Open Innovation in Germany vs. Australia - Learning from the Sports Industry

Dr. Schlegel lives in Melbourne and travels regularly to Germany so
he knows both cultures very well. The main difference he sees
between the two cultures that relate to innovative activity is that
Australians are very open to experiments. That is something that
companies in Germany are reluctant to. German companies are rather
very protective of their own IP. If something goes wrong,
Australian companies are very open to seeing it as a lesson
learned, to take something out of it and understand how to fix
this. This is more cultivated in Australia than it is in
Germany.Practical advice of Dr. Schlegel for our
community:

- Companies are recommended to enter the market early, develop
their product in close collaboration with their customers and learn
from the Australian culture by increasing failure tolerance &
willingness to experiment.- Use the structural
process by Gene Slowinski Want, Find, Get, Manage
as a best practice for open innovation, especially to structure and
communicating your open innovation process or R&D
strategy.
Key takeaways of the talk between Dr. Martin Schlegel who is the
executive chair and board member of ASTN - the Australien Sports
Technologies Network.

Australian companies accept the premise that the current problems
are way bigger than only one company can solve.


An open innovation mindset is the prerequisite for sharing and
collaboration beyond the supply chain


Australia is a very multicultural society there are different
viewpoints and lived experiences to find that add to being able
to come up with solutions that otherwise would not be
accessible.


There are structural differences between Start-Ups and SMEs. The
definition of a start-up is "a temporal organization in search of
scalable and profitable business modules where it is all about
learning."


Successful collaboration between Start-Ups and SMEs needs a
facilitator to overcome the psychological barriers of SMEs to
share and source knowledge with start-ups.


Open innovation is in part reflecting the behavior of start-ups
in the corporate world: The most important attitude in open
innovation is to understand the problem your partner is facing.
This actually draws from the normal approach of testing business
models that start-ups do: First understand thoroughly what the
customers are facing, understand the real need and driver. Why
are not more companies developing their product with the
customers instead of chasing investors?


There are attitudinal differences between Australia and Germany
on how to approach sports - more to learn about in this episode.
Tune in!