When I look around at how companies do open innovation, I see the early start of how networking and innovation is changing.
Networking and innovation used to evolve around physical contacts driven by conferences, events and meetings. Today, this is changing rapidly as we begin to use elements like:
• corporate innovation sites or communities such as Intuit Collaboratory, Psion’s Ingenuity Working and SAP’s Co-Innovation Lab
• intermediaries such as NineSigma, InnoCentive and IdeaConnetion
• the use of social media tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn
Networking and innovation are becoming increasingly virtually. This happens fast. Many companies still network and initiate innovation in a more traditional way, but I guesstimate that about 30% of all interactions today are virtual in the sense that the early stages of contact happens through sites, intermediaries and social media tools.
I predict this will increase to about 50% in just a few years and then it will just continue to grow together with the general use of social and virtual tools.
What do you think?
