"Open innovation means that valuable ideas can come from inside or outside the company and can go to market from inside or outside the company as well"
Open innovation is a strategy by which companies collaborate with agents outside the organization to seek new ideas and processes. This type of innovation leverages external resources to find new and better solutions to corporate problems and challenges faster and more agile.
Companies need openness to share the problems of the organization and seek collective solutions, using the intelligence of the crowd through crowdsourcing and open innovation.
The term ‘open innovation’ was coined by Henry Chesbrough in 2003 in his publication Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology: “Open innovation means that valuable ideas can come from inside or outside the company and can go to the market from inside or outside the company as well”
How can companies benefit from talent outside their four walls?
- Through idea competitions
- By incubating start-ups,
- With collaboration projects with universities or, simply,
- Requesting help via the Internet
“Companies benefit from the ideas of others, and society benefits from the possibility of asserting itself, even if they live in a remote part of the world or do not have the means to study at a large university,” said James Gallman of General Electric at the Future Trends Forum on Technology and Inequality of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation. In the following video, James Gallman explains an example of how companies and workers can take advantage of the great opportunities offered by technology and open innovation.
Open innovation has been greatly favoured by globalisation and the development of communication technologies. With a world that is developing faster and faster, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies alone to develop technologies that do not become obsolete.
General Electric and its Fuse initiative is a good example of a company that is already betting on open innovation. As they state in their Open Innovation Manifesto “we believe that it is impossible for any organization to have all the best ideas, and we strive to collaborate with experts and entrepreneurs from around the world who share our passion for solving some of the world’s most pressing issues”
Lego is also known for opening up to crowdsourcing by turning user proposals into real products through Lego Ideas.
What other open innovation initiatives do you know about?
Vicepresidente de estrategia de recursos humanos y análisis de personas en Allstate
