Be Opened! Lead them – Lead User & Open Innovation
Designing innovation as a process where internal and external actors have a similar role is the central idea of Open Innovation. We speak of an innovation is not restricted to the product but also referred to the business model of innovation based on experimentation and collaboration between companies, universities, public sector and, of course, users.
If in the sixties we had asked where were the best experts in computers, probably many would have agreed on a brand or a site: IBM and Silicon Valley. However, if you ask us today, probably we will find many answers, all valid and probably also with a variety of places, scattered throughout the planet.
Traditionally, new business development processes and the marketing of new products took place within the firm boundaries. What distinguishes open innovation in an innovation process is closed in the latter all ideas, inventions, research and development are generated within the company until the final product market launches. However with open innovation the company can make use of external expertise and even allow other organizations to develop products from their innovations.
Undoubtedly, there is clear evidence of the benefits of opening the innovation process to the ideas and knowledge in both directions. We can summarize the following:
- Reduced time and cost of innovation projects
- Incorporation of solutions and innovations in the form of ideas, patents, products and technologies that have never been developed by the company due to lack of time, knowledge and / or technological means
- Commercialization of innovations that lack of capacity or for strategic reasons are not to market through the organization
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGDuOl6O7PM&feature=related
And what does open innovation needs? Lead users! What’s it?
Lead users are users of a product or service that currently experience needs still unknown to the public and who also benefit greatly if they obtain a solution to these needs:
- Lead users face needs that will be general in a marketplace – but face them months or years before the bulk of that marketplace encounters them, and
- Lead users are positioned to benefit significantly by obtaining a solution to those needs.
In contrast to the traditional market research techniques that collect information from the users at the center of the target market, the Lead User method takes a different approach, collecting information about both needs and solutions from the leading edges of the target market and from analogue markets, markets facing similar problems in a more extreme form.
The methodology involves four major steps:
- Start of the Lead User process
- Identification of Needs and Trends
- Identification of Lead Users and interviews
- Concept Design (Workshop)
The methodology is based upon the idea that breakthrough products may be developed by identifying leading trends in the to-be-developed product’s associated marketplace(s). Once the trend or broader problem to be solved has been identified, the developers seek out “Lead Users”- people or organizations that are attempting to solve a particularly extreme or demanding version of the stated problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN2HPMSAiWo
And after all… what can we do with this information? What can we do in Europe? As everybody knows, except Germany, Europe’s living a crisis times and Governments can play a key role in triggering new models of collaboration, concludes the Science/Business Innovation board in order to change this situation and re-make our business development concept. Here you have 7 ways to make open innovation work in Europe:
- Make sure innovation clusters are focused and that academics are allowed to move between academic and commercial roles to bring innovations to market.
- Innovation can benefit from multiple large industry partners.
- With returns plummeting on venture capital investments, open innovation offers new funding models for getting smart ideas to market.
- Intellectual property rights don’t have to be a stumbling block.
- Governments can drive job growth by opening government data to promote innovation in services.
- Government failures in open innovation provide valuable lessons.
- Smart governments can be a catalyst for open innovation partnerships – but not through a top-down approach.
So we have to take it in account, not only in our professional lives, in our business, our companies… we have to be opened, we have to be global, and we could think as one mind.
References:
http://www.anissamoeini.com/images/LeadUserInnovationReport.pdf
http://bulletin.sciencebusiness.net/news/75615/7-ways-to-make-open-innovation-work-in-Europe
http://www.openinnovation.eu/open-innovation/
http://openinnovation.berkeley.edu/
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13 feb 2012
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