"Collaborative Business Models: Open Innovation Business Model Modality"

(Area: Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Technology, Strategy, Collaboration)

(Reading Material "Collaboration Advanced Course: Collaborative Business Models and Strategy in the New Age", Hugo Céspedes A.)

Recalling the post "Introduction to Collaborative Business Models ", as well as a summary on what is meant by Business Models ("Collaborative Business Models: The Art of Creativity and Execution for Innovation and Entrepreneurship ") , I will talk next about Open Innovation as a Collaborative Business Model.

Organizational Innovation Systems have adapted to the new times, understanding social and technological changes and mainly the growth of knowledge and its democratization to the world. We are facing a new Knowledge Society that is about to change a "traditional" paradigm that had been a leader for years and that was left behind due to the speed with which any of the stages can be executed, thus the individualization of the organizations to Innovate, to welcome an Open and Permeable Process by sharing Knowledge with other people.

Perhaps, the Traditional (Closed) Innovation Model is an idea of wanting to keep everything under control, perhaps a way to protect an Intellectual Property and a classic model of competitiveness, obsolete, which apparently is no longer governed only by inventions coming from a company, but now "it is valid to think, contribute and develop Innovation that arises from different sources such as Innovation Centers, Universities and individuals themselves".

Traditional Innovation Processes are usually represented by a Funnel where "existing ideas and technologies in the organization are introduced at one end and the final product or service that will be offered to the user comes out at the other end". It is therefore a linear system where it is necessary to select the best ideas, develop the products, validate the prototype and the rest of the activities internally to finally obtain the desired result.

The Main Objective of Traditional Organizations is, in short, "to develop successful products and/or services by generating successful ideas". These ideas are generated within the organization using internal experts who capture ideas at conferences, fairs, projects, etc. The Capacity to Generate successful products and/or services is, therefore, limited to the capacity to generate successful ideas of said internal experts. In an Open Innovation Process, the Objective is "to look for the most successful ideas wherever they are, no matter if they have been generated by a group of young people in Silicon Valley, a team of researchers in Bangalore, an online community of users or the group of experts of the organization".

One of the great challenges of this new paradigm was, therefore, "to identify, access and incorporate the necessary knowledge to develop successful products or services". Identifying the necessary knowledge is not a trivial task. It requires knowledge of what is happening in the sector through "primary sources" (experts, field research, suppliers, customers, etc.) and "secondary sources" (studies, statistics, prospects, etc.) of information. The existence of limitations must be taken into account when interpreting the events. Thus, when identifying the necessary knowledge, a series of blind spots must be taken into account: * Misjudging the boundaries of the sector * Inadequately identifying the competition * Excessive emphasis on the visible competence of competitors * Carrying out an overemphasis on where rather than how rivals will compete * Making false assumptions about the competition.

In Open Innovation Processes, the task of incorporating and/or mixing external knowledge with that existing internally in the organization is key. People have Knowledge, therefore, incorporating and mixing knowledge is a task that requires dedication and resources. By doing it this way, integrating external and internal knowledge, more knowledge and learning is produced within the organization.

"Open Innovation" describes how companies have moved from so-called Closed Innovation Processes to a more open form of Innovation. Today we see how Open Innovation has become a Strategy, even a Collaborative Business Model, preferred by innovative organizations, as a way of thinking about the actions of organizations in pursuit of satisfying needs and requirements for solutions to problems of our users, clients, citizens, beneficiaries and potential new segments and markets.

Open Innovation refers to "the innovation strategy under which organizations go beyond the limits of their organization and where Collaboration with professionals/clients/...externals comes to play a fundamental role (that is why today in day it is also being considered as a Collaborative Business Model)". Open Innovation means combining internal knowledge with external knowledge to carry out R&D (Research and Development) projects. It also means that organizations use both internal and external channels to bring innovative new products and technologies to market. In this context, universities and research centers offer new perspectives and solutions to organizations that use this model. In general, this type of Innovation responds to the possibility of occurrence of what we know as "Collective Intelligence ".

Open Innovation (Open Innovation) for years has been acquiring a great diffusion, especially as a result of the conceptualization carried out by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 (being a professor at UC Berkeley and veteran of Silicon Valley, writing "Open Innovation: The New Imperative to Create and Leveraging Technology"). This, given that Chesbrough provided a definition adapted to the needs of the 21st century and, in addition, conceived a new application model. However, like any paradigm shift, its implementation took place following the well-known "S" curve and, in most cases, from a "mirror effect": many companies adopt it because others do, especially big enterprises. These began to spread the new collaborative business model, and they did so not only as a marketing and communication strategy, but also as a factor for attracting talent, in order to respond to the challenges that are beginning to arise within their new Open Innovation projects .

In his book, Chesbrough defines Open Innovation as "the use of intentional inputs and outputs of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand markets for external use of Innovation".

According to Chesbrough, "Open Innovation is a more distributed, more participatory and more decentralized approach to Innovation". This approach is a great way to access external knowledge and find new ways of doing things.

Various scholars of Open Innovation have different nuances of what an Open Innovation System is, but at the end of the day Open Innovation means that organizations can make use of external resources and best practices to complement the value of their own business assets. Innovation, obtaining greater return on investment. According to Chesbrough's vision of Open Innovation, "there is a global market for innovation, where innovation itself is a commodity that can be bought, sold, borrowed and reinvented".

As can be seen, ideas and technology not only come from within the organization, but also from outside. Unlike the traditional model, there is no single way out, rather the Innovation Process resembles a "Gruyere cheese" with a multitude of pores that allow the process to be exited before it reaches the traditional market. These exits can be in the form of spin-offs, or patent licenses. This image reflects the notable difference between the traditional model and the Open Innovation model.

It is also important to underline the importance of internal R&D departments, since Open Innovation multiplies the value of the R&D budget by exploiting External Collaborations in each phase of the Innovation Process, from scientific research to product development and its marketing. In this new environment, organizations need to properly lead and interpret existing opportunities in their innovation networks, as well as flexible skills to capture customer needs, assimilate new capabilities and execute them.

Why Apply the Open Innovation Model in Organizations?

According to Chesbrough and Schwarts, "Collaboration in the development of products and services is one of the most important issues in Open Innovation Models". The use of external partners can create business models that reduce R&D budgets, increase innovation results and discover new markets.

According to the ATKearney report, Open Innovation allows organizations to "reduce costs in Innovation processes" causing "the acceleration of Innovation and the development of new products and services", "thus increasing profits and market share" and "increasing the creativity of the organization itself". In addition, "it allows direct investment in internal R&D to be reduced", since part of that investment must be allocated to surveillance systems and Collaboration with external agents.

All these benefits would not be possible without "the change of the Organizational Culture", since to implement an Open Innovation System, the NIH Syndrome ("Not Invented Here" syndrome) must inevitably be combated. This syndrome occurs when, due to pride, ignorance or something similar, it is decided to reinvent the wheel instead of using already available but alien knowledge. Collaboration is the key to Open Innovation. This means a certain loss of control, since there will not be a single organization that makes the decisions, but these must be agreed upon by all the agents that participate in the creation of the product or service.

This vision of Open Innovation as Innovation based on Collaboration is only one of the possible scenarios. Collaborative Innovation is Open, insofar as we open the organization to Collaborate with third parties to achieve certain objectives and therefore, Knowledge, decision-making and other aspects begin to filter through the thick borders of the organization.

The transition from a Closed Innovation Model to a more Open one requires not only changes in the Innovation Process itself. "The changes must be structural, from the Organizational Culture to the Business Model, passing through technologies, Intellectual Property Management, etc.". It is therefore a profound change in the prevailing paradigm in the organization, which allows the organization to be faster than the competition, more competitive and provide greater added value. As mentioned above, in an Open Innovation Process it is necessary to make use of both internal and external knowledge and skills, giving them the same importance. In addition, close collaboration with other organizations is essential, thus expanding existing markets and accessing new markets. The boundaries of the organization, therefore, seem to become more porous, making it difficult to identify what is inside and what is outside the organization.

The same ATKearney study shows that the most successful organizations are committed to Open Innovation. They are organizations that work with a much more extensive network of partners and collaborate both up and down the Value Chain. This study reveals that organizations have traditionally attached great importance to the first phases of the Innovation Process, such as the generation of ideas, where creativity plays a decisive role. In this type of process, Creativity and the Generation of Ideas play a decisive role, but ideas are not only generated internally, but "can be Generated Collaboratively between different organizations, or they can be imported from external organizations" . It is in this phase, and the following ones, where there is a greater change with respect to the traditional paradigm.

In the last phases of the Open Innovation Process, fundamentally marketing, this new paradigm includes activities that have not traditionally been taken into account. In Open Innovation, innovations can reach the market through various channels, be it through a spin-off, a license, a final sale, a donation or it can contribute as input for different innovations. "The output channels in the Open Innovation Process multiply", unlike what happens in the traditional ones.

Chesbrough reflects on what the future of organizations should be in which, as is logical, not all the best experts will work in the organization and it will be necessary to have an internal R&D department and an external R&D department that will generate the necessary value to continue maintaining levels of competitiveness. This will lead to redefining current business models (these being much more open, where there is no single way to generate value). This is how the Open Innovation Collaborative Business Models have been generated today.

The key, therefore, could be said to be in the transformation of the solid limits of the organization to another scenario where the limits are composed of semi-permeable membranes that allow Innovation to "move" more easily between the external environment and internal R&D processes.

In addition, other types of issues arise, such as the possibility of opening the organization's Innovation Process in a closed and highly competitive sector. How will Intellectual Property be managed in these cases? The issue of Intellectual Property is one of the keys, since, for example, if products and services are co-created jointly with third parties, there will be many issues to negotiate around it.

Activities in the Collaborative Innovation Open Business Model Strategy.

How should Open Innovation be implemented and why should the necessary activities be taken into account for its correct approach? The Process incorporates various activities in its development. It is considered that "there are three most significant": a) Search for External Information, b) Collaboration with External Partners, c) Use of Appropriation Strategies, d) Search for External Information.

a) Approach the World of Research: Universities, research institutes, technology centers represent an important source of innovation for many companies that are forced to incorporate process innovations in the face of new regulatory and/or competitive conditions. In this way, local policies can encourage organizations to innovate and adopt innovations in order to increase their competitiveness (in the past).

b) Adopt Standards and Regulations: Safety, quality, technical, health or environmental standards represent an important source of innovation for many companies that are inclined to incorporate process innovations in the face of new regulatory and/or competitive conditions. In this way, local policies can encourage companies to innovate and adopt innovations in order to increase their competitiveness.

c) Embrace Intellectual Property: Intellectual property instruments can provide a direct path to absorb innovation. On many occasions, the acquisition of intellectual property makes it possible to drastically reduce the time-to-market or makes it possible to access new elements or markets. On the contrary, it can be a significant source of income. Software companies routinely sign (cross-licensing) agreements to avoid duplicating research effort. Not only is the sale or assignment of licenses on patents convenient, it is important to identify the patents that are necessary and purchase said patent. We must enter a market where patents are bought and sold openly.

d) Cultivate People: It is impossible to create an innovative organization without innovative people within it. The well-known "learning-by-hiring" translates on many occasions into "stealing talent from competitors" but also into "introducing that knowledge into the company through the temporary incorporation of consultants". The "innovation explorers" or "innovative scouts" are professionals specially dedicated to observing the environment and identifying innovations or business opportunities. BT Group has stationed scouts in India, China, Japan and Silicon Valley to monitor new technologies produced by universities and start-ups.

e) Move, Speak and Listen: Exhibitions, conferences or technological fairs are events that represent an ideal instrument to observe the environment. An example of observing the environment can be found in the "innovation ecosystem" created by "Tata ", the Indian automobile giant. Tata has created an international network of universities, venture capital companies and technology start-ups, with which it holds meetings, talks and conferences to observe their progress in research. Joint research projects and start-ups have already emanated from these events.

Online ideologies are also convenient tools to stay alert. The company Springwise offers a search service for the most promising business ideas through a network of more than 8,000 observers in some 70 countries around the world.

f) Collaborate: But the main key lies in maintaining an open and receptive vision towards Collaboration. Collaboration relationships can be established with suppliers, competitors, customers. The typology is also varied: licenses, consortiums, strategic alliances, joint ventures,... It is therefore necessary to integrate more and more, on the one hand, the Client and, on the other, the Provider so that they work collaboratively. In this environment of Cooperative growth, Collaboration is experiencing new forms and methods today. An emerging cooperative trend is found in Crowdsourcing or the Collaboration of thousands of users in the development of a given project. Although the idea of Crowdsourcing is to exponentially increase the capacity to innovate, its viability has not yet been clearly demonstrated. Tools such as NineSigma or Innocentive seek to lay the technological foundations that overcome existing difficulties.

Key Elements of Open Innovation.

a) Collaborative Business Model: The president of BT Internationall, Francois Barrault (at the time), emphasized the fact that innovation extends over the Business Model as organizations approach their customers and how they adapt their model business to customer needs. "Innovation is not only inside the R&D laboratory, but also in the relationships we have with our customers". According to Henrry Chesbrough, "an open business model has at least two significant advantages: on the one hand it allows creating a greater source of value for the organization and on the other hand it allows creating a greater source of value for the organization and on the other hand , allows organizations to be more efficient in creating and capturing that value".

If we talk about Open Business Models, we must undoubtedly talk about the model of excellence: the Open Source Model (which I will delve into in future posts). John Powell, head of Alfresco , an organization dedicated to the development of enterprise content managers, said in an interview that "the Open Source Business Model makes all aspects of a software company easier because, without having to hide your intellectual property, you can incorporate the great ideas of all the stakeholders, you can have them help you in the development, in the quality control, ... and in the propagation of your product". One of the paradigmatic cases is that of the Mozilla Foundation , which is an organization that was established in July 2003 and that has undergone strong changes in its legal and organizational structure in its brief history.

Perhaps the most important change was the creation in August 2005 of the subsidiary Mozilla Corporation to coordinate the development, distribution and marketing of Mozilla products, such as the Firefox browser and Thunderbird email client. As a company that it is, it defines itself as a for-profit reinvests all its profits in Mozilla technologies and products and is solely owned by the foundation itself. Its benefits come from the advertising that is mainly generated by using the Google search box that Firefox incorporates. Shioban O'Mahony, a professor at the University of California at Davis School of Management, calls Mozilla "the First Corporate Open Source project" that integrates public and private investment". It is true that many other companies support and get involved in open source projects, from IBM to Google, passing through Microsoft itself, but the peculiarity of Mozilla Corporation is that it was created for the development of free software Shioban O'Mahony's research is especially interesting to understand the management of free software projects, since it has been dedicated to analyzing the governance models of their communities (for example Debian), with special attention to hybrid cases that combine community and private management and financing using Mozilla as a case study.

b) Technologies: Open Innovation aims to open the organization to various agents to encourage their interaction in a fruitful ecosystem. Internet-based social networks seem, logically, to provide sufficient human substrate to facilitate Innovation. We could even consider that the ecosystem to which we allude with Open Innovation does not stop representing itself, but rather a "social network". Now, the social network tends to develop homophily: the connections are made with those other nodes with whom it is shared, not so much with those who diverge. And Open Innovation requires changes of focus, different views, outside the prevailing system many times. In addition to social media, a new set of technologies are emerging that are helping organizations innovate faster, more efficiently, and more accurately than ever before. A NESTA report identifies GRID technology (Grid Computing, which is Distributed Computing), simulation, and rapid modeling and prototyping techniques as key technologies that have had a profound impact on economic and social growth in the Knowledge Economy, similar to that of machines in the Industrial Economy in the mid-nineteenth century.

As with social networks, the growing commercial use of the Internet has created a myriad of opportunities for new technologies to support Innovation. The use of these social tools, such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc., is creating an ecosystem where people develop their ideas in a more horizontal and collaborative way than before. Another type of social technology or also called 2.0, are the Mash-Ups that are being developed to allow innovators to capture, combine and analyze information from different online sources. This technology can provide organizations with new ways to relate to the market and understand the most active and involved users, hoping that they will be involved in the development of the products and services that they want.

c) Knowledge Management: The appearance of the Knowledge-based Economy implies that the capacity of an organization to Create Value does not depend exclusively on its financial and production capacity. It has been established for some years that information and knowledge are a primary source for the creation of income and wealth. It is not surprising then that appropriate policies are beginning to be necessary to achieve good Knowledge and Information Management. Since innovation has its origin in Knowledge, the process must start from the consideration of all types of knowledge: "the explicit", which due to its formalization and systematization is easier to process, transmit, store and share, and "the tacit" which is much more abstract and less formalized and therefore more difficult to manage and integrate within the organization.

It is necessary to make Knowledge dynamic through interaction and connection between different communities of practice (business units, functional groups, suppliers,...) facilitating their technological connectivity, creating the necessary platforms and infrastructures (intranets, extranets, virtual communities, etc.). ...) and human that inevitably entails a degree of negotiation between the different communities and groups, and that translates into certain norms, values over entertainment and interests.

d) Intellectual Property: Intellectual Property instruments can provide an avid shortcut to absorb Innovation. On multiple occasions, the acquisition of Intellectual Property allows drastically reducing the time-to-market or makes it possible to access new segments or markets. In addition, it can also become a source of income. Software companies routinely sign cross-licensing agreements to avoid duplicating research effort.

Intellectual Property can take the form of "licensing, establishment of new businesses for the purpose of marketing, and sale of intellectual property rights." The licenses, therefore, combine organizational resources at their margins. By establishing new organizations as vehicles for commercialization, the organization can use external resources to reduce its own risks, while maintaining possession of an option for later re-internalization.

If we talk about Intellectual Property in terms of Knowledge, we must point out the appearance of various types of licenses that allow Intellectual Property to be protected in a way that does not restrict the generation of new Knowledge. These licenses refer to copyrights that are based on the idea of a personal right of the author, based on a form of identity between the author and his creation. The Moral Law is constituted as an emanation of the person of the author: it recognizes that the work is an expression of the person of the author and thus it is protected. Copyright Protection is strictly limited to the work, without considering the moral attributes of the author in relation to his work, except paternity, it does not consider him as an author as such, but he has rights that determine the modalities of use of a work.

The "Copyleft or Permitted Copy", on the other hand, comprises a group of copyrights characterized by eliminating the restrictions of distribution or modification imposed by copyright, with the condition that the derivative work remains with the same copyright regime. author than the original. Under such licences, a wide variety of works can be protected, such as computer programs, art, culture and science, that is, practically almost any type of creative production. Its supporters propose it as an alternative to the restrictions imposed by the rules set forth in copyright, when making, modifying and distributing copies of a given work. This is intended to guarantee greater freedom so that each recipient of a copy, or a derivative version of a work, may, in turn, use, modify and redistribute both the work itself and derivative versions of it. Thus, and in a non-legal environment, it can be considered as opposed to copyright or traditional copyright.

Among the licenses with the greatest impact and implementation within the Copyleft paradigm we have: Creative Commons licenses . Creative Commons licenses are inspired by the GPL (General Public License) of the Free Software Foundation, however they are not a type of software licensing. The main idea is to enable a legal model aided by tools to facilitate the distribution and use of content.

There are a series of Creative Commons licenses, each with different configurations or principles, such as the right of the original author to give freedom to quote his work, reproduce it, create derivative works, offer it publicly and with different restrictions such as not allowing commercial use or respect the original authorship. The different licenses are based on combining different properties. These properties are: a) Attribution (by) -Forces to cite the sources of these contents. The author must appear in the credits-, b) Noncommercial (nc) -Forces that the use of the contents cannot have any economic bonus for whoever makes use of contents under that license-, c) No Derivative Works (nd) - It requires that this work be distributed unaltered, without changes-, d) ShareAlike (salt) -It requires that all derivative works are always distributed under the same license as the original work-.

Examples of Open Innovation Collaborative Business Model.

In practice, Open Innovation can take the form of established Associations like Delphi y Mobileye working on autonomous driving systems, to co-creation contests like the BMW Startup Challenge, and Crowdsourcing and Crowdfunding portals like the My Starbuck Idea platform , Quirky , Kirkstarter , Innocentive , Choosa (Hoy Guerra Creativa) , Ideas4All , Crowdflower (Ahora Appen) , OpenIDEO , 99Designs , Freelancer , Adtriboo , Elance (Hoy UpWork) , among others (which I will cover specifically in future posts).

The first examples of Collaborative Open Innovation Business Models, we see in:

1 . Samsung (Various Types of Collaboration): Although Samsung may be recognized for several convictions for plagiarism cases, Samsung has also been rated as one of the most innovative large companies today. Of course, Samsung has a strong in-house R&D unit, but the company is also a proud supporter of Open Innovation and Collaborates on Open Innovation, especially with start-ups. The distinctive part of the Samsung Open Innovation Collaboration is that the company divides it into 4 categories: a) Partnerships, b) Ventures, c) Accelerators, d) Acquisitions.

a) The Associations (Partnership) are essentially Collaboration between companies, like the new companies in Silicon Valley. Partnerships are typically aimed at new features or integrations within existing Samsung products.

b) Ventures can be described as investments in early stage startups. These investments can generate income in case of exits, but also provide access to new technologies of which Samsung has invested in Mobeam, a startup -at the time- of mobile payments.

c) Accelerators provide startups with an innovative and empowering environment to create new things. Samsung offers these startups an initial investment, facilities to work in, as well as some resources from its vast pool. The idea is that spin-off products from internal startups could eventually become part of Samsung's product portfolio or simply serve as learning experiences for the company.

d) The Acquisitions aim to attract startups working on innovations that are at the core of the strategic areas of Samsung's future. These acquisitions often remain stand-alone units and may even join the Accelerator program.

Collaboration with Startups: As an example of Samsung's collaboration with startups, Samsung acquired an IoT company called Smarthings to get an IoT platform without spending money and time on R&D. Samsung saw potential in the IoT industry and saw it as a strategically important part of its future business, and therefore an area where it wanted to be a pioneer. Smarthings began operating as an independent startup fed with the resources of a large company. With the investment, the potential and home electronics of Samsung SmarThings can truly become an integral part of Samsung products, creating new IoT possibilities for homes. By collaborating with startups, Samsung aims to benefit from the variety of innovations that startups have already introduced. These companies often have products that can complement or integrate with Samsung ′s own products, creating value for both parties. On the other hand, the type of companies that aim for new innovations that require large initial investments are often better invested or simply acquired. So the main learning point from the Samsung case is that different kinds of companies at different stages of their lifespan offer different kinds of possibilities. You need to identify them and discover the methods that are best suited to different types of opportunities.

2. Local Motors -Co Creation in a Community-: Local Motors activates its Open Community through its Co-Crea platform.

The designed vehicles are then manufactured, for example, by 3D printing. The key part of Local Motors' product development is its completely open innovation platform. You don't even need to be logged into their platform site to see the new designs the community has come up with. Like most other open innovation companies, innovations are minted through open innovation challenges, such as the LITECAR challenge.

In 2015, Local Motors had an Urban Mobility Challenge: Berlin 2030, which aimed to envision the future of transport in Berlin. A year later, one of the planned transport solutions had already seen the light of day. It is one of the best-known Local Motors Co-Creation products, Olli, the autonomous smart bus. In addition to being autonomous, Olli also works through your phone. You can choose your routes through Olli or even create new ones. Olli isn't just a vision of the distant future, he's actually walking the streets of Washington D.C. Like other designs, Olli has been developed through the Co-Creation site after the initial design. In fact, they can see the conversations and ideas that the community has posted there. The site even has continuous development: currently, they are looking for solutions in the improvement of the universal interface and further development of the suspension.

Practical Conclusions: Local Motors has positioned itself as an open innovation company in an industry that is traditionally anything but open. In fact, the company challenges Collaborators to make a difference and be part of the change. This makes them stand out from their competitors. The fact that this openness is clearly a core part of Local Motors makes people see that open innovation is not just a marketing gimmick, but at the core of the way they work. This positioning and "opening force" is a great foundation to stand out and build Collaboration. As a result, Local Motors benefits from an Active and Motivated Community. The Community is a great supporter of the company. Therefore, to create an engaged Community, you need to make sure that people really believe in your initiatives.

3. Mozilla -Motivating the Community: One thing that is rarely connected to Open Innovation is Open Source development. When you think about it, open source software development, the source code of a product is open and just about anyone with decent skills can be a part of software development. Open source software development generally aims at free products that anyone can contribute to. This means that you get diverse people from all over the world to participate in the projects. Mozilla is a great example of this type of open source software development.

Its product is the Firefox web browser , developed by Mozilla 's worldwide community of coders and other professionals. Mozilla has been at the forefront of advancing this type of product development, and development activities are carried out by the Mozilla community, which includes both volunteers and paid employees. People are motivated to volunteer at Mozilla because it's a great learning experience, they get to be part of a community, and they get to participate in Mozilla events. If you want to participate in Mozillla's product development, they've made it easy for you. For the first step, you can start with little things like reporting bugs to get involved. You can find more information about the different ways to participate on the Mozilla website . In addition to volunteering, you can also apply for their internships and job offers. So from this perspective, Mozilla operates somewhere between a non-profit association and a company.

Practical Conclusions: What we can learn from Mozilla is definitely the importance of fostering a community. As there are many examples about the benefits of Open Innovation Communities, it is also worth learning from Open Source Communities.

Could you benefit from Opening Up Parts of your R&D to Create this kind of Community? Talented people join Mozilla communities to learn, gain experience, meet people, contribute to the product, and maybe even get hired at some point. Looks like they have their offers for Community members in order. Think about how you could motivate and encourage your community. What could you offer to get people excited and involved?

4. Facebook -Using Hackathons to Generate Fresh Ideas: There is an interesting example of Internal Open Innovation within Facebook. On Facebook they organize hackathons for their employees. The idea of these hackathons is for "employees to come up with new ideas and innovations and make early versions of them".

These hackathons are not just for developers, but for anyone within the company. The point is that you work with something that you don't work with on a daily basis. It is argued that doing things outside of your day job and enjoying making a difference within the company is what sparks innovative creative thinking. Of course, you can't undermine the effect of diversity in these hackathons either.

Facebook Hackatone: Developers and architects can have certain ways of thinking, so things get interesting when you get ideas from, say, people who work in the finance or marketing department. When your employees meet across departments and other barriers that they normally have, they actually spread tacit knowledge, a sense of team spirit throughout the company, and build meaningful relationships within your organization. All of this happens while employees are creating and innovating something new for your company. When this type of Collaboration is typical of your organization, it also creates a Product Innovation-focused Culture for your workplace.

These hackathons are quite productive for Facebook. There are many examples of features dating back to these hackathons. For example, Facebook's "Like" button, live chat, and timeline are all ideas that have come out of Facebook hackathons.

The "pride flag" feature, which allowed you to modify your profile picture to support the LGBTQ community in 2015, was created in a Facebook hackathon. The idea was coined by two Facebook interns. Through hackathons, it quickly spread throughout the company and ended up being released for public use. This example shows that your job title doesn't necessarily matter when you have a great idea.

Practical Conclusions: Includes the entire body of employees. If your employees are Knowledge Workers and you pay them for their creative thinking, it makes sense to include them all in the Innovation Process for new products and features. Anyone can have an innovative idea and it is worth listening to them.

Opening Innovation internally has both short- and long-term benefits. In the short term, you can get new ideas to develop your business, and in the long term, Internal Open Innovation can be a great tool to motivate your employees and drive the development of both their thinking and their skills.

You should be able to creatively and proactively teach this problem-solving mindset to all of your employees.

Remember, not all internal open innovation occasions have to be weekend hackathons, you could also reap many of the benefits of internships like shorter idea challenges.

5. GE (General Electric) -Connecting with Young Talent: GE is famous for its Open Innovation challenges and initiatives on its Open Innovation page . These challenges point to external Open Innovation and new ideas. Through these challenges, GE becomes familiar with potential future talent around the world. The prizes of these challenges are very attractive for young professionals and students and include: a) Scholarships, b) Monetary Prizes, c) Possibilities to Work with GE on the Project in Question, d) Paid Internships. The benefit of this is that GE gets connections with young talent as well as innovation work on Open Innovation challenges. GE's Innovation Challenges and the possibilities they offer also affect GE's image as employees in a positive way. For example, the Unimpossible Missions Challenge: The Challenge of the University Edition . This challenge is clearly aimed at students who are creative, have a certain level of technical skills and a clear recruitment motivation. Through the challenge, GE aims to get three smart and creative students to intern at GE.

Practical Conclusions: Open Innovation can be used as a way to connect with talented young professionals and recruit new talent for the company. Innovation challenges for individuals and universities can be a good way to do this. They allow you to see the potential of young talent from a much broader angle than in a regular job interview, case interview, or even take-home exercises.

6. Moodle -Benefit from a Large (Shared) Sharing Community: Moodle is a learning platform used by many universities and other educators around the world. The company itself originates from Australia and is completely open source. This means that there is an open community behind Moodle and it is free for anyone to use, which is why schools, universities and other educators prefer it. Moodle originally emerged at the beginning of this millennium, when schools began to use more technology. Therefore, there was a large space in the blue ocean market for this type of solution. What makes Moodle work is the fact that its users Create New Value for the company at all times. There are more than 70,000 registered sites that have more than 10,000,000 courses on the platform with almost 90,000,000 users in total (this is more than the entire population of Germany).

Moodle's distribution is pretty good, so you don't need to market your product as much as startups in the same field. It also has an open development roadmap, so everyone can see the future direction of the product, giving you more confidence in making the decision to go live with the product.

Practical Conclusions: Although the timing of Moodle was right and that played a big role in Moodle's success, the key success factor from an Open Innovation perspective is that Moodle has a large sharing community that generates new users as well as the opening of your development roadmap.

Thus, we can learn to Create Value for users through Expert Users, such as universities. Moodle is used all over the world to contact and communicate with your students. This makes it easy to propagate.

Moodle has been rated as the best learning management system, because it is/has: * Always up-to-date due to being open source * Translated into almost 100 languages * Lots of features, which makes it very flexible.

Also, the fact that Moodle works very openly and has an open development roadmap means that it's trustworthy: everyone knows what's going on and what new features the company is about to roll out.

It's worth taking a minute and thinking about how you could gain trusted and engaged users who spread the word and in turn generate new customers for you.

7. P&G -Being Open About Innovation Needs: P&G (Procter & Gamble) Open Innovation with external partners culminates in its Connect & Develop website .

Through this platform, P&G communicates its needs to innovators who can access detailed information related to specific needs and submit their ideas to the site. Connect & Develop has generated multiple associations and production of relevant products.

As an example, P&G's COVERGIRL went through a long R&D process by partnering with OraLabs to release a new lip balm, a market that suddenly became a trend. As time is money, especially with fashion products, the Collaboration with OraLabs really benefited COVERGIL.

On the other hand, because P&G openly communicates its needs, it also creates competition for solution providers, which of course is great news for P&G.

Practical Conclusions: Let others know what your needs and problems are. this makes it possible for others to propose customized solutions for you, which improves competition. In the best case, you can choose the best Innovator for your solution. Talking about problems and needs can also lead to great connections that you might not otherwise have found.

Despite this, there are great benefits to opening up about your needs to companies that might be able to solve your problems. Collaborative relationships can also last for decades, becoming useful on more than one occasion.

P&G a menudo se refiere a la Colaboración con "asociaciones duraderas eficientes", porque ya conocen las prácticas de trabajo de cada uno por dentro y por fuera.

P&G often refers to Collaboration with "effective long-term partnerships" because they already know each other's work practices inside and out.

Besides the fact that being completely open gives you the best chance of getting innovative solutions that you might not have thought of yourself, it is also possible to create your own trusted community with which you can share your problems.

8. Nivea -Involves Users in Product Development: Nivea's B&W deodorant is a good example of how to engage users throughout the development of new products, from idea to implementation. Intimate Open Collaboration with potential partner companies occurs via the Beiensdorf pearl finder, which might be interesting to take a look at. However, the real case that we can learn from here is the development of Nivea's B&W deodoran t .

The idea for Nivea B&W deodorant was coined together with Nivea users through social media. The way Nivea collaborated with its users throughout the R&D process is very interesting.

They pretty much said "Okay, we know our current product can be related to clothing stains. Could you please share your stories and home remedies so we can develop a better product?"

They basically shared what kind of product was needed, what seemed to be the reason behind these spots in the first place, and how they could be prevented. The resulting B&W deodorant then became the first deodorant on the market that prevents the appearance of white and yellow spots.

Beiersdorf then partnered with a company they found through pearlfunder and developed B&W deodorant together with users. This admission of problems in their product could have been seen as a sign of weakness, however users actively collaborated with Nivea and the final product ended up being a huge success.

Practical Conclusions: Your users may have surprising problems that you could solve. User engagement and activation can be a good idea to engage them to Collaborate with you. Even if Open Innovation Collaboration may seem scary, listening to your customers' needs is common sense. So keep your eyes and ears open (also online!) for all the ideas that come from your potential and current users. Of course, Nivea could have invented the B&W invisible deodorant by traditional means, but it probably would have cost more time and money. Nivea also gained visibility and engaged customers by including them in the Innovation Process, which thus doubled as marketing.

Do you know what your Users think of your product? Perhaps there is a way to involve your users in the process, thus giving you useful information about their needs, wants, and ways to improve your product.

9. Phillips -The High Tech Campus: Phillips has a wide range of Open Innovation activities. It has the platform , the challenges, and it activates its own employees to Think Open . Phillips also established its own Open Innovation Campus in Eindhoven in 2003. The High Tech Campus is open for a variety of companies to work.

It offers them tools to help speed up their business and research projects. Basically, the Campus has been said to be a Silicon Valley the size of a postage stamp in Europe. Physical proximity has allowed Phillips to work close Collaboration with other technology companies from Phillips headquarters and make use of most of their projects. Currently, the campus functions on its own, but Phillips' presence is still there and he continues to win with the physical space of Open Innovation. The possibility of physically working together has created an Innovation ecosystem in Eindhoven with more than 140 companies of different sizes working in the same small area.

10. Apple -Value Creation through Open Platforms: Apple is a typical example of a company that is very closed and secretive in its R&D, so what is it doing on this list? Despite being closed, they continue to use Open Innovation on their own terms when they believe Open Innovation is appropriate.

Take the apps on iOS products, as an example. Even if the quality of Apple products is top notch, it is first and foremost the quality and wide range of applications available for Apple products that makes them so valuable.

Think of iPhone users (and all other smartphone users). They have all kinds of needs that phone manufacturers or operating system manufacturers have no idea about. Some are interested in their health, some in mobile games, some in news, books and music, etc.

With all the possible apps, users can customize their user experience exactly how they want, and all of this benefits both the platform and the users.

Practical Conclusions: The key learning point here is that you can restrict the amount of openness in Open Innovation. What Apple does is that it regulates and controls its Open Innovation so that application developers can create their products to work in the Apple environment. In this way, they can be distributed through Apple channels with little or no visibility into other aspects of Apple's internal R&D.

However, achieving this kind of position and control is not easy, nor is it always feasible. You have to think about whether being in control really gives you enough value.

Regulating openness means that also the possibilities of Collaboration results are restricted in one way or another. For example, Collaboration may fail to create Revolutionary Innovations.

Also, you will convince others to engage in Open Innovation with you, although leading Collaboration can be difficult unless you clearly have a winning platform. So be careful how you control Collaboration.

Because Apple has a great brand and a winning platform, a high level of control is possible for them.

11. General Assembly -Re-Weighing Education: General Assembly is a school that offers on-campus online courses that help people gain knowledge relevant to working life.

Generally, the course contents are related to modern needs and technologies in today's working life. There are courses, for example, on: User Interface Design, Coding, Digital Publishing, Business Skills.

The offer is both for students, who simply want to learn and make connections in the community, and for companies that want to offer courses to their employees.

Valued Community: General Assembly embraces Open Innovation through its community, developing its offering based on the needs of changing working life. They are also actively looking for new partnerships. The community is used to connect talented young professionals (current and former students) with companies seeking them.

General Assembly teaches people skills that get them into paying jobs and provides tools to help build their own businesses. So, in a way, General Addembly is a personal accelerator for your students! As an example, there is General Assembly's "Web Development Immersive (WDI)" course. Through this course, students learn how to develop web software professionally. Students also complete various projects that give them skills applicable to real-life situations. For example, Nathan Mass created his own service based on what he learned in the WDI courses and now has a company called Pennypost.

General Assembly's Open Community made it possible for Mass to start his own company with people who liked his idea. Several peers and instructors joined Maas in creating Pennypost after the WDI course. The fact that this type of innovative companies and people have their origin in the General Assembly makes them gain visibility. Therefore, more and more companies want to hire their former students, in turn attracting more students.

Practical Conclusions: General Assembly listens and reacts to what its customers want to learn and teach. The skills they teach are closely related to the new needs of working life, skills that companies want to hire and teach their employees. Being agile and developing its offer to meet the needs of society is what makes General Assembly more attractive to students.

The problem with traditional schools is that the curriculum tends to change slowly in them.

General Assembly is a very good example of being open to the needs of its users and meeting ever-changing requirements. It is also open to new skills and instructors who have something to add to their offering.

12. Telegram -Allowing Users to Create Content: Telegram is a messaging app that works on computers and smartphones much like WhatsApp. What makes it different is "how much users can openly contribute to your content". What makes Telegram interesting and popular is the fact that you can customize it to your liking. Users with development skills can create their own stickers and bots (ie their own content) on the platform. While Telegram can be used as a normal messenger, it is also possible for users to customize their user experience for themselves.

Although instant messaging is a very competitive market, Telegram has gained many users due to its ease, openness, and the fact that you can create your own content. The Telegram company sometimes even awards prizes for new content.

Custom stickers allow you and your friends to create stickers of the funniest moments you've shared. Telegram also promotes the best stickers by updating an in-app list of the most popular ones.

Practical Conclusions: The main giveaway of this case is that the openness can: Allow users to create new and versatile functions by themselves; and Personalize your user experience.

When users can create almost any type of function they want, you can benefit from the best innovations.

So it might be a good idea to let your users create whatever they want on your platform as it might be enough to set your product apart from all the others.

Also, having users configure a product to exactly match their needs creates a positive lock-in effect. Why would you want to swap the product for a substitute, when others can't be made to match your preferences?

13. Lilly -Collection of Information: Lilly is a pharmaceutical company that has applied Open Innovation through its Open Innovation Drug Discovery (OIDD) program. In OIDD, scientists (both in universities and in companies) can securely share biological data that point to the discovery of new drugs. Lilly then offers modern tools and help for filtering and investigating the data. Basically, OIDD is a platform that allows companies to find new drug compounds faster.

OIDD is also a platform to build R&D partnerships with Lilly. With the OIDD Lilly has generated a wide network of Open Innovation type Open Innovation 2.0. In the network, all parties can benefit from the new Value Created within the network, in this case, from new drug discoveries. Therefore, new discoveries lead to new drugs more quickly.

This open way of working allows Lilly and other scientists to find new drugs and potential cures for serious diseases faster than ever before. Researchers in addition to Lilly get the tools to test their compounds, while Lilly gets a huge database of compounds. On the other hand, Lilly gains connections that she can use when possible pharmacological solutions are found.

Practical Conclusions: The Lilly example demonstrates an Open Innovation network and how that positively affects Lilly's own R&D. The OIDD platform accelerates new drug discoveries, and when new drug compounds are found, Lilly can collaborate with the search company. In the end, Lilly would be able to make the final product and be the one to sell it. This type of Open Innovation network can be extended in many ways, such as through the Open Innovation platform in this case. You may not even need to create the network yourself, as there are many Open Innovation networks you could join.

If you are still worried about Open Innovation due to issues with possible intellectual property rights, you may want to reconsider. Lilly is a big company in the pharmaceutical field, a highly proprietary industry with restricted intellectual property rights, and while they have certainly had to address these issues, they have succeeded. And if they can make it work in the pharmaceutical industry, why couldn't you?

(Note: For those students of the course, go back to the course and follow the instructions to assimilate the knowledge delivered).

Source: "Innovación Abierta: Modelos y Técnicas para el Nuevo Entorno Colaborativo", Harvard Deusto; "Innovación Abierta: ?Estamos Preparados?", Hugo Céspedes A.; "?Qué es la Innovación Abierta", N/A; "Qué es la Innovación Abierta?: Definición y Ejemplos Reales", Canal Innova ; "16 Examples of Open Innovation -What Can We Learn From Them?", Merit Morikawa, Viima; "Las 10 Plataformas de Crouwdsourcing Más Innovadoras", Pascual Parada; "Innovación Abierta (Open Innovation): ?Estamos Preparados?", Hugo Céspedes A.