Why User-Driven Innovation Should Not Be Confused With Open Innovation
Denmark has its share of world-leading companies on user-driven innovation. Lego, the toy company, is a great example of this through their Adult Fan Of Lego groups and many other initiatives.
Another example is Coloplast which develops products and services that make life easier for people with very personal and private medical conditions. Their business includes ostomy care, urology and continence care, and wound and skin care. They are considered by many as a global pioneer of user-driven innovation due to their work with doctors, nurses and users of their products.
Last week, I read an article on how Coloplast has set-up communities for their users to share experiences and ideas. You can use Google to translate the Danish article and you can check out one of their communities here: International Stoma Innovation Community. In the article, Coloplast claims that they have halved their development time over the last couple of years partly due to the external input and they also mention that they are now using many more external partners than previously.
It sounds good, but nevertheless, I think Coloplast is a nice example of company that is still stuck in the user-driven mindset. The main idea of user-driven innovation is to get input from the users – and perhaps even the eco-system – of your products or services.
Open innovation is about integrating external partners in the entire innovation process. This should happen not just in the idea or technology development phase but also in all other phases towards market acceptance. User-driven innovation is great as it directs your innovation efforts towards market needs. Open innovation takes you to the next step by providing more opportunities through external partners as you address those market needs.
Which red flags did I pick up on Coloplast? First, take at look at their corporate website. I cannot find any guidelines on how to approach Coloplast with ideas or other contributions. Compare this to Procter & Gamble where you can find a very visible link to their Connect+Develop initiative.
Another red flag is the stoma community itself. It really gives you the feeling that it is about how Coloplast can tap into users rather than how they can work together and build relationships with external partners. This is what user-driven innovation is about. It should just not be confused with open innovation.
Furthermore, if you search for “innovation” on Coloplast’ corporate website nothing shows up besides a links to their international stoma community. This is actually a bit scary for a company that perceives itself as being quite innovative. It makes me – and perhaps many others – wonder how serious they really are about innovation…
The reason for writing this blog post is that I want to caution Coloplast – and other companies – not to be confused by the two types of innovation. This can be misleading and damage the possibilities for a company to become the preferred partner of choice which is a key objective on the open innovation game. However, I also think user-driven and open innovation can be a powerful combination and hopefully we will experience great cases on this in the near future.
Forbes posits "Why the Pursuit of Innovation Usually Fails"
Read why leaders and companies are locked-in to "best practices" that become obstacles to innovation. Even when desperately needed – like today. Offer your comments. http://tinyurl.com/yku67yj
I think this is related to the difference between "sustaining innovation" and "disruptive innovation". Customer and partner input is terrific for incremental improvement, but disruptive innovation is usually too out there for existing customers.
One of my favorite quotes about this is from Henry Ford, who said "It I'd asked people what they wanted, they would've said faster horses…"
I cannot comment on Coloplast, as I don't know this company, but the challenge with Open Innovation and User-Driven Innovation is that people read the headline and apply their own definition to suit their own reality.
Why is this a challenge? Because when you try to apply the learnings from the research and theory developed behind these concept to create value for an organisation, you're not getting through to them if you try to use the terminology within open or user-driven innovation if they already are stuck in a misconseption of what it actually means.
If companies think that open innovation is all about collecting ideas, as in P&G's connect and develop, they're completely missing the point. If they think user-driven innovation is about asking the user what they want, they're completely missing the plot.
I'm pretty sure that if Henry Ford had analysed his customers' behaviour, he would have concluded that they wanted a form of transport that could move them around on roads much faster than horses.
It is clearly stated in the article that they do involve external partners (open innovation) – but the aim of the article is not to talk about that part of Coloplast's innovation process. So, the blogger is actually confusing open innovation with user innovation, precisely what he is accusing Coloplast of. Hence, the entire blog is misleading, unless you demand that everyone should be talking about open innovation all the time. Which clearly would be a poor strategy.
And, Coloplast doesn't care that you can not find an entry point to the community, since you are not of interest to them. If Coloplast is to be mentioned by name and "flagged", why not make an actual investigation or go through the literature about Coloplast?
Rikard,
I actually believe it is very important for companies to develop their own overall definition of innovation and of the kinds of innovation that they engage with. The reason is that innovation means many different things depending on your views and situation.
Companies should develop an innovation strategy answering the why's of innovation and then they should define what innovation means to them. Then they can start build a common langauge. Of course, this only states why it becomes even more difficult to work with innovation across companies.
What do you think?
Stefan
Carsten,
Thanks for your input!
First of all, I fully agree that it would be a poor strategy only to talk about open innovation. This should only be a part of an overall corporate strategy that involves traditional, internal-oriented R&D and innovation as well as open innovation initiatives.
I am a bit unsure on how you believe I confuse open innovation and user-driven innovation in this specific context. Semantics can always be difficult as we tend to put our own values in such words as Rikard also mentioned. Perhaps we also interpret the article differently. But perhaps you can elaborate on this?
Stefan
Stefan,
I prefer to view Open Innovation (OI) as a broad enough term that also includes what you have referred to as "user-driven innovation".
Henry Chesbrough, defines OI as “a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.” With this definition, many different types of externally focused initiatives can fall under the term "open innovation".
Rather than getting tangled in semantics, and see it as more productive for an organization to select and use the right types of OI – those that are best aligned with their organization's specific needs, objectives, and business/technical complexity.
I look forward to collaborating with you in Orlando, and continuing the dialogue!
Best,
Jeff
open innovation is a two-way process which allows both inbound and outbound movement during all stages of the innovation process. user-driven innovation is a one-way process which is only concerned with the input of ideas.
user-driven innovation is just one small part of open innovation. (albeit the one that everyone likes to talk about.)
Thank you for your response. Always enjoy blogs where the blogger actually responds to the input (iwhich can't be taken for granted!).
Concerning the confusion. What surprised me was that you took an article and a case about user innovation, and flagged it for not being open innovation. It might make sense to flag this particular company, but not based on the article, I would argue.
kind regards, Carsten
Jeff, I agree that we should not get caught up in semantics. The most important thing is that a company develop their definition of innovation as well of open innovation. Generel Mills prefer to call this Connected Innovation.
User-driven innovation can very much be related to open innovation but it does require that it becomes more than just tapping input and ideas and then doing everything yourself as usual.
Carsten, I see your point although I did not only read the article as being about user-driven innovation. It also had some links to open innovation which together with my prior knowledge of Coloplast prompted me to write the blog post.
Stefan
I'd like to see a really critical analysis of how well companies honor their engagements in both user-driven and open innovation processes. My impression in the field is that innovation directors and managers have one point of view, but operational directors and managers have another — and that is to honor innovation initiatives in the breech, but not in the barrel. The case studies I read are simply too self-serving (being provided mainly by innovation advocates including company managers and consultants) for me to take them seriously. Yet innovation occurs. What is the disconnect? We really need to find out, to do this right.
Stefan,
I whole heartedly agree with you that companies should define what innovation means in their context.
However, when discussing "open innovation" (as in Chesbrough's research and projects based on that) and "user-driven innovation" (as in Von Hippel's and related research), it's a challenge that these terms take on different meanings for different people.
For some people, user-driven innovation can mean that you user-test your new products throughout their development cycle or that you deploy some IDEO-inspired methods of customer behavior analysis.
Open innovation is probably misunderstood even more often, as so many of the individual parts of the Open Innovation paradigm are applied within the businesses (licensing out of patents, collecting ideas, collaborating with other businesses, external R&D or consultants on development, etc). Hence, the "we're already doing this"-logic easily dismisses the notion that this can be done much more systematic and efficiently by applying learnings extracted from other companies' experience.
Our challenge as consultants, when we use these terms, is to first define them such that we know our clients are hearing the same words we think we're saying and THEN discuss what it means to them. If we skip over the definition too fast, then we end up talking past each other and the discussion becomes unproductive.
Of course many clients have no patience for a lecture in innovation management theory…
Just to clarify: I think the consequence of the above post is that we need to be aware of the weaknesses of academically based terminology in our discussions with clients. This is true for all consulting, of course. Speak the language the clients understand – unless your purpose is to try to impress with complexity, in which case you're probably not a very good consultant (not accusing you of this, obviously, I very much enjoy your blog).
My point was NOT that our clients are stupid and we need to make them smarter – though when I read it back, I realised that it may have been interpreted thus
Rikard,
I fully understand where you are coming from. However, I disagree on the approach.
Innovation, open innovation and user-driven innovation already have too many different meanings and definitions for academics and consultants to drive ONE definition for these terms. Thus we should take the other approach and make sure our clients define innovation towards their situation.
Stefan
But Stefan, this is precisely my point. You argue in your post that Coloplast are confusing user-driven innovation with open innovation. My claim is that applying known definitions of these terms may ostracise the client, as they may perceive the consultant to be "term-dropping". If they themselves believe they are doing open innovation and we disagree with them because their actions don't fit in with our definition of open innovation, then we're not helping them.
I think we agree here. The customer is right, we just need to help them understand where they are acting wrong. The theoretical work behind open innovation and user-driven innovation can help us lead them in the right directions, but the correction should not be communicated to them in a language they may misinterpret.
Interesting discussion, and maybe this will help. I view User Innovation and Open Innovation as approaches. Thinking of it that way, then it's the application of an approach that needs to be tailored to each specific context. It's true that the terms can be ambiguous, but in some sense, isn't that the point? It keeps us from being boxed too narrowly into a corner when we may need our tools to be flexible enough to handle a broad range of challenges.
For this reason I think Stefan's next post hits the nail on the head. Let's ask what we are trying to do and why, and then the nuances of the application will be shaped to fit each client's needs.
Rikard,
I should have emphazised in my latest comment that although we cannot drag one definition onto user-driven innovation and open innovation we still need to be aware that they are two different terms or as Ellen says approaches. By the way – good input, Ellen!
I also think we agree on the bigger picture on this…
Rikard, I might write a blog post based on our discussion which I find quite interesting. OK with you?
Stefan
Interesting blog post, insightful comment on what organisations say ‘they are’ in terms of innovation versus what they actually do. And I enjoyed the comment discussion also.
Rikard I think that the word innovation has become commonly used and less understood as a result. Therefore I find it wise to establish what innovation is to the client or audience and build forward on that explanation sign posting relevancy along the way.
I think companies also need to be cautious about being over reliant on 'user driven' innovation after all if Kodak had gone that route they would have produced better film rather then a digital camera.
Regards Roisin
Absolutely, it would be great if you blogged about this. I agree this is a very interesting topic.
Great discussion.
My conclusion after reading 50+ different blog posts on this topic in an effort to sort of the terminology is that the blurring of terms is exactly as confusing as it seems…….and in fact, the confusion was the topic of my recent blog post on http://www.dellaforma.com (VERY new blog).
I found the following terms and tags, all tied to one another under searches for either User-Driven Innovation or User-Led Innovation:
Collaborative Innovation, Customer-Centricity, Customer Co-design, Customer Innovation, Customer-Contributed Content, Customer-Led Business Strategy, Customer-Led Innovation, Community-Based Design, Crowdsourcing, Distributed Participatory Design, Open Source [Innovation], Outside Innovation, Participatory Design, Participatory Innovation, People-Centered [-Centred] Design, Social Innovation, User-Centric Innovation, User-Innovation, User-Centered [-Centred] Innovation.
After I wrote my post, I started following the action on http://www.quirky.com and realized that I forgot to add the term "Virtual customer environment" to my ever-growing list of overlapping terms.
I am still sorting through for myself which terms are truly in use (and/or useful!) when talking about innovation, and which ones have popped onto the scene as more "proprietary" terms designed primarily to sell books and consulting services.
I too appreciate Ellen's comment about keeping an open mind and considering these as approaches rather than definitions.
This is really interesting stuff. I am currently trying to bend my head around which terminology would most closely represent the innovation practices taking place between collaborating creative micro-businesses I work with. For all intents and purposes I thought they seemed to practice Open Innovation (OI), but now having viewed your list Carol, I see that many many other terms could also be applied.
Does OI by its very definition imply that the process had to be originally a closed process within individual companies, does IP creation or exchange have to be defined in each case? Does it have to be a clear two-way (or many-way) process rather than the more 'user – driven' gathering of information discussed above?
I am writing my MA dissertation on the OI process and leadership competencies required for OI pertaining to Creative Micro-businesses so any clarity on this area would be really appreciated.
Thanks for an informational and fascinating discussion.