I recently did an open innovation workshop for the oil and gas industry in which I asked the participants to look into issues related to implementing open innovation within their companies. This revealed some interesting insights that are also relevant for many other industries.
Here we go…
The Internal Organization
– identify 5 key actions for preparing an organization for open innovation
1. Show top management success stories
2. Incentivize programs to recognize innovation
3. Identify stakeholders and define effective communication channels
4. Agreements with Universities and others institutions
5. Facilitate spaces to generate ideas
Value Pools in the Innovation Ecosystem
– Make a top 5 list of value pools (external innovation partners) that a large oil and gas company could tap into
1. National clusters
2. Communication with NGO´s
3. Internal open innovation
4. Universities – academia
5. Society and communities
Open Innovation Implementation
– Identify 5 key barriers (internal as well as external) for implementing about innovation.
1. Common language for innovation does not exsist
2. If it is not made in house it does not work (the Not-Invented-Here syndrome)
3. Innovation belongs to one area (it does not spread, not enough people take responsibility)
4. People are afraid to share information and knowledge
5. Poor recognition methods (of those contributing to innovation)
Getting Executives Onboard
– Provide 3 reasons why they will not commit to open innovation and 3 reasons why they should do so.
NO!
1. Fear of change
2. Legal and political issues (e.g IPR)
3. Risk management attitude (i.e low tolerance for risk and failure)
YES!
1. To be recognized as visionary leaders (bring new methods to the industry)
2. Optimize cost by tapping into the external innovation pools
3. Generate new business opportunities
