While attending and talking at the SA Innovation Summit in South Africa, I also heard some good insights by Stafford Masie, who is a South African innovator and entrepreneur.
Although open innovation was the topic of his talk, he still touched upon this and in particular he said two things that I really liked:
• Make everything hackable
• Create more value than you derive
Yes, most large corporations would frown on the idea that their products or services should be hackable, but if we take a more positive view on this it makes sense. It could mean that others can interact, build further on what you do. You need to think in terms of ecosystem and customer interaction from day one.
When it comes to open innovation, there are usually few big winners, lots of smaller winners and then many losers. The latter being those who do not understand open innovation or being unable to set up the strongest innovation ecosystem. Even though, not everyone wins with open innovation, it would still be a good rule to engage open innovation with the mindset that you should create more value than you derive.
Those are actually some good rules for open innovation.
