Real life practitioners of Open innovartion

This industry week article is proof of that the open model, finding existing proven innovation and bringing it to market through collaboration, can work!. They have developed an innovation strategy around what they call the Connect + Develop (C+D) initiative. Looking outwards to see relevant innovation, then connecting to collaborate on developing and profiting from the idea.

To accommodate P&G's accelerated innovation process, Cloyd emphasizes a fast cycle learning methodology to help P&G identify winners earlier and develop them at lower cost. 'Remember,' he adds, 'that the challenge is that most innovations fail!'

If the innovation is already partly proven, evolving it through incremental improvement or modifying it to a more appropriate context can make it a real success. Only a new pair of eyes can see these possibilities!

The case for openness is stated through:

• Not all the smart people work for you. There is a need to work with smart people both inside and outside the company.
  
  
• External ideas can help create value, but it takes internal R&D to claim a portion of that value for you.
  
  
• It is better to build a better business model than to get to market first.
  
• If you make the best use of internal and external ideas, you will win.
  
• Not only should you profit from others' use of your intellectual property, you should also buy others' IP whenever it advances your own business model.
  
• You should expand R&D's role to include not only knowledge generation, but knowledge brokering as well.
  

The last two points may be hard to quantify and implement, how much to pay for an idea? How to make the brokering of knowledge work?

They big lesson seems to be that the key to success is in the process employed to make the initiative work.

For those motivated to emulate P&G's lead in open innovation, Brez offers recommendations. "Start with a formal strategy that includes implementation and tactical plans. Comprehensive planning produces the greatest value. Put all of the elements together -- with senior management committed to the strategy, the implementation, the organization and the funding."