The open innovation model is a term that relates to and promotes the idea of taking and carrying out a modern approach towards innovation by adopting methodologies from the technology industry such as agile project management techniques, proper time allocation dedicated towards proper experimentation and testing for creating a better, more effective and more efficient program.
The multiple huge advantages to using and taking the open innovation approach, and it all leads to better quality and results for all parties involved; the users, the organisation providing the product and so on.
Sinnaps is an example of an application web that uses this approach and makes use of it well. It is an innovation project management software tool itself and aids workflow while allowing for effective communication amongst team members, allowing the team to effectively tackle a project and share ideas, solutions and discussions while doing so, all through Sinnaps.
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Open innovation strategy and methods
Open innovation strategy and methods generally result in a multitude of benefits and offers these benefits to any organisation that uses the open innovation strategy and methods effectively. Innovation project management and effective use of its methods and strategy require things like good communication tools and a versatile platform. Sinnaps offers both of these with it’s useful communication features and cloud based storage (versatility).
The open innovation model requires good use of strategy and methods to allow maximum benefit, some examples of strategies and methods include:
- Need Seeker Strategy – This directly engages current and potential customers to better get an idea of their needs, and also shapes new products and ideas alongside striving to make the company first in marketing these things.
- Technology Driver – Follows and operates based on company’s technological capacities, leveraging research and development to create new innovations and change, seeking to solve customer needs with new technology.
- Market Reader – Monitors customers and competitors equally, but while maintaining a more cautious approach focusing largely on creating change using an incremental approach and following proven concepts.
Using these strategies and methods for the open innovation model will help to ensure that you get the most out of it for your business.
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Open Innovation vs Closed Innovation
The open innovation business model is essentially beyond the company’s boundaries, meaning that not only internal ideas and means are used, but also external ideas and means. This can be anything from technology, to frameworks to methodologies and much more, it offers greater possibilities as the place of innovation is inside and outside the company.
There are drawbacks to this however, as this term primarily relates to collaborative networking. It does not equal to free access to a company’s knowledge and technologies. Open innovation therefore can involve high costs for the use of licenses and other intellectual property.
Closed innovation is limited to within the company meaning that internal resources are used only, and results in the following:
- Companies invest large sums of money in order to establish a know-how centre within its own organisation for research and development.
- The R&D developments provide significantly beneficial innovations that result in innovative products and solutions.
- This results in innovation process being characterised by a closed system, with fixed company boundaries and internal R&D activities.
As you can see, closed innovation is excellent for having an independent yet effective innovation process.
Benefits of open innovation
The benefits of open innovation are many and can lead to reduced costs, greater efficiency and much more. Central points for the benefits of open innovation include:
- Creating new products and services
- Innovating old products and services
- Building a strong network and community of people who are engaged with your work
- Keeping your employees engaged
- New revenue streams
- Innovation risk reduction
Advantages and disadvantages of open innovation
There are positives and negatives to open innovation as well however.
The advantages of open innovation are plentiful and include:
- Reduced cost of conducting research and development
- Potential for improvement in development productivity
- Early incorporation of customers early in the development process
- Increase in accuracy for market research and customer targeting
- Greater synergistic potential with both internal and external innovations of the organisation
- Marketing potential
Disadvantages are as such:
- Possibility of revealing information not intended for sharing
- Potential for organisations hosting to lose competitive advantages as a consequence of revealing intellectual property
- Increased complexity of controlling information
- Regulating how contributors affect a project
- Devising means to properly incorporate and identify innovation
- Realigning innovation strategies to extend beyond to get the full benefit from the innovation on the external side of things.
These points essentially cover the open innovation funnel and the open innovation advantages and disadvantages. There are also two known types of open innovation, inbound open innovation which is about sourcing and acquiring outside expertise and outbound open innovation which is the commercialisation and capture of internally developed ideas in the organisation’s external environment.
There are also a couple of open innovation project trends worth mentioning, and they are:
- Transformation of organisation structures
- Co-creation
- Customer Centricity
- Advanced networks
- Evidence-based innovation
In conclusion there a number of benefits and advantages that can be derived from innovation as described in this article. Sinnaps provides an effective medium to carry out most if not all of these methods with its variety of features and intuitive user interface provided with the Sinnaps application web.
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Innovation in Project Management
