Within the last two decades the approach of Open Innovation has been adopted by many multinational organizations - a challenge driven innovation process where the definition of a problem or challenge is the main trigger of an (often) global innovation sourcing process. This process is relevant especially for organizations where internal R&D resources are not available or capable, intellectual property is not held within the organization, and a high probability that other solutions providers might already have a head start in technology readiness. There are often success stories about commercial contracts, mergers and acquisitions between organizations and solution providers where an initially conducted open innovation program was the starting point of a fruitful collaboration.
Over the years having the dialogue with innovation managers around the globe we identified repetitive patterns of reasons why open innovation programs do not always lead to a fruitful valuable collaboration. Some Examples:
● Blurring charm of the initial idea: Solutions which look good on the pitch deck but are not capable of delivering on the technical promises or prototypes which are in a status where no trust can be built up that one day the full technical value proposition can be delivered.
● Unavailability of own resources: Innovation managers not having access to internal resources who could take over on the technical due diligence, use case matching, and first commercial validation
● Sustainability of the innovative idea in the future: Risks that the solution does not have a sustainable competitive advantage towards the markets.
● Challenges in managing & coordinating relationships with partners: Collaborations where no cultural (language, informal institutions) or organizational proximity(work habit, project management) exists.
These are just a few reasons which cause open innovation processes to fail but in the end it always comes down to the fact that organizations face risks and uncertainties which - if not taken care of - will be decisive on receiving economic value out of an open innovation approach.
Foundry International has established a framework which allows innovation managers to de-risk their open innovation process while sourcing globally, and being connected with pre-filtered, pre-vetted innovative solutions that meet the use cases
1. Challenge Definition
Together with industrial engineering experts and regional industry partners, Foundry conducts situational analysis in defining the challenges for open calls.
2. Exposure & Global Sourcing
Foundry creates a holistic marketing strategy, briefs global partner network, and conducts a global sourcing campaign for relevant technologies and solutions potentially capable of solving the respective challenges of the target regions.
How we do Exposure:
Individual web-presence for the Open Innovation initiative
Tailor made B2B social media campaigns
PR campaigns
Pro-active outreach for promising solution providers
How we do Sourcing:
Sourcing via channel partners e.g.
Governmental SME agencies
VC’s
Incubators and accelerators
Research organisations
Sourcing of relevant IP-Owners via platforms and databases
Hosting of promotion webinars for interested IP owners
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