Open Innovation and Lead User Innovation

Innovation is nowadays vital for companies: if a company is not innovating, it will lose against its competitors! Information is everywhere and good ideas can arise from unexpected places or people! Seeking breakthrough products is now the goal of every company that wants to be successful. But, what do “Open innovation” and “Lead User Innovation” mean? After researching about these topics, here are my most interesting findings!

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology”. Henry Chesbrough is the one that promoted open innovation and if you want to hear his own words about this topic, just watch this video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UDBaDtwXfI

In contrast with the old model of innovation, which was closed, this new model of open innovation allows companies to benefit not only from external ideas and technologies but also from ideas that other companies have not used. Open innovation is a modern system, where cooperation is important. The old model claimed that each company should control their ideas but several factors, like increasing mobility of skilled people or the growth of the venture capital market, have proved that this is not the best model: nowadays companies cannot be “isolated” when there´s so much knowledge around. It has been studied that companies embracing open innovation can generate more profits than the ones that doesn´t. Many companies, like IBM, U-Tech, Lupin Pharmaceuticals, Aurobindo Pharma, Nokia… are already taking advantages from open innovation!

The lead user concept, was developed by Erik Von Hippel, and we can hear him talking about this concept in the link below!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbQ5mAEE1lk

Leading users are users that are at the leading edge of important market trends and that have a strong incentive to find solutions for the novel needs they encounter at the leading edge. No one knows better how to solve needs than the ones that have those needs: users know what they need to make their lives easier. When a user is motivated to solve one need, great ideas can arise from there and they can end in breakthrough products! Motivation and innovation makes these users be of great importance for companies! As their products are designed thinking in needs not covered by current products, they tend to be more profitable than the ones not developed by users. The lead user method consists on identifying these users, and internet is a really good way to find them. The costs are low, and the advantages are huge, that´s why  3M and Ericsson, among others, are already aware of this method!

In my opinion, innovation must be part of every company and all companies that want to improve their businesses should follow these methods! Both of them are complementary and useful, because knowledge is everywhere, and in the end, knowledge is what gives power to businesses!

If you have time, I recommend you to visit also these links that I found in the web.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoRcLt_nT7g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nnhcnuo-pRc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qj-NGG2xQIw&feature=related

Comentarios desactivados en Open Innovation and Lead User Innovation / 08 Feb 2012 por Maria Diez Maroto
MERME /

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