Open Innovation

“There is only one thing stronger than all the armies of the world: and that is an idea whose time has come.” - Victor Hugo

Are you familiar with the concept of open innovation?

How open innovation works is the people who come up with an idea submit that idea to a company for their consideration.

If the company likes it, they will license the idea from the creator and pay them royalties on the revenue.

It is a philosophy many companies are utilizing to find the best products available.

For example, Procter and Gamble has had an open innovation web site since the year 2,000. (www.pgconnectdevelop.com )

A 2006 Harvard Business Review article about the results of their open innovation efforts, quoted P&G's CEO.

He said:

"The model works. Today, more than 35% of our new products in market have elements that originated from outside P&G, up from about 15% in 2000. And 45% of the initiatives in our product development portfolio have key elements that were discovered externally."

So far, the open innovation concept has been mostly used for sourcing products.

But, as the business landscape changes and becomes more competitive, the companies who thrive will source ideas from anywhere and from anyone for ways to do things better in EVERY aspect of business.

This is especially true of small to mid-sized companies.

Companies

Imagine for a minute that you are a business owner who employs 50 - 100 people.

Certainly, you could develop a culture that encourages the folks you employ to actively look for better ways to do things. And, they would probably come up with some.

Especially if they had real training on HOW to purposefully use their imagination to come up with those ideas and a system that by-passed the roadblocks. ??

But, imagine that there was a vast army of people who

• Were not on your payroll
• Who you paid no benefits to and
• Who did not take up a seat in your building

But, who were actively seeking better ways to do things or solving specific problems you had.

Wouldn't that give you a serious competitive edge?

Individuals

As an employee, most folks financial compensation has been limited to their salary and, in some cases, bonuses.

But, what if there was a way for you to apply your knowledge, experience and imagination to coming up with ideas and you could get paid for them?

And, the compensation for those ideas was not strictly limited to coming from your employer?

A system that helps companies source great ideas from multitudes of minds and where individuals can get paid for those ideas is what we're launching.

Recently, in our Facilitator Certification Training I shared with the trainees what this looks like and how it works.

Below is a video captured in that session.

Those of you who take the four minutes to watch this will be witnessing the birth of the new paradigm in business: A more cooperative and prosperous world.

At the risk of sounding unhumble, it's not unlike witnessing the beginning of Amazon.

The only thing not included in that video clip is the fact that companies will be able to submit a problem to us and we will submit to our SpearPoint Solutions community of trained thinkers to come up with the best solution - which will be paid for.

_____________________

Want to see how our Open Innovation Flow of Solutions concept can help you?

PM me?so we can discuss.

**********

Thank you for reading! Not already subscribed? Join our rapidly growing community of subscribers and read previous Editions by going?here .

See you next week?

About?Bob Sager

The founder of SpearPoint Solutions , Bob’s professional background includes over three decades of experience in sales, leadership and training. Combined with creative thinking, he uses that experience to develop business strategies that help organizations increase sales and reduce customer acquisition cost. Additionally, his team of Certified Facilitators train organizations on methods of purposeful creative thinking that are crucial to thriving in the modern?economy.?

Among other accomplishments, Bob is the?inventor?of the creative thinking game, What's the BIG Idea??, author of the books, Discovering Your Greatness and 101 Freaking Brilliant Business Ideas.