The Next Wave of Open Innovation
InnoCentive was profiled in Business Week today in an article called “The Next Wave of Open Innovation: How InnoCentive aims to exploit sophisticated technology and networking capabilities to connect problems with their potential solvers”. It’s a great piece that positions InnoCentive nicely at the forefront of open innovation. I think the single most important message that comes across in the article – and they say it a few times – is the notion that organizations will find success in innovation by looking outside of their own organizations, primarily because it often takes people outside the core focus to present a solution. This left field aspect is something that we have found to be true again and again, both in independent research conducted by academics like Karim Lakhani, and in conversations with our Seekers, who continue to be surprised about where solutions to their Challenges are found. There is no better example of this than that of Solver John Davis, who used his expertise in the concrete industry to solve a Challenge about removing oil from the bottom of the ocean.
I was also pleased to see the recognition of how valuable working in teams can be in solving complex problems. More and more we’re finding out that Challenges are being solved by self-forming groups, which is why we’re working to create more community features for our Solvers.
It’s great to see open innovation hit the mainstream – and this kind of exposure is beneficial for all of the innovative companies that have given open innovation a place of prominence in their corporate strategy.
Over the weekend, Business Week published an article on a similar topic, entitled 