Realizing that observations OF customers are often a better source of discontinuous innovation than observations FROM customers, IBM was one of the first of now many software companies that utilize an online channel to provide downloadable beta version software to registered users for tracking usage and gathering feedback, both explicit and implicit. Such [...]

Supplier partnerships are in some ways most easy to initiate. This is because there is an ongoing relationship to be built upon. Difficulty when using this source of external innovation typically arises because the relationship ready has expected norms of behavior that oftentimes a new partnership relationship conflicts with. Value Chain Map Showing [...]

Seeking to increase exposure to external technology, and infuse a culture of innovation into their R&D staff, British Telecom, Becton Dickinson, in Eastman chemical are examples of companies which have co-located various types of external idea partners at R&D campus parks. The physical proximity of the research partners creates occasions for impromptu idea [...]

Seeking to expand access to a labor pool beyond its current R&D staff, Eli Lilly created Innocentive, an online marketplace for corporations to post scientific problems for external parties to solve. Successful problem solvers, which include university students, retirees, and scientists from other companies and universities, receive cash bonuses in exchange for the [...]

U.S. Government laboratories can be a good source of preliminarily developed technology. Most often the desired technology has been explored at an early scientific or engineering level. It’s rare that the technology has been fully developed for commercial application. Of the United States national laboratories the most-active have been traditionally Argonne, Sandia, and [...]

Universities too are a good source of new technologies. In order to target improved absorption of research output from academic partnerships companies such as Intel situate their laboratories adjacent to preferred university campuses selected for their expertise in key technology disciplines. Each laboratory is staffed by Intel scientists and managed by a full-time [...]

Crowdfunding on sites such as GoFundMe, Crowdcube, Kickstarter and Indiegogo can give a boost to financing small businesses. These sites allow businesses to pool small investments from several investors instead of seeking out a single investment source. As such, many non-traditional technologies and business models appear on these sites. In years past, crowdfunding [...]

The world of hackathons requires the art of balancing high-speed, creative autonomy and administrative control to blend in many interesting ways. Both the hacking and making cultures are centered on creative autonomy, curiosity-led problem solving, and freedom to independently build solutions. Managing hackathons requires bringing together myriad technologists, designers, and other professionals and [...]

In order to leverage a world-wide community in problem solving, Open Innovation Competitions have been hosted by companies. It has been found that the types of problems that are best suited for such competitions are:1. Big insurmountable challenges that really need out-of-the-box thinking.2. Finding solutions which are assemblies of known technologies. How the [...]