What does an open innovation strategy look like? I went through some of the presentations from the CoDev conference and I spent some time on the presentation given by Fabienne Jacquet, Director of External Innovation at Colgate-Palmolive. I was unable to attend her presentation, but she got great feedback : – )

Her presentation gives a quite clear description of the open innovation strategy at Colgate-Palmolive. Their overall external innovation mission is to embed the external world into Colgate-Palmolive and their strategy for this builds on four elements:

• create environment for open dialog
• “translate” between marketers and scientists
• build a winning external ecosystem
• become a “partner of choice”

Fabienne also stated that they evolved their external innovation by:

• creating new partnerships around consumer insights (consumer immersion programs, bring scientists closer to marketing and customers)

• integrating technology scouting (monthly forums for evaluating ideas and immediately determine next steps, cross-functional with all levels participating)

• connecting externally (programs with key partners and academia, global networks with open search providers and a submit your idea website – I have to say that I am not that impressed by the website which is also hard to find.

• building the appropriate external ecosystem (focus on partnerships that are in line with their corporate culture)

• successful alliance management (senior level sponsorship, R&D co-owns the relationship, trust and transparency with a focus on win-win)

I like what Fabienne and her team is doing. It is to some extent basic stuff, but basic stuff often works and I think this serves as inspirational building blocks for companies that want to implement open innovation.

Hopefully, I get a chance to meet with Fabienne soon and ask her how they plan to implement the next practices of open innovation at Colgate-Palmolive. That could be quite interesting.