Should R&D Units Lead Open Innovation? Lessons from HP, Nokia

I scan all tweets containing the words “open innovation” as this is a great way to stay updated on the open innovation community.

Recently, this one showed up. “@jsorgent: HP Open Innovation Office authenticity fail: http://www.hpl.hp.com/open_innovation/. Terrible site.”

I have a general interest in following the innovation efforts at HP. Unfortunately; I have to say that I am not impressed by their current open innovation approach.

If you google HP and open innovation, you are led to their HP Labs Open Innovation Office which @jsorgent describe as a terrible site.

The first sentences from the website go like this: “HP Labs’ Open Innovation Office pursues and coordinates research collaborations with top researchers and entrepreneurs in academia, government and business around the world. It ensures joint research endeavors result in high-impact research that meets HP and its partners’ scientific and business objectives.”

Please note that HP Labs is an exploratory and advanced research group. As such, it is not a surprise that they are more interested in academia and research institutions than businesses. You also get that feeling in this presentation by Rich Friedrich, Director of HP Labs Open Innovation Office.

By the way, I could just as well write this blog post about Nokia as they have a similar setup. Check this link: Open Innovation at Nokia Research Center and try to google Nokia and open innovation.

I admire HP and Nokia for still having huge corporate R&D labs that drive out innovation that is worthwhile to a greater society. However, it does raise a few questions.

Can you claim to be an open innovation leader if your initiatives have a strong focus on university collaboration and less on corporate partnerships?

Can you extract the true value of open innovation if overall responsibility is placed in units such as HP Labs and Nokia Research Center? Does this hinder a more holistic approach on innovation that goes beyond R&D?

I have not spoken with HP people on this blog post so they might reply and tell me about interesting corporate initiatives that they have beyond the HP Labs Open Innovation Office. Then I stand to be corrected.

However, this would just raise another issue that might even be more serious than the above. Should a company with great initiatives on open innovation not share this with the rest of the world?

I think this is very important especially as it has become widely accepted that one of the key objectives of open innovation is to become the preferred partner of choice. Being the preferred partner of choice is very much about perception.

Of course, you need to have processes in place that qualifies you as a serious open innovation player. However, this is not what makes you the preferred partner of choice. This is merely your ticket to play the game.

What separates you from your competitors having similar setups in place is how well you communicate about your open innovation initiatives and how good you are at building the proper perceptions on this. I think HP has issues that require attention on this.

To build further on this, please remember that open innovation is very much about finding technologies, ideas, solutions and new paths to markets. It is, however, just as important that these things are able to find you. Companies that want to do open innovation with HP most likely find HP Labs Open Innovation Office first.

They might get the impression that HP focus too much on research rather than development and getting innovation to the market fast. This could drive them towards HP’s competitors instead. This is not an attractive position to any company.