I like to hear of interesting studies with relevance to open innovation. Some interesting research, both formal and informal was shared at the Marcus Evans Open Innovation conference on the first day. First, in a “raise your hand poll,” the overwhelming majority of participants at the conference all felt that innovation and open innovation will become increasingly important in their industry during the next 2 years. It is inevitable and now necessary for large companies. I guess that is why they were all at an “open innovation” conference so the sample is probably a little biased.

Most interesting though was a more rigorous study shared by IBM today at the conference. This study was based on phone interviews with over 750 CEOs and business leaders. This affirms the need for open innovation. I found the article online about this study and it states, “In terms of how to drive innovation, the study found that 76% of CEOs ranked business partner and customer collaboration as top sources for new ideas. This greatly contrasts with internal R&D, which ranked eighth as a source for new ideas — cited by only 14% of CEOs.” This is fascinating. The top sources can be considered sources outside of the company.

I believe that in open innovation you should strive to get ideas anywhere you can get them. Here is the list of the top 10 sources with employees, business partners, and customers as the top three sources according to CEOs. IBM’s research on top sources of new ideas and innovation:

1. Employees
2. Business partners
3. Customers directly
4. Consultants
5. Competitors
6. Associations
7. Internal Sales & Service Unites
8. Internal R&D
9. Academia
10. Think-tanks
11. Labs and/or other institutions

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Some themes that emerged today from presentations from innovators from P&G, IBM, Clorox, Pepsico, Kraft, and others include:
1.    Open innovation is a very new concept and most companies are just adopting it and learning it. This means there are a lot of failures and process improvements right now and the success stories are just starting. Even P&G which is recognized as a top open innovator is still on the journey and learning.
2.    P&G is a leader. Other companies that want to be better at open innovation appear to recruit P&G innovation professionals to work for them thus gaining that knowledge and experience to apply within their own organization. I heard multiple instances of this today. P&G really has an excellent reputation for open innovation with their “connect and develop” philosophy and mandate from the top to get half of their ideas from the outside.
3.    Collaboration is critical. Most organizations are shifting to become more collaborative as this is key for open innovation. This also requires a culture shift and new skills to learn for innovators.
4.    Suppliers and partners are key. Since much of the open innovation relies on the work of partners and suppliers, finding and assessing them is important to innovation success. Suppliers and partners can not only provide the idea but they can also help to develop the idea, provide the technology or knowledge to make it work, package it, or virtually anything else needed to create and launch a new product.
5.    Searching is a key open innovation practice. Many of the organizations that presented today have a focus on searching for technologies and intellectual property that they can acquire to bring their ideas to market faster. This is much more efficient than creating the technology internally. Many examples in particular were given of product packaging that was found in Japan and licensed for use in the United States.
6.    Open innovation is transformational and not transactional. Though you are relying on partners and suppliers to help you develop the idea you still must do much work to connect the supplier’s insights in and strengthen the relationship for the future. Open innovation should not be a transaction but rather a transformational experience that helps everyone learn how to innovate better and in new ways.
7.    Open innovation is a result of desperation or challenges. Many of the organizations adopted open innovation because they had to. Their business was declining or they had to react to urgent challenges. For many this impetus for change ended up being positive because they launched an innovative new product (like Clorox Wipes) or gained a more efficient development process.

The first full day of the conference was awesome. I’m physically tired from spending about 11 hours engaged at the conference but am inspired and motivated. I was able to have a lot of great conversations, meet some interesting innovators from a wide range of companies, and I took 17 pages of notes from the various programs. It was a great day because of the quality presentations from many innovative companies and the lunches, breaks, and reception offered good times to have good conversations with the presenters and fellow participants. Within the past year I’ve probably been to over 40 presentations on innovation from that many different speakers (mostly consultants and innovation professionals from Fortune 500 companies) and this conference is a good one to offer the opportunity to hear multiple perspectives. This week I’ll share with you some things that I think are common amongst open innovators and also some things that are new and emerging for open innovators…what is becoming innovative about open innovation if you will. My approach at the conference today was to first identify themes amongst different presenters from different industries. I’m going to approach this as a case study on what a variety of companies are doing with open innovation. Some strong themes emerged that tell us what multiple companies are thinking about in terms of innovation. In the next post I’m going to first lay out some themes I saw emerging and then in later articles explore the themes further.

There were some great learning opportunities from some of the most innovative consumer product companies in the world today. P&G, IBM, Clorox, Pepsico, Kraft, and others shared what they have learned about open innovation and how they practice it. They all share similar models that recognize innovation in a stage-gate process or a porous funnel pipeline that allows for inputs and outputs throughout the innovation pipeline. In essence, most companies share similar models for innovation and open innovation that are identified in the popular books suggested on openinnovators.net.