John Hagel and John Seely Brown wrote a great post recently named Open Innovation’s Next Challenge: Itself. It got scores of retweets so you have probably already read it if you follow the open innovation community. In short, they argue that companies need to focus more on relationships rather than transactions when it comes to open innovation.

The questions raised in their post are valid enough, but I think Hagel and Seely Brown – whom I respect a lot – are a bit late on this one. The companies that are serious about open innovation are already ahead of the transactional model. They fully understand that what really matters on open innovation happens “behind-the-scenes” rather than through fancy idea-generation or crowdsourcing initiatives.

“Behind-the-scenes” is not about making innovation happen internally. I actually believe that you should be careful with open innovation if you are unable to make your internal innovation engine work. Open innovation is by no means a holy grail that instantly fixes all of your problems.

When I talk with open innovation leaders such as P&G and General Mills, we agree that sites such as PG’s Connect & Develop and General Mills G-WIN are important, but such initiatives are not the most important pieces of the puzzle.

It is far more important that companies have internal platforms in place that can handle the many opportunities that arise when they bridge their internal resources with external partners. This requires the right people, a proper mandate and good processes. This is too often not the case.

Initiatives that we can label as “behind-the-scenes” include teams that are very adept at hand-helding partners as they begin to work with the large company, special events with trusted partners and scouting teams as discussed in this great report: Scouting for Innovation

Companies like P&G, General Mills and Intuit know that it is very important to have such elements in place in order to achieve what Hagel and Seely Brown rightfully urge companies to aim for; long-term partnerships.

Actually, one of the biggest issues on open innovation in larger companies is to be able to treat their partners so well that these partners maintain an interest in doing business with them again and thus become long-term partners. This is not always the case today as some large companies believe that the definition of a win-win relationship is that you get to kick the little guy twice.

The next practices of open innovation will be about developing systems, enablers and processes that speed the connection to innovation parners in a repeatable, cost effective and quick way. The latter sentence is inspired by a talk given by Peter Erickson, who leads the innovation efforts at General Mills.

An idea portal that brings in lots of quick transactions will not make you the preferred partner of choice within your industry. This is nothing more than a ticket to get into the game and the companies that are serious about open innovation know this.