Go out to the sand pit and play!
OPEN INNOVATION
The theory of open innovation was developed by Henry Chesbrough, who defines the concept as follows:
“Open Innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. [This paradigm] assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology“.
According to this theory, companies should and must shift their way of generating ideas and bringing them into the market from the closed model, regarding the appearance of ideas only in the companies with powerfull R&D deparTments where it’s development was restricted to these companies’ borders, to an open model where ideas may appear anywhere due to the actual knowledge mobility and globalization, which must be used readily if it is to provide value for the company. Therefore, companies today must develop capacities to learn from the outside, relax their borders giving importance both to external and internal sources and positioning themselves as external sources for others. Through this method, companies will boost their own resources, target indirectly other markets and improve their efficiency in targeting their own market.
I have come across the following practical approach on the topic, reducing it to a children’s sandpit issue (source: Alexander Damvelt, Phillips):
The following are examples of companies, taken from the www.openinnovation.net, that took clear advantage of applying the open innovation model to their business:
- Cisco Systems, which lacks anything resembling the deep internal R&D capabilities of Bell Labs, somehow has consistently managed to stay abreast of Lucent (Lucent Technologies, which inherited the lion’s share of Bell Laboratories after the breakup of AT&T), even occasionally beating the company to market.Lucent devoted enormous resources to exploring the world of new materials and state-of-the-art components and systems, seeking fundamental discoveries that could fuel future generations of products and services. Cisco, on the other hand, deployed a very different strategy in its battle for innovation leadership. Whatever technology the company needed, it acquired from the outside, usually by partnering or investing in promising startups (some, ironically, founded by ex-Lucent veterans). In this way, Cisco kept up with the R&D output of perhaps the world’s finest industrial R&D organization, all without conducting much research of its own.
- IBM’s research prowess in computing provided little protection against Intel and Microsoft in the personal computer hardware and software businesses.
- Motorola, Siemens and other industrial titans watched helplessly as Nokia catapulted itself to the forefront of wireless telephony in just 20 years, building on its industrial experience from earlier decades in the low-tech industries of wood pulp and rubber boots.
- Pharmaceutical giants like Merck and Pfizer have also watched as a number of upstarts, including Genentech, Amgen and Genzyme, has parlayed the research discoveries of others to become major players in the biotechnology industry.
LEAD-USER INNOVATION
Eric Von Hippel, who developed the concept of lead-user innovation, stated the following: “It’s getting cheaper and cheaper for users to innovate on their own. This is not traditional market research — asking customers what they want. This is identifying what your most advanced users are already doing and understanding what their innovations mean for the future of your business.”
User innovations occur when customers of a product improve that product with their own designs. The following link leads to a short explanation given by Eric Von Hippel himself about lead-user innovation, where he brings up several examples of lead-users such as surgeons, security software users, bike users and kayak users.
PERSONAL OPPINION
I think both companies and individuals should and must change their way of generating ideas and developing them. This era we are living today moves at such a speed and has such an intense communicational and globalized net, that sticking to closed procedures suppresses the acquisition of value. The good ideas and things yet to be done are bound to be result of collaborative procedures. One of the most interesting out-knowledge flow the companies must develop is that regarding the lead-users, both because of their experience as committed users and because their useful information is generaly released for free, which represents a cheap breeding ground for new market opportunties.
References:
- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxvd4obm8XM&feature=related
(this video is a really good and clear talk of Eric von Hippel himself on the topic full of examples)
- www.amaliorey.com
- www.standford.edu
- hbswk.hbs.edu
- Carliss Baldwin, Christoph Hienerth, Eric von Hippel: “How User Innovations Become Commercial Products: A Theoretical Investigation and Case Study”
- www.leaduser.com
- www.openinnovation.net
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12 feb 2012
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Amaya Sayas Lopez
Magua, Sin categoría /
Magua
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