Three Open Innovation Best Practices
What does it take to generate positive results from engaging with open innovation? How can companies maximize the potential of external knowledge sources?
The European School of Management and Technology Berlin (ESMT) thinks it knows the answers. The institution has come up with three best practices following an exhaustive study of 23, 800 organizations that use online feedback mechanisms.
The study was carried out by Linus Dahlander, Professor and KPMG Innovations Chair at ESMT and Stanford PhD Henning Piezunka. They looked at organization in almost every industry sector and have drawn up the following three best practices for open innovation:
1. Offer proactive attention – companies should start the conversational ball rolling with an internally developed suggestion.
2. Offer reactive attention – all companies should respond actively to suggestions so that people know they are being listened to and heard.
3. Catalyze – organizations should focus their efforts on new users at the early stages of their open innovation effort. In other words they should carve out the time to nurture fledgling discussions to turn them into thriving communities.
The bottom line appears to be that companies must really put in the time to engage with open innovation.
“Many attempts at open innovation campaigns often wither and die,” says Prof Dahlander. “One of the reasons why most organizations fail to elicit suggestions successfully is because outsiders don’t see how much effort actually goes on behind the scenes.
“Our suggestions might seem like common-sense rules for successful communication but the reality is that companies frequently underestimate the investment needed and often fail to apply such widely understood best practices when it comes to corporate engagement.”
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