Sources of Innovation: Where do business leaders think ideas & innovation come from?

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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