Curb Transactional Open Innovation and Embrace an Integrated Ecosystem Strategy

“It’s a wall,” “It’s a snake,” “It’s a rope,” “It’s a spear,” “It’s a fan,” no, “It’s a tree,” and so goes the story of “The Blind Men & The Elephant”. The tale is a great example that shows how you and your team can manage your innovation efforts. You can hold onto your current belief or become open-minded to other points of view, which can help shape a new understanding as additional facts help reveal a new truth. 

Uncovering the root cause of a problem or discovering a problem worth solving because it can lead to a breakthrough opportunity often feels exactly like the blind men in this parable searching for answers. The choice is yours: you can settle for what you see (or touch in their case!), or you can cast a wider net looking to diversify your data points and get a complete 360 perspective on the possibilities.

Enabling and expanding ecosystems is more than ever a hot area of focus as organizations need to become a lot more proactive, adaptive, resilient and customer-obsessed. Enabling and expanding your ecosystem means going beyond your employees’ collective intelligence — fostering collaboration and learning directly from your customers, suppliers, partners, academia, researchers and the start-up community.

“Elephants can sense danger. They’re able to detect an approaching tsunami or earthquake before it hits.” – Jennifer Richard Jacobson

For the longest time, there were three major types of corporate Open Innovation practitioners:

1. The Open Innovator Naysayers

These cynics stay on the sidelines looking over with suspicion and they come up with the same tired reasons why this would never work for them. Privacy, confidentiality, regulations, compliance and intellectual property concerns usually stop them dead in their tracks. This type of group prefers to live in the status quo.

2. The Intermittent Open Innovators

For some, Open Innovation means to create value faster, better and cheaper to complement their internal innovation effort. They understand the importance of engaging in Open Innovation, but any mandate is highly dependent on exhausting internal resources to address problems before looking to the outside world or opportunistically consider a particular challenge that lends itself to such an approach. For this reason, this type of group will always be looking for a good challenge that merits from the effort. Consequently, their diversified and valuable data points — innovation ecosystem — will only be viewed as individual pieces, rather than connected dots. Much like the blind men, this group loses sight of all the incredible possibilities standing right in front of them (or for this tale, the elephant!).  

The world is shifting to operate under constant volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA), which was severely exasperated by the recent events and the ongoing pandemic. The knowledge of the situation and predictability of the outcomes is currently at an all-time low for many businesses and it is paving the way for an entirely new generation of open innovators to emerge: 

3. The Adaptive Open Innovators

This new group embraces open innovation and strives to create an ‘always open’ ecosystem. They connect, network and nurture with external participants are core principles. Their mantra is that true economic moat comes from enabling and expanding innovation ecosystems primarily driven by a robust and resilient open innovation practice; the external contributors’ level of influence is carefully reviewed and their level of contribution is orchestrated for maximum efficiency. 

There are many methods your organization can utilize to tap into a vast global network of multidisciplinary teams of diverse and creative expert problem solvers who are eager and ready to tackle your most complex and pressing business challenges:

The right open innovation approach depends on many criteria defined by your team and the nature of the problem, such as the desired outcomes, appropriate screening process, and evaluation criteria. Below is the Open Innovation Model Matrix® used by many practitioners to help them choose the most appropriate Open Innovation approach  and define the most beneficial strategy for open innovation ecosystem enablement and expansion:In addition to evaluating the Open Innovation approach, a successful campaign should include developing  a model to assess the challenge’s complexity and determine a fair reward in exchange for IP rights.  The following is some of the essential criteria you should consider: Strategic Value (Continuous Innovation, Horizon 1, Horizon 2, Horizon 3), Revenue Impact, Cost Reduction Considerations, Complexity of Problem, Attempts to Solve Internally, Problem Maturity, Level of Risk, number of People/Products Impacted, Technology Area, Solver Type & Expertise Required, and Solution Deliverable. Based on a low, mid or high ranking for each of these, you can then define 3 to 5 possible categories e.g. basic, simple, medium, advanced and prodigy. This will help determine the appropriate award prize. 

“Elephants, it turns out, are surprisingly stealthy.” – Thomas French

In the Pre-Covid era, aka “The Before Times” — as some affectionately refer to — many companies did not strategically approach the concerns; instead they viewed the interaction too transactionally. The ‘new normal’ is transmitting signals for innovators to transition in this new world and become the next adaptive open Innovators. 

No comprehensive ecosystem strategy can properly function unless there is a clear model and process that includes the employees’ close involvement. Moreover, having one or multiple employees take full ownership of a project from the beginning until the end (yes, find your true innovation evangelist!) will ensure a seamless transition from your external ecosystem to the internal team and drive the project forward.

The elephant is a majestic animal and an incredibly unique creation that is so much greater than the sum of its parts. Similarly, a genuinely integrated innovation ecosystem not only develops individual connections to customers, suppliers, partners, academia, researchers and the start-up community but it also looks to create a unified framework that involves, learns and correlates the data across the entire structure. The end result provides an unparalleled level of foresight and intelligence that truly drives a sustainable innovation mindset and builds continuous feedback loops to monitor and proactively seize transformational opportunities.



Ludwig Melik

CEO at Planbox and author of the Future-Fit Manifesto. I help organizations build a sustainable culture of innovation. Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.