarely seen happen. Often Open Innovation approaches get undermined by internal innovation teams. In that case the resource balance is irrelevant, as nothing useful will come from it. The innovation / R&D team needs to own the open innovation initiative and frame it, to ensure synergies will be had. Their incentives need to be structured well, to ensure that overall success matters more than perceived individual success.

é preciso identificar os pontos de integra??o e definir "contratos", congelando requisitos e fun??es, mesmo que apenas até a próxima intera??o, de forma a conseguir paralelizar e integrar com seguran?a as atividades conjuntas.

Es gibt die M?glichkeit, als Unternehmen mit Start-Ups zusammenzuarbeiten, um Innovationen zu verfolgen. Eine weitere M?glichkeit ist die Gründung einer innovativen Unternehmenseinheit. Dabei müssen tats?chlich die Verantwortlichkeiten und Grstaltungsspielr?ume eindeutig geregelt sein, damit die Erwartungshaltungen beider Unternehmensteile nach Innovationsleistung einerseits und Innovationsfreiheit andererseits erfüllt werden.

Open innovation can help unlock new products and white space opportunities otherwise not accessible due to constraints set by internal capabilities within the R&D team. Some external collaborations can help you iterate rapidly and respond to market trends faster than what innovation cycles allow within your teams. However, external R&D engagements should be picked carefully to ensure that core R&D capabilities are retained and nurtured within the organization to maintain a competitive advantage without these being replaced in the long run. Hence, balancing short-term wins with the retention of sustained and relevant product design capabilities is critical to maintaining a forward-thinking and creative team/organization.

Zwei Aspekte halte ich bei Open Innovation für besonders wichtig: - Geistige Eigentumsrechte: Vor Beginn einer Zusammenarbeit sollten die Kenntnisst?nde in einem Thema mithilfe eines NDA abgekl?rt werden. Ebenso sollten die (nicht-)exklusiven Nutzungsrechte und eventuelle Vergütungen gekl?rt werden. - Vertrauen: Startups und kleine Forschergruppen berichten immer mal wieder, dass sie sich durch die Corporates übervorteilt gefühlt haben. Das muss nicht so sein, h?ngt aber viel mit einer frühen und transparenten Kommunikation zusammen.

Open innovation approaches, especially in R&D, are often limited by legal frameworks. At the end of the day, if something valuable comes out then IP ownership is key. Corporates will need a strong framework to ensure the foreground and background IP can be structured in line with business value creation, otherwise strong results cannot be commercialised. This also means having a clear view on how successful open innovation partners will be remunerated fairly if outsized business value is created from the IP they helped to create. Without an aligned incentive structure, no outcomes will be generated.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to Open Innovation is the rejection / sabotage of the strategy by the company's own R&D team as the staff can view it as a demoting of some kind. One of the most important way to mitigate this risk is to ensure that the rules are clear for everybody. You want that your team does not feel left aside so that the share of R&D that is not done internally does not suffer from the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. What the company's objectives are should be made clear. What the company needs to deliver to achieve these objectives should be made clear too. And why it is not the best option for the company to take on this challenge internally needs also to be communicated clearly.

One of the most fruitful ways to rapidly get innovative ideas from “outside the box” is to hire a diverse group of “interns” for a summer project to come up with ideas and present them to your management/project team. Given your target (or new) market segment, you can pull from high schools, colleges, or local community colleges or senior organizations to get a useful focus group. Worst case, you will get some valuable feedback on your products/concepts, but — you may get a blockbuster idea, or even a few eager and qualified new team members! I’ve done this several times. Message me if you have a question.

Je nach Unternehmen und seiner bisherigen Innovationsleistung kann die Hinzuziehung einer externen Beratung sinnvoll sein. Manchmal bedarf es der Expertise von au?erhalb, um intern zu überzeugen. Dann finden die Aussagen von au?erhalb der Unternehmens eher und mehr Geh?r als die Aussagen aus den eigenen Unternehmensreihen.