Open innovation allows companies to talk with other companies or customers during an earlier stage of development and to even include them in the product or service formation stage.

1. TOP 5 COMPANIES FOR OPEN
INNOVATION OF 2013
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OPEN INNOVATION IS A CONCEPT THAT WAS
DEVELOPED BY HENRY CHESBOROUGH AND
THIS IS HIS DEFINITION:
“Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of
knowledge to accelerate internal innovation and expand the
markets for external use of innovation, respectively.”
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Basically this is a synergetic way for companies to share their once
guarded ideas with organizations and individuals outside the company
to accelerate the innovation process.
Open innovation allows companies to talk with other companies or
customers during an earlier stage of development and to even include
them in the product or service formation stage.
This allows the companies to afford the ability of not only innovating
faster but also saving resources on guesswork so that they can make the
improvements that will matter most to their customers.
Here are the top 5 companies with strong open innovation efforts.
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1. GE – YEARS OF CONTINUOUS DEVELOPMENT
AND THE ECOMAGINATION CHALLENGE
GE has been a pioneer with its Ecoimagination Challenge by using it as
its open innovation tool. It also has the added benefit direct
communication with other companies and individuals to increase its
already robust innovative process.
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2. PHILIPS – A GLOBAL THOUGHTFUL APPROACH
ON OPEN INNOVATION
There are plenty of partnerships that Philips has made to drive their
open innovation forward.
They collaborate with the High Tech Campus with knowledge sharing.
Philips also actively contributes its experiences through the Philips
innovation consultancy.
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3. LEGO – PARTNERSHIPS AND DIRECT
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK
The household building company has a strong open innovation program
including their partnership with Cuusoo.
Cuusoo itself is a platform for open innovation and LEGO integrate this
crowdsourcing platform with great success.
With the current program for the creation of a product it requires
10,000 votes.
Also, they offer the ability for people to create the designs themselves
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4. UNILEVER – LEARNING THE HARD WAY
Hindustan Unilever Limited was faced with financial troubles that were
exacerbated focused on margins and price increases ahead of
collaboration with customers or employees.
When they made the simple change to focusing on collaboration and
encouraging employee innovation they were flooded with solutions to
all of their problems that also resulted in a 34% increase in their stock
price.
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5. GENERAL MILLS – THINKING LONG-TERM
General Mills is one of the most innovative companies in the world as
they were one of the first large companies to adopt an open innovation
process.
By using their global partners and customers as an additive to their
innovation process they can stay competitive while their competitors
struggle.
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Trying to emulate these companies open innovation processes on any
scale will improve your chances in this any economy as well as leading
to better success in the future.
Remember that people like to contribute and the more ideas or creative
inputs that you can harness in your innovation process the more likely it
is that you will be able to tackle any problem or situation that is thrown
your way.
Use these 5 top companies as a model for success and you will not only
compete in this competitive business marketplace but you will be on
your way to becoming your industry leader.
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10. GROWING BUSINESS WITH INNOVATION
For additional information about Business Innovation
please visit www.InnovationGrow.com