Michael Fruhling says:

An interesting and provocative question, Stefan. I think that the following statements are more true than not:

There are more open innovation "experts" than people who are expert in open innovation..

There is more talk about strategy, than real knowledge and insight about practice. The people who are intimately involved in the daily workings of open innovation operations know intimately what's hype and what's real.

Intermediaries and platform oriented companies and individuals will invariably "follow the money". That is, if they feel that they can make a buck off of an emerging area of interest, they will try to cater to it. That's being opportunitstic..,it's not a bad thing, except when it's done cynically and without pure intentions to add real value.

I can't profess to know it all in this field. Not even close. As a professional scout and open innovation team member (as part of client teams), and as a technology representative who approaches corporations with technical opportunities, I have earned excellent access to a good number of the major corporate players in open innovation. This has enabled me to obtain good direct experience, as well as keen insight from some who are generously willing to share with me. I get glimpses of the operational and transactional aspects of open innovation from the direct work-related interactions that I have with these people. Still, I don't get to see them often enough doing their work on a day to day basis, away from conferences and public settings, to be truly expert in a number of aspects of open innovation.

There's clearly a fair amount of good work going on. The more we hear about it, including the details of it and not just the "sound bites", the better we should be able to answer your question with some greater clarity and precision.

Best regards,

Michael

Wille Eerola says:

First of all, so nice to see this topic under discussion! There is definitely a lot of hype around open innovation; sometimes slightly too much, I am afraid.

As Stefan pointed out, open innovation is fast becoming more reality than hype. That's the case, period. Then another question is how fast and what direction?

I have been speaking a lot and passionately for open innovation – both processes, accesses and platforms – in the most emerging markets in the world, in Pakistan for example. Taking that emerging market angle into this discussion, companies supporting open innovation models can also benefit from substantial resources globally – and I don't talk about bulk outsourced IT/TC/etc work but real innovation resources focusing on R&D of any field of technology. Also, looking the innovation issues from Northern-European/Scandinavian/EU point of view, open innovation is one of the key issues to ensure ongoing and productive innovation process since we are working with limited resources (=people) vs. China, India, Pakistan etc. Even US is not what it used to be in terms of innovations. So, I do believe open innovation is the way to go and it's here to stay.

I believe open platforms, open software, open innovation processes are part of this 2010 and Beyond world. It's the way the next generation thinks and acts. It's not about big giant corporations and their processes anymore, it's about open communication that generation follow. We can talk about it but it's the next one who is actually doing it and mostly because it's the most obvious way for them; mindset. Also in terms of innovation processes.

Corporate open innovation enabling non-corporate workers to attend the innovation process will be productive and effective way to handle R&D in the future. There are sure management, operational and legal issues linked to that "openness" but those are practical stuff, by end of the day. I personally see there plenty of new possibilities in form of corporate and universities taking that cooperation into a modern world level, too.

Total open innovation taking place through crowdsourcing on open platforms is theoretically marvelous idea but practically very challenging to run, management and operate. Just based on my own personal experience, in every open network the biggest challenge comes always in form of money and resources when further investments are made. And there the issue is more and less legal, too. Who owns, who invests, who gets the products and cash? So, even that I am big fan of the new modern, global and open innovation platforms, I don't believe that's the way to go. It will obviously grow in the near future but certain models need to formed as well. But I do believe that the fundamental concept of global open innovation process could be adapted – and should be – into more controlled form i.e. corporate innovation models. There the most modern, intelligent and fastest ones are the winners.

Wille Eerola says:

Quote from Frank; ”What if many tasks currently done by large companies were done instead by temporary combinations of small companies and independent contractors?" This is so much reality in car manufacturing business (was in pre-recession time at least…) and shipbuilding/marine engineering where basically all the work outside sales, project management, core design and customer relations are done by chain of independent contractors in many locations around the world.

Again, I guess the biggest practical challenge is on management side i.e. how an open innovation process through those contractors is professionally managed? Stefan, any insights? Please shoot few.

Kevin McFarthing says:

Hi Stefan,

This is really a question that should be answered by each individual company. There are some where the answer is unequivocally "reality". Examples are DSM, and almost every large pharmaceutical company where the axis between Big Pharma and Small Biotech has been running for 15-20 years. This is also an example of the other question asked by Frank – drug discovery is becoming increasingly outsourced.

On the other hand there are companies who have appointed relatively junior heads of Open Innovation who don't have the positional or experiential authority to make anything happen. There are others who talk a lot about it on the corporate website but don't follow through with action. Clearly in those cases the answer is "hype".

Open Innovation has something to offer everybody, the size of the prize being dependent on the industry, the company culture and capability, and ultimately leadership.

The role of intermediaries is then also up to the individual company, where they are better off with a small independent with "been there" experience than an intermediary with a fixed solution (I am a little biased here….). Intermediaries can make the OI journey a little less scary, ensuring opportunities are maximised and risks minimised.

Intermediaries are also very useful in the role Michael Fruhling mentioned, linking small companies with technology to big organisations with market access. They will always have a role, which will increase as the hype moves increasingly to reality.

Best regards

Kevin

Jose Briones says:

I think open innovation is not hype. It is a new approach that will transform the old internal innovation systems and hopefully eliminate the bias against the "non invented here". However the issue that I see, that will negatively impact open innovation efforts, is that many companies that have failed at innovation will see this as a "panacea" or as the answer to their failures. They will simply try to "bolt on" open innovation to their existing poor management systems, which are not suited to a real innovation culture. Thus I envision CEO's that attend an open innovation conference and demand that all innovation teams add open innovation to their Stage Gate processes. I think all of you that know what Stage Gate is like, can readily predict what the result of those efforts will be. Thus open innovation, just as regular innovation, may get a black eye, but not because it does not work, but because companies simply do not want to implement the management changes necessary to create a real culture of innovation.