I will unfortunately not make it to FEI in Amsterdam. A shame as this would be have been a good opportunity to identify more European open innovation cases.

There are – no doubt – European as well as Asian companies that get open innovation, but some of the U.S. cases presented at CoDev were very impressive. And my point is that they are better at sharing their insights than their European and Asian counterparts. This will be critical in the long run. At least, this is what I see as an non corporate practitioners following this movemen.

Stefan

Being that little contentious here with your opening remarks. I think there are differences that need less of a reaction just emerging from what sounds a highly focused, successful conference at CoDev. As you will be going to the FFE in Amsterdam that has a broader agenda you might be able to measure the pulse of both a little better then.

My take on it is, the American company is more open, it is more enthusiastic to engage in new ways and often pioneers these but I would feel the models adopted by Unilever, Neste, Reckitt Benckiser to name a few, are far more mature, structured and integrated but in different ways.

Americans do open themselves up for questioning and learning but they sometimes follow the established practice, the alternatives are slower to see but in the end it is the results in final product, not the noise of how to get there and both have considerable way to go to get this well worked out.

As for Asia, well it is well behind on structural innovation but has two real pluses, it is much better at scouting and sourcing around the world and has pockets of research institutes that collaborate far more closely within their national society to alter existing practices. Working there for 12 years sometimes direct comparisons like you have made are difficult to make without a deeper investigation