Three-Step Scenario to Explore Open Innovation

The ultimate innovation success isn't what you do; it's what you deliver for results, and how being innovative becomes the state of mind.

Innovation is essentially an intentional novelty bringing sustainable benefit. Innovation generates either economic or social value. From the business management perspective, innovation opens up new possibilities of combining existing business competencies in new ways which can form distinctive competencies as a stepping stone for doing more creative things. The value of open innovation is increasing because it uses all the information sources available in developing a robust innovation pipeline to generate fresh ideas and improve innovation management effectiveness. To put another way, open innovation makes the pie of creative ideas grow bigger. Here is a three-step scenario to explore open innovation.

Develop enriched innovation hubs and clusters: At the heart of innovation, it is a life cycle of idea generation, interaction, selection, learning, and creating new knowledge or perspective, etc. Open innovation is for discovering better pastures off the fence for innovation experimentation. The goal of open innovation isn’t just to be democratized or be cost-efficient, but to ensure that the abundance of good ideas to flow in and develop the wider user community to co-create ideas and solve difficult problems creatively. Try to digitally connect key assets or context to the resource-rich innovation hubs and hyperconnected digital cluster across enterprise ecosystems for either sourcing great ideas or developing alternative solutions. Set innovation agendas and initiate new conversations that spark creativity, galvanize inspiration, and gain traction on a powerful theme of renewal and growth. There is more flow of creative ideas, the more is happening, the pie gets bigger. Open innovation not only lies in the rapidly growing businesses and industries; but also happen in the well-established companies in highly mature industries that innovation can help to rejuvenate their business by breaking down bureaucratic culture and mediocre mentality. Proactively listen to customers’ needs and gain a deep understanding of the motivational construct of customers through empathy. Companies across the vertical sectors can benefit from open innovation by fully involving with their partners or customers and take outside-in perspectives and developing enriched innovation hubs and clusters.

Build some degree of “hard-wired” innovation system and structures: Innovation is a learning process that is vital for both individuals and organizations. Although innovation is greatly influenced by external circumstances, it doesn’t mean that open innovation will happen randomly or the innovation process or system of the organization is or should be unstructured. Effective innovation management requires a fit process as part of the holistic innovation 'system. The robust innovation processes and tools that enable an organization to generate winning concepts on a consistent basis, is the prerequisite for sustainable business advantage and growth. Take a structural way, have some degree of the “hard-wired” innovation system and a set of practical tools to manage innovation with the well-defined metrics to monitor the results. The actual challenge with innovation is to fully understand the system and systemic risks throughout the life cycle and the adverse event life cycle. These are system safety, reliability, quality, logistics, maintainability, availability, or the human factor. The point is to develop innovation as a differentiated business competency, not as a one time-initiative, with the ultimate goal to build a highly innovative business.

Expand innovation ecosystem: The businesses need innovation silver lining from specific tools rising to an overall problem-solving system environment. Organizations can no longer rely on a single individual or team to drive innovation. The evolution of innovation only exists in an open environment or the dynamic ecosystem that creates insight and takes advantage of all sources of creativity in an open way and make a leap of innovation management to the next level of innovation maturity. Innovations simply benefit from being developed in and subsequently commercialized in a more open ecosystem. However, for many organizations, the ecosystems have evolved without much attention or planning. To effectively respond to the new dynamics, companies must begin thinking about ways to broaden their ecosystems and revenue streams while becoming more responsive. Variety, complexity, diversification, and collaboration are the very characteristics of the digital innovation ecosystem. The emerging digital technologies enable companies to leverage their ecosystems which draw mutually supportive companies together from multiple industries that seek fresh ideas collectively and build differentiated business value that could not reach alone. An innovation ecosystem should fully cover a wide enough direction so that companies can operate within ecosystems to deliver innovative business solutions to customers. Innovation happens at the intersection of people and technology; business and customers. The emerging markets perhaps offer particularly fertile ground for exploring innovation opportunities and developing a dynamic innovation ecosystem. Therefore, companies need to proactively evolve and develop a vibrant innovation ecosystem in which businesses can thrive and reach the next level of innovation maturity.

The open innovation scenario can improve idea generation, decontaminating conventional thinking, harness interaction, build the dynamic team, inspire learning and share, and take logical steps to develop innovation as a unique business competency. The ultimate innovation success isn't what you do; it's what you deliver for results, and how being innovative becomes the state of mind.

Posted in: Innovation,IT Innovation