OpenUp2Innovate Archiv

According to Henry Chesbrough, a lot of the challenges relate to the people inside the organization.

Henry Chesbrough coined the term Open Innovation in 2003. What has changed since then?

In 2003 the focus was primarily on one organization and the innovation happening within the boundaries of a company. In the last 20 years, things have moved in a couple of ways:

1. Inside the organization: We have now a much richer sense of opportunities and challenges that OI can bring. A lot of the challenges of OI relate to the people.

2. Outside the organization: Nowadays, it is about bringing together many organizations. Collectively, we need to find out how to collaborate and orchestrate better solutions by building ecosystems!

Open Innovation appears to get confused with "revealing all knowledge and IP". These misconceptions are rooted in fears. Any advice on how to reduce these fears?

You don't share everything!

There is a learning curve: If you gain more experience, it becomes more natural and easier to train and manage the process.

Working with larger companies: Create a public shareable version of your service so that people can say see the value. You don't share the specifics of how you do things, or what specific compounds you use.

How do we motivate and not demoralize the people?

Reframe the purpose of the organization: For example, instead of being the people who are solving the hardest problems, NASA now sees itself as the seeker of the answers to these hard problems (inside or outside the organization). This reframing helped NASA to align the goals of their organizations with the mechanism of OI.

Reconsideration of reward systems: Organizations need to establish a reward system that appreciates internal achievements but at the same time considers recognition for externally sourced know-how.

What can managers do to establish an OI mindset?

1. Achieve an early win: To create a small project that does not take a lot of money and time but achieves something positive that creates a positive flywheel effect.

2. Acknowledge all contributors: If you achieve this small win you should not only celebrate this win but all the people who have contributed to it - especially those outside the innovation team.

3. Align KPIs and reward systems: They have to be adjusted to stimulate the behavior we really want so that we can broaden this success to the entire organization.

Henry summarized all his experiences in books written especially for managers:

How to move from technology development to the business model side: Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open business models: How to thrive in the new innovation landscape. Harvard Business Press.

How to move from the world of products to the world of services:

Chesbrough, H. (2011). Open services innovation: Rethinking your business to grow and compete in a new era. John Wiley & Sons.

How to get positive business results from open innovation:

Chesbrough, H. (2019). Open innovation results: Going beyond the hype and getting down to business. Oxford University Press.

Open Innovation als Kreativitätsbooster

Wer ist Dr. Gerrit Jochims?

Gerrit ist Mitgründer und Geschäftsführer von IdeaChamp. Der Innovationsenthusiast promovierte über Kreativität in Organisationen und berät seit 2014 Unternehmen in Bezug auf Innovationsprozesse. 2021 gründete er mit seinem Team die IdeaChamp Innovation GmbH, die eine digitale Kollaborationssoftware für Innovationsideen entwickelt.

Sophie spricht mit Gerrit darüber wie MitarbeiterInnen zündende Ideen entwickeln können:

Beide sind sich einig: Kreativität kann durch die Kollaboration mit diversen Menschen außerhalb des Unternehmens gefördert werden.

Gerrit verrät, wie er zu seinen innovativsten Ideen gekommen ist:

Sein Kreativprozess involviert Schreiben, Malen, Zeichen und startet zunächst mit der Frage "Warum ist das ein Problem?". Im nächsten Schritt besorgt er sich Know-How das ihm helfen könnte. Er spricht meistens mit Leuten die in dem selben Bereich schon mal ein ähnliches Problem hatten und dann arbeitet das erstmal eine Weile.

Tipps von Gerrit & Sophie, um Probleme kreativer und effizienter zu lösen:

Gewohnheiten entwickeln: Es darf nichts Besonderes sein, dass spannende Ideen von außen kommen. Externe Wissenseinflüsse sollen der Normalzustand werden. Wenn die Mitarbeiter:innen sich mehr mit externen Partnern austauschen, dann wird es zur Gewohnheit und das so genannte "Not-Invented-Here Syndrom" dadurch reduziert.

Aktiver Austausch: Andere Sichtweisen sehen und das Problem aus verschiedenen Perspektiven zu beleuchten hilft, um auf neue kreative Ideen kommen. Die eindeutige Aufforderung: Geht auf Leute aktiv zu, auch - und vor allem - wenn sie fachfremd sind!

Offenes Mindset: Offenheit hilft aus ausgetauschten Informationen wertvolle Ideen zu entwickeln und diese umzusetzen. Um kreativ sein zu können, muss man sich öffnen - innerhalb und außerhalb des Unternehmens.

Eigenes Verhalten ändern: Wenn Leute mit neuen Ideen auf dich ankommen, dann nimm die Idee zunächst an und gehe konstruktiv damit um, bevor du sie direkt ablehnst oder Kritik äußerst. Frage dich zunächst einmal "Wie kann uns das helfen und unter welchen Umständen?"

Open Innovation und Kreativität - beides bedingt sich

Ein offenes Mindset ist die Grundlage, um Open Innovation betreiben zu können. Laut Forschung ist Kreativitität eine Dimension des Open Innovation Mindsets (Engelsberger et al. 2022). Um kreativ sein zu können, muss man sich öffnen und über den eigenen Tellerrand hinausschauen. Daher benötigt man, um Kreativität zielbewusst einsetzen zu können, Open Innovation. Kreativität und Open Innovation sind daher ein sich gegenseitig befruchtender Kreislauf....

Gerrit fasst dies sehr gut in den folgenden Worten zusammen:

"Kreativität würde verhungern, wenn man nicht intern oder extern offen ist. Kreativität brauch Open Innovation und Open Innovation brauch Kreativität!"

Das klingt alles super - aber wie umsetzen?

Wenn ich ernsthaft im Unternehmen Kreativität fördern möchte und mit Open Innovation befeuern möchte, damit wir effizienter werden, Kosten sparen und somit die Energiewende meistern, brauchen wir Tools um das alles in die Praxis umsetzen zu können! Die Mitarbeiter:innen benötigen Handwerkszeug, um zielgerichtet Wissensflüsse ermöglichen zu können und diese Instrumente sollen auch attraktiv gestaltet sein. Es müssen zielgerichtet Wissenshäppchen bereitgestellt werden, die nicht in Hierarchien untergehen. Das Ziel: Mitarbeiter:innen dabei zu unterstützen besser und effektiver Ideen zu entwickeln.

Wie sieht euer Kreativprozess aus? Und zu wie viel % involviert ihr andere Menschen dabei? Teilt eure Erfahrungen mit uns und sendet uns eine Email an info@omindconsulting.com.

The people are the key drivers of innovation

Why is it so important to measure people-centered innovation KPIs?

We want our people to collaborate, share and source knowledge - but this all takes time. We all know exactly how much time every meeting costs! Why should people do this if their success at the end of the year is measured based on something totally else?

What are people-centered innovation KPIs and how can they be captured?

Everyone is talking about the importance of an innovation mindset - but what exactly is it? In Aurelia's PhD she has investigated this question deeply and collected data in different industries and countries. She has identified 6 dimensions that globally capture the highest impact on knowledge exchange and innovative behavior. Hence, the OMIND team has translated these 6 dimensions into the OMINDset evaluation tools!

What exactly are these 6 dimensions?

1) Openness toward new experiences: Doing things differently!

2) Creativity: Thinking outside the box!

3) Positive attitudes toward knowledge sharing: Some people like to share but face psychological barriers to actively sourcing knowledge from others.

4) Positive attitudes toward knowledge sourcing: Some people like to source as much knowledge as they can get but don't want to share their one's knowledge.

5) Risk- and failure tolerance: Being open to trying something new although it might mean failing according to the slogan "Better fail fast!" - and very importantly, forgive yourself if making a mistake!

6) Integrative complexity: The ability to put yourself into the situation of your counterpart and viewing always two sides of a coin!

Are these research results accessible for practitioners through an easy-to-use tool?

Yes, through OMIND consulting and OMIND platform.

With OMIND consulting, Aurelia and her team provide strategic consulting when it comes to developing people-focused KPIs and incentive and reward schemes that facilitate efficient collaboration and innovation.

OMIND platform is a software that enables employees with easy-to-use tools to act upon a conducive HR strategy. Employees get supported to work on themselves and become aware of their attitudes towards knowledge exchange and hence, support a sustainable mindset shift. By evaluating the people's mindset change over time and tracking their knowledge sharing and sourcing behavior, team leads can view all the results and KPIs in one dashboard to analyze the efficiency.

If you are interested in these evaluation tools or getting strategic consulting on how to empower your employees for efficient collaboration and innovation, don't hesitate to reach out to info@omindplatform.com!

Open Innovation in media

How open is innovation at public broadcasters?

Today we discuss Open Innovation (OI) at public broadcasting companies in Germany. A topic that has not really been dealt with up until now. As part of Sophie's research, she tried to answer two questions:

“To what extent does public broadcasting practice OI?”

“Which requirements does public broadcasting need to fulfill in order to be able to optimally implement OI?”

Differences between the broadcasters

Large public broadcasting firms have the financial means to look beyond company boundaries and try out different innovation practices but because of their size, there are still many structures slowing them down, flat hierarchies and systematic knowledge management is difficult to establish.

Small public broadcasting firms have an open corporate culture, in which internal knowledge exchange is a matter of course and necessary. Hierarchies are sometimes less pronounced, which means that managers are much closer to the editors. However, they lack the means and influence to transfer this exchange of knowledge to externals or to other broadcasting firms and make a difference.

Obstacles to OI

A very homogeneous workforce in terms of education and social background.

Inhibitions to move outside the public-broadcasting cosmos.

BUT

Tendencies that the public broadcasters open up, begin to work in an interdisciplinary way and think outside the box, can be found.

The focus of the new offerings is increasingly on social media which has a positive effect on the possibilities of conducting OI together with the users.

Possible solutions

Integrating a systematic OI strategy and also connecting it to HR. It is important to create a conducive environment for the people to engage in OI.

More diversity within the staff. Building more cross functional teams with people with different cultural and functional backgrounds, education, age and gender.

New Findings on the Open Innovation Mindset

In todays episode we talked to OMIND intern Clara about the importance of the strategic promotion of an open innovation mindset among employees at different organizational levels

Her research questions

- What commonalities can be identified in the establishment of an open innovation culture by external consultants in and between the industries?

- How can this potential be used to develop a business model for OMIND consulting that enables sustainable value innovation?

Main takeaways

The most common conception on innovation was the awareness regarding the need for change towards a more open corporate culture and a more intensive collaboration with educational institutions, startups and suppliers. 

Barriers to establishing an open innovation culture were identified as an overload of employees in day-to-day business, which leaves neither space nor time for knowledge sharing.

Any questions? Feel free to contact us or Clara on LinkedIn!

Special Episode – Innovatorik und Open Innovation

We invited Dirk Wirth, an innovation expert, to talk to us about the field "Innovatorik". It describes the combination of rhetoric and innovation. It's the ability to bring people to innovate.

Innovatorik and Open Innovation contribute to one another. You need an open mindset in order to successfully be a Innovatorik-person and be able to inspire others to innovate. On the other hand you need people who are talented at Innovatorik, in order to implement open innovation within an organization.

Dirk Wirth on Linkedin

"Das große Handbuch Innovation: 555 Methoden und Instrumente für mehr Kreativität und Innovation im Unternehmen" by Dirk With

S2/EP1: Open Innovation and Sustainability

An interview with Felix Rossknecht, a consultant, speaker and mentor with whom we talked about sustainability and the important role of Open Innovation and employees.

This episode serves as a introduction episode to the second season of this podcast: Sustainability. While giving you a small overview and clarification on the terms, we also tried to connect the prior season on digitalization.

Our Takeaways

The GOAL is a sustainable business. Open Innovation can be the KEY to successfully implement sustainability into the business context. Digitalization can be used as a TOOL to pursue this goal.

When it comes to sustainable business it is important to know that there is a lot people can learn from one another. Nobody has to make up their own ways, but rather try to collaborate and ask for help! For that to happen you need an open mindset, fitting organizational culture and shared values. Its not important to get money out of all the innovations, its rather about creating a new big pie – regardless how big the share of each individual is. Long lasting relationships are the key to successful collaborations and a sustainable future.

Links

Felix Rossknecht on LinkedIn

Special Episode: Open Innovation in mittelständischen Unternehmen

Christian Mohr is executive management board member and managing partner at UnternehmerTUM, the leading center for innovation and business creation in Germany. In this special episode we talked about middle-sized/ family owned companies and how different they deal with open innovation in comparison to bigger companies and start-ups.

Some family lead and middle-sized companies have been in business for decades and went quite well with their strategy. Through Corona though many were forced to rethink their business model and started to use digitalization and in some cases even broadened their way of thinking outside the firm's boundaries, hence use open innovation.

These companies have also a different and more down to earth set of values, which is deeply rooted in tradition and a sense of responsibility towards employees, who have been working in these companies for years and sometimes even generations. These values can sometimes hinder open innovation in terms of the willingness to try new things and take a risk, but can on the other hand be very helpful. Through the close connection and the smaller size, communication and idea generation within the company can be easier, which is an important factor for open innovation: when employees feel free to talk about ideas, it directly translates to the openness of companies to be able to share ideas across the firms' borders (for more information on that phenomenon read Human resources management and open innovation: the role of open innovation mindset by Engelsberger, A., Halvorsen, B., Cavanagh, J., & Bartram, T., 2021)

One of the biggest problems is, that many of these companies are scared of change. But in times of climate change, digitalization etc., this change is unavoidable, which makes these companies struggle. They are literally caught between tradition and adapting to their environment. Will they be able to sustain the close relationship to their employees and values, while adapting to the challenges of our time?

Christian Mohr on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/christian-mohr-921b56b7

Website UnternehmerTUM: https://bc.unternehmertum.de

Engelsberger, A., Halvorsen, B., Cavanagh, J. and Bartram, T. (2021), Human resources management and open innovation: the role of open innovation mindset. Asia Pac J Hum Resour. https://doi.org/10.1111/1744-7941.12281

EP5 – Open Innovation and Team Management

How does a team with flat hierarchies help to encourage an open innovation culture?

We invited Julija Storz from freenet to talk to us about her views on team management. Here are some of the main lessons from the interview.

Challenges for interdisciplinary teams

People are coming together with different business-backgrounds and different mindsets. It is always a challenge to adapt to a lot of diverse people with various backgrounds.

Nobody is an absolute expert in any field. There is a huge dependence on external knowledge.

As everybody can easily take the lead and be more independent. But that means, that single employees tend to have more responsibility, which could be overwhelming at first. 

How to adapt to digital transformation

Always listen to your employees and be aware of which tools they feel comfortable with. 

The main goal is to always exchange knowledge.

3 success-factors to lead a self managed team with flat hierarchies

1. Trusting and have an open mindset regarding other people. 

2. Give people their freedom as a team and individually, especially regarding personal skillset and experience. 

3. Always give and be able to receive feedback, whether it is within the team or with stakeholders.

Julija Storz on Linkedin

Special Episode: How Open is Innovation?

Four master’s students from the University of Southern Denmark present the Paper "How Open is Innovation? A Retrospective and Ideas Moving Forward" by Linus Dahlander, David M. Gann and Martin W. Wallin, written in 2020 and published in 2021.

What’s it about?

This paper analyses the last ten years of innovation and openness, draws lessons, evaluates criticism and further papers, and concludes by preparing us for another ten years of Open Innovation.

What has affected open innovation?

Technological development has had a significant impact on how companies can benefit from Open Innovation (Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Services, Robotics and APIs). These technologies allow companies to change their business model. All this is related to the vast amount of data that is constantly being generated. Data openness could build bridges across organizations, but only a tiny part of data is used to this end. Some organizations, such as Google, Facebook or Amazon, are just very good at monetizing with data, but handling a lot of information might lead to privacy violations and other issues.

Dark side of open innovation

It enables collaboration and value creation for some, but it could also lead to exploitation and value destruction for others.

Among the technologies that impacted Open Innovation are APIs and login services. They can facilitate interactions at a big scale, and they are part of a rapidly growing market, and for this reason, some companies focused their business models on them. But in some cases, this led to scandals and bad situations. The case of Cambridge Analytica, which is very well known, had issues due to an excessive collection of data.

Some issues can also be found in the volume of ideas generated through crowdsourcing. Aligning the company's strategy with the crowds that generate ideas could be challenging because of the attention deficit. Technology comes to help in this case too. To cope with this, companies use different methods, one of which is Artificial Intelligence, even though the limitation of AI is the ability in evaluating brand new ideas, because of the way AI algorithms are trained.

Crowdfunding

It has gained a considerable importance in the past ten years. We all know its power to find funds for early-stage ideas, but we should also consider that crowdfunding can generate only a tiny amount of funding compared to VC funds. Nevertheless, its importance is linked to funding-generation and, most importantly, to knowledge generation for the team. When a team posts a content in a crowdfunding platform, they manage to collect information about their potential customers.

And this links to information and data collection.

Importance of data

More than it was ten years ago, it is now clear that data has huge importance for businesses, but it is still not easy for every company to implement strategies based on data. Some very-well-known big tech companies, such as Amazon, Facebook and Google, made their business models around data, but this is not yet the case for smaller organizations.

It must also be understood that companies are still struggling to effectively share data with big corporations due to the fear of an unbalanced flux of information, such as the case of the German automotive industry and Google Maps.

Therefore, one future research topic for Open Innovation researchers could be to understand the balance between revealing data and capturing value from data.

How can open innovation adapt to these changes and change the game itself?

When people adopt idea-sharing mindsets, open innovation can change traditional industry boundaries.

For instance, the article highlights Tesla, who is shaping the battleground for the new automotive industry.

They have acknowledged that they cannot drive the electric market forward alone. In fact, Tesla has revealed intellectual property to seek the advancement of electric vehicle technology to accelerate electric vehicles' market size.

Ultimately, their ambition would be to improve their cars and stay ahead of the competition, and so they engage in an open, collaborative culture to gain inputs from the masses.

Furthermore, with this approach, Tesla states that they are willing to cooperate with electric car companies to compete against the fossil car market.

How does technological development impact organizations?

Platforms are essential for today's organizational development and facilitate how organizations create and capture value. And their impact is not surprising. Platforms minimize barriers of distance and connect people and create a network effect. This provides a space where information and ideas can flow. 

And successful platforms providers to grow larger and larger.

Are there any concerns?

It is difficult not to acknowledge the power that large IT corporations have. They even own open-source platforms, with code that is designed to be publicly accessible. Microsoft now owns “Github”, “IBM” owns “Red Hat”. And while these large collaborations claim novel commitment and intentions, it makes one reflect on how open open source really is.

Can there be too much innovation, or can there be too much openness?

Yeah, we need to reconsider how much openness is appropriate and at the end of the day, it will be a trade-off that should be handled carefully. The amount of openness goes hand in hand with patenting. 

This can be a barrier to adopting open innovation. There are many reasons that patents are a barrier to open innovation. The article highlights over-valuing internal ideas and fear of being the one revealing the new commercial blockbuster to potential competitors.

Many companies still have a "no patent - no talk" mindset and therefore miss out on the benefits of broad and distant. They might miss out on business opportunities: What values do patents have, if they lay unused in a drawer? The pharmaceutical company “Bayer” employs 7.000 scientists, holds thousands of patents, many unused. And yet only two employees are responsible for licensing out.

OPEN INNOVATION - the bigger picture and societal shift in openness

Current tensions between nations make it harder to cooperate across borders, e.g. USA CHINA TRADE war. https://www.bbc.com/news/business-45899310

In China, the CTO of “Aliba” said that we live in the data age and that data could be processed better outside the company. 

The current crisis gave open innovation a boost, exploration and collaboration among different institutes which did not cooperate before. 

The challenge is to carry this momentum into a post covid world.

Why is it so important that we carry the momentum?

The importance of this momentum comes from the more significant problems we have to solve, such as climate change. These problems, which are not tangible, have high complexity and abstraction levels following Rittel and Webber, are called wicked problems.

In the 2010 paper the focus was on company-specific problems. But companies can have a significant impact on their environment. Yet, another trend can be detected: We see a concentration in capabilities of research due to the high cost of research equipment. A consequence of this is a more multidisciplinary team. 

This results in hotspots of research.  The power of this hotspot is the knowledge and motivation in one place. The downside of this concentration is the downfall of collaboration among institutes.

Other challenges OI might face in the future

Define the value of open innovation overestimates their contribution to a project, so it is a challenge to measure OI scrutiny. A second challenge is that organizations have to place OI either in the periphery or at the core of their business: Substitute vs complementarity.

The speakers:

Bolgac Gülen

Alessandro Pisanu

Carl Brockhausen

Steffen Henriksen

Literature:

Dahlander, Linus & Gann, David & Wallin, Martin. (2021). How open is innovation? A retrospective and ideas forward. Research Policy. 50. 10.1016/j.respol.2021.104218.

Rittel, H.W.J., Webber, M.M. Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sci 4, 155–169 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01405730

EP3: Tools for Open Innovation

Transcript:

As promised, we will put theory into practice. Today we will be talking about the paper “The role of digital technologies in open innovation processes: an exploratory multiple case study analysis” by Andrea Urbinati, Davide Chiaroni, Vittorio Chiesa and Federico Frattini from 2018. The overall question: What does a company need to do, in order to implement digital technologies in an Open Innovation process?

The Tools

Big Data

Huge amount of data, that can’t be handled with in a “normal” way. The correct amount of bytes depends on the size of the company. In order to handle big data, one needs analytical skills to extract value from this massive amount of data.

Internet of Things (IoT)

It’s the technology to connect “things” via internet. Smart homes and wearables are real life examples, because they exchange data via the internet from one object to another.

Information and Knowledge Management systems (IKM)

Creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. (e.g. eLearning platforms like "Moodle")

Cloud Computing

The Cloud! To put it as simple as possible: it’s an IT-Infrastructure made available via internet. Normally it includes data capacities, computing power or an application software (e.g. adobe programms, that also save your projects in their cloud).

Product-Lifecycle-Management – Systems

Systems that withhold all the information and data regarding the life cycle of a product - from the concept to the trash bin/ recycling bin. With these systems one can also control the process of development and enable the redistribution of workflows. Also crossfunctional teams can use these systems: One might be good in CAD programs to do the mock up, the other one is an engineer and realises the product and then there are administrators and such that do the distribution. All these steps can be included in one PLM - System.

System of Rapid Prototyping (SoRP)

SoRP (e.g. 3D printing technology), mainly revolves around prototype generation, test design, refining and commercializing. Its most beneficial in the product development phase, you can e.g. simultaneously develop several versions of the same product and speed up the product offering.

Combining the Tools

In order to understand the significance of the different tools, you must understand, that combined and used simultaneously, they give the organization additional advantages in the Open Innovation process. For example, a proper Cloud infrastructure must be installed in order to deal with Big Data. That means you need good working computers and lots of storage to even benefit from other digital technologies.

Two other tools working well together when it comes to product development is the System of Rapid Prototyping and Product lifecycle systems, because SoRP enables saving time on prototyping and PLM provides control over the product lifecycle of said product.

How to use them?

On the organizational level it helps in reorganizing the Research and Development units in data capacities and time management for example. They need to restructure their way of financing digital investment, implement routine ways for innovation activities and standardize technologies’ features.

But let’s move on to the process of Open Innovation: There are three phases, that a company has go through to enable Open Innovation. I will include a little example just to make it more approachable: The generating of an idea, let’s say a nurse droid, the development of the droid and the last phase would be the commercialization of it, so bringing it to the people and the hospitals.

The mentioned tools now need to be used tailored to the phase you find yourself in.

Examples

More and more private hospitals invest in digital technology to monitor the patient’s diagnostic-therapeutic pathway via electronic medical records. A hospital put together a group of 20 to 25 people including doctors and nurses. This so called task force was supposed to work with new digital tools to accelerate the elaboration of information on their patients instead of using the traditional clinical records on paper. In detail, they used Big Data and Cloud computing, where they saved and analysed the information of their clients. In the end they reduced the time on elaborating clinical records from three to four weeks to four days from the patients’ discharge. On the OI process, let’s say “timeline”, the technologies where used within the commercialisation phase, so they where already using it on customers, their patients.

The second example is of a company that tries to establish a unit called “Digital Direction – unit” that responds directly to the CEO. Before this unit they used site management, apps, social media etc., which helped different units to communicate. First they planned to make a unit, that reorganized and put together all these different platforms linked to digital technologies. In this idea generating phase they mainly used Information and Knowledge Management systems. By initiating this unit the company was following two main goals: They wanted to digitalize the marketing and commercialization in order to get to their final customers and they wanted to put the digitalization of sales processes in the hands of sales. The next step, to achieve these goals, was to overcome the technological and digital gap. We now arrived at the development phase, where they integrated graduate programs for internal offices and employees and of course digital training courses. Because the implementation of digital technologies and the initiatives require experts in the field, they need to be found as well.

The technological transformation of the past years actually forces the companies to adapt their research and development units. They now have to adapt their innovation activities. In particular they do so by standardizing technologies’ features, to rethink their planned budget for digital investments and, as we already reflected on, developing new and formalized procedures for innovation activities.

Summary

To summarize the findings of Andrea Urbinati et al. there are certain steps a company needs to go through to enable Open Innovation and to really use it to their advantage. For optimization of your digital processes, it is advisable to form a unit that will be combining the different tools tailored to the organizations needs, and where it stands in the OI Process (whether it is on the stage of idea creating, developing or commercializing). After these things are sorted out, the optimized tools can be implemented in the different departments, which need to work with these tools again. To involve the employees in this transformation process will require workshops and some time. But as the case studies showed, it will be worth it, because in the end it will safe costs and time and employees will be technological wise be picked up appropriately. 

Source:

Urbinati, A., Chiaroni, D., Chiesa, V., & Frattini, F. (2020). The role of digital technologies in open innovation processes: An exploratory multiple case study analysis. R&D Management, 50(1), 136–160.

EP1: Open Innovation and Digitalization

Last week, Aurelia already gave you some insight on this series and open innovation, but today we will dig a little bit deeper into the topic on digitalization itself and I will explain to you how digitalization can be used to drive open innovation.

We will give you some advice on how open innovation can help to drive the transformation.

Open Innovation: accessing external knowledge to find solutions for pressing problems. In a business context open innovation means to use inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation. As a consequence the organization's boundaries become permeable, what allows to combine the company resources with the external co-operators. For example you can get access to important knowledge though experts. Moreover, companies can reduce costs and bring innovations to market more quickly.

How can open innovation help to support digital transformations? The explanation is based on these four key elements.

1.  Determine your strategy

2.  Developing the organisational culture

3.  Developing the right mindset

4.  Empowering your employees 

Further Links:

Open Innovation Tool: Adobe Kickbox

This episode was based on the blogpost from Tatjana Juskov; October 13th, 2020: How to Use Digital Transformation to Drive Open Innovation which was originally posted on a blog of the RMIT University in collaboration with Geoffrey Mann. Here is the link to the original publication*

*Engelsberger, A., Juskov T. and Mann, G. (2020), 'How to Use Digital Transformation to Drive Open Innovation'

EP2: Employee Experience and Open Innovation

This episode I am talking with Dr. Tanja Reimer about employee experience in combination with open innovation and how important it is to build a healthy environment for employees. Just then one would be able to help creating an open mindset to be able to exchange knowledge across companies' borders.

Further information and links:

Dr. Tanja Reimer

Linkedin

Her book: "Service Learning - Persönlichkeitsentwicklung durch gesellschaftliches Engagement"

EP0:  Interview with OI Expert Aurelia Engelsberger

Today's topics revolve around some personal and professional info about OMIND's CEO Aurelia Engelsberger and the purpose of "Open up 2 innovate". Why does she find Open Innovation so fascinating and why did she initiate this podcast? 

In the next episodes we will be talking about digitalization and Open Innovation. Follow our social media and we will keep you posted on our guests and all the topics we will be covering.

Links:

Homepage of OMIND Consulting

Aurelia's LinkedIn