Let’s be clear: innovation has become systemic. It can be seen as a basic characteristic of a global system where brains, knowledge, ideas, technologies, and markets are massively interconnected and generate transformation at an exponential rate. Within this context, not many companies have the capacity to keep on innovating and developing in closed circuits.
Nonetheless, open or collaborative innovation is not without its own challenges. You cannot declare it and hope to reap its benefits. It is strategic, it impacts the company’s models and functioning on the long run, and it is undoubtedly one of the most decisive missions for leaders today.
Open innovation is strategic, because it takes place within parameters unique to each company and must be molded around them. Is it more appropriate for you to use a crowdsourcing approach, where you will reward the best solution to a previously published question? Netflix is a famous example of this, having solved the complex (and crucial!) issue of its recommendation algorithm in such a manner. But this means that you know how to reach, motivate, and manage the necessary skills wherever they may be, that in the end you can count on easy-to-industrialise solutions, and that you have the know-how and tools required to assess them at an economically profitable cost.
Would it be better then to join in a consortium with one or several partners, and thus to share the decision processes and the intellectual property – partly or entirely – through a more horizontal approach? This would mean that you know how to find partners with whom to succeed, and create with them trust networks, long-term mutual interest levels, and the most efficient collaboration architecture... The Pfizer-BioNTech alliance regarding the development of the Covid-19 vaccine shows that it is possible and can generate value.
There is feedback on numerous approaches to open innovation: more or less open, more or less shared, more or less opportunistic or sustainable... but leaders cannot leave it up to chance or to the inspiration of their teams, when it comes to deciding their own approach. Because none can be efficient, if it is uncorrelated to the company’s strategy.
Open innovation can also be a violent blow for your organization and some of its vital profiles. One cannot go from a problem-solving culture to a “researching and discovering external solutions” role with the flick of a switch. This can be experienced as a disruption of one’s professional identity, which explains many cases of solutions not being adopted – their only flaw being that they had not been invented by the teams that were supposed to carry them out. Here again, since we touch on culture, the role of leaders is vital. They need to remind their teams of the mission and fundamental goals pursued by the company, and to which each innovation contributes.
In 2016, a study published by Accenture, based on 200 collaborative innovation projects, showed that only 38% of them achieved their strategic goals if leaders were less involved, versus 68% in the other case. Open innovation is not a simple “tool” that we can use here or there, without any other issue or consequence: it must be part of a coherent long-term vision. Leaders, it all depends on you!