A recent article in the Creativity and Innovation Management journal (March 2008) takes on internet marketplaces for technology such as yet2.com and Innocentive, and shows that there’s still a bumpy road ahead for totally open innovation. Specifically, the success rate has been far lower than expected.

In their study of 25 large Swiss and German firms (on average, 8 457 employees and 2 135 million € in revenue), Ulrich Lichtenthaler and Holger Ernst find that markets for technology have remained imperfect, resulting to high transaction costs and limited adoption by industry incumbents. Although all the firms surveyed were aware of different service providers, and several firms had invested substantial time and resources to decide on their technology offerings, the maximum number of transactions for a single company was only one out-licensing and one in-licensing agreement.

It might be no wonder, therefore, that most industry experts interviewed by Lichtenthaler and Ernst “have relatively reserved attitudes towards these marketplaces”. Only two out of 25 firms wanted to give the internet marketplaces another chance in the short to medium term, while the rest are presumably waiting for the markets to shed their imperfections. Thus, a vicious circle is set up: firms do not want to spend their resources on imperfect markets, while markets remain imperfect as long as firms do not participate more actively.

According to the authors, the most severe deficit is that the commercialization of technology through internet marketplaces constitutes a relatively unsystematic and passive approach. Specific technology needs or customers are not addressed, and problems and solutions are communicated very broadly. This makes matching technologies with buyers difficult, and numbers tell the rest of the tale: in 2004, yet2.com, with its 90 000 registered users, concluded only 10 technology transfers. Companies also tend to publish only relatively unattractive, residual technologies that have limited value, further weakening the attractiveness of using the marketplace. Read the rest of this post >

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As companies increasingly recognize the importance of reaching beyond their four walls, there’s an urgent need for implementation roadmaps in this area. Two world-renowned business innovation experts address this “execution gap” in their new book The Global Brain, and help you identify and implement the best network-centric innovation strategy for your company. An inspiring interview with Satish Nambisan, one of the book’s authors and a global thought leader in the field of innovation:

1) What’s the key message or take-away for practitioners?

The key message is that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to network-centric innovation is a sure prescription to failure (in other words, copying what a P&G or an IBM does in open innovation is not necessarily going to be a successful strategy for your company). There are different forms or models of network-centric innovation. Each company has to identify the approach or model that best fits their particular industry/market context. In this book, we structure the landscape of network-centric innovation (i.e. define the different models of network-centric innovation) and explain how companies can identify the model or approach that is most suitable for them and then prepare for those collaboration opportunities by developing the appropriate portfolio of organizational competencies and capabilities. In sum, companies that invest in processes to systematically identify the right network-centric innovation approach and the requisite organizational capabilities are more likely to benefit from such initiatives than those who blindly follow the latest high-visibility example of network-centric innovation.

2) What are the new, important jobs that will arise from this shift taking place?

Several new entities or roles have emerged in this space – each of which implies a new job or a new type of firm.

For example, my book describes a new type of innovation intermediary called ‘Innovation Capitalist’ – a firm that seeks out innovative ideas from independent inventors, invests in those ideas and transforms them to a stage where their market and technical feasibility are clear, and then sells the related licenses and/or patents to large client firms who can take those ideas to market. We are already seeing several such firms all over the world – in US, in Europe, and in Asian countries such as India and Singapore.

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Steve Hamm wrote an excellent article about IBM’s Innovation Factory. IBM’s chip division was losing a lot of money in 2002-2003, even after a 5$ billion investment three years earlier. To overcome these problems, IBM decided to shift from a closed to a more open and collaborative approach.

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