Open Innovation Perspectives for Executives, Innovation Leaders and Employees

As I prepare for a couple of workshops in the coming weeks, I have the opportunity to think about how to prepare different messages for three different groups of stakeholders within a company; executives, innovation leaders and other employees working with innovation.

Here comes a few notes on each of these stakeholder groups.

Executives: First, they need to understand what open innovation is and they also need to understand that a true implementation of open innovation will bring change across the entire organization. They need to lead this change.

Executives need to be convinced by example. I plan to look into key questions such as: How do other companies approach open innovation? What can we learn from this? What were the benefits? How did they manage the risks? How can we translate the lessons from other companies and industries to our company? What is happening in our industry right now and how do we fare in comparison with our key competitors?

Innovation leaders: They have a difficult double-role. First, they have to understand open innovation in general very well and then they have to understand how this new paradigm shift will influence their company. Having this understanding, they can now work with the executives to make them understand that they need to embrace this paradigm shift. This is a tough job, but it gets even harder as they also have to get the organization onboard.

I believe that they have to paint not only the big picture, but also show and explain how this will bring change – and new opportunities – to the employees working with innovation in the future. They need to learn and adapt as they go along while constantly getting small and big wins.

In short, the innovation leaders need a toolbox on open innovation as well as one on change management. Very interesting, very challenging…

Employees working with innovation: This is potentially all employees and they start out by asking: What does this mean to me? This response is fully understandable as they often do not see the bigger picture and – more importantly – do not fully understand what this paradigm shift will mean to their work with innovation.

Working with this group requires a practical hands-on approach that focuses on their specific work with innovation while trying to make them see the bigger corporate picture as well.

All for now. Your input is highly appreciated.