Generating Impact on Varying Levels

As you could see in the previous examples, Open Innovation is a great resource for lots of different challenges and projects. Now it is time for a systematic overview.

Open Innovation is a feasible method for:

• Agenda setting: on public and company level: identifying pain points, highlighting pressing topics, suggesting research and innovation topics (problem crowdsourcing, stakeholder workshops)
• Prioritization: ranking of topics, identifying most relevant questions and ideas or solutions (Discussion and voting by crowds, stakeholder, or expert workshops)
• Generating and identifying new solutions: Idea generation and evaluation for products, processes, strategies, and prototyping (solution crowdsourcing, co-creation or design thinking workshops, hackathons),
• Transferring existing solutions to new application areas for technology transfer and discovery of new markets (Technology competence leveraging, stakeholder/expert workshops, qualitative interviews, value chain mapping),

We have put together a list of 5 points to pay attention to for generating impact with Open Innovation and hope that it will be useful in case you ever want to apply Open Innovation methods in your private or work life:

1. Successful Open Innovation is characterized by a targeted, strategic opening of the innovation process.
2. Each challenge and project aim requires a tailor-made approach and application of Open Innovation.
3. It is necessary to select the appropriate Open Innovation method and address potential contributors.
4. Only serious Open Innovation projects lead to success. They are characterized by the sincere goal of opening-up and letting knowledge in (or out) and the readiness to accept and embrace novelty.
5. Opening up an innovation process allows a high level of diversity and also uncertainty to flow in, creating friction that has to be moderated.

We know that we all learn best from stories. Therefore we have asked Stefan Kreppel from Palfinger 21st for an interview as he has got some very interesting stories to tell about how Open Innovation may be integrated in a big organisation like Palfinger. This video at the next step is optional, but very worth watching. Enjoy!