Creating a culture in your company that utilizes open innovation is something that a lot of people would like to do but they have questions they need answers to first. There is a lot of debate about implementing open innovation regarding conflicts of intellectual property, confidentiality, creating open innovation networks, limited accountability, and creating workable measurement metrics.

1. TOP 5 QUESTIONS ABOUT
IMPLEMENTING OPEN
INNOVATION
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Creating a culture in your company that utilizes open innovation is
something that a lot of people would like to do but they have questions
they need answers to first.
There is a lot of debate about implementing open innovation regarding
conflicts of intellectual property, confidentiality, creating open
innovation networks, limited accountability, and creating workable
measurement metrics.
Here are the top 5 questions about implementing open innovation with
some answers that may help you make a more educated decision
regarding your situation.
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HOW DO I START IN IMPLEMENTING OPEN
INNOVATION IN MY ORGANIZATION?
The biggest mistake that people and leaders of companies make when
implementing open innovation is simply trying to copy another
company.
They think that because it worked for another company than just
copying it will work in the same capacity for their company.
By taking the time to create a customized solution that is viable for your
particular company and serves a purpose that will provide a tangible
benefit, you can be sure that this is the right thing to do and implement
it in the correct manner for your organization.
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PROPERTY BUT STILL UTILIZE OPEN
INNOVATION?
Most companies have legal departments or legal advisors that will
strongly advise against collaboration or stall a project with paperwork.
While this can protect your interests, it severely hampers the effective
speed and opportunity that open innovation provides.
There are increasingly more legal improvements that recognize the
need for joint development such as the Cooperative Research and
Technology Enhancement Act of 2004 (Create Act). This allows
businesses in the US at least to be a little freer to share their intellectual
property.
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HOW DO I GO ABOUT FORMING AN OPEN
INNOVATION NETWORK?
The key to creating a successful network is deciding on which type or
types, of network would best suit the needs of your company.
The major types of open innovation network include: solution bounty,
which offers a reward for the solution; internally prequalified, which
uses the resources of a large company to collaborate with their clients;
business partners, which is more often used for smaller companies to
think outside of the box (but has more exposure to IP issues); suppliers,
which have a unique perspective of inside knowledge; and
crowdsourcing, which can leverage your entire prospective customer
base but is expensive to manage.
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HOW CAN I EVALUATE OPEN INNOVATION ONCE
IT IS IMPLEMENTED?
The exciting and unnerving thing about open innovation is that there is
no standard metric for measuring or evaluating its effectiveness.
By setting a specific metric around fixed resources such as time and
hours spent you can design an evaluation process that allows you to
quantify the whole concept.
Look at the metric over time and that will give you the best idea of how
it is progressing.
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WHAT ARE THE ADVANTAGES OF ADOPTING
OPEN INNOVATION RIGHT NOW?
Depending on your specific business need and design there are plenty
of ways that open innovation can help, but there are two main benefits
that are universal to most businesses.
The first is the speed at which you can innovate and create a solution.
With so many people contributing ideas as long as there is a good
process for refining the innovations could happen at an accelerating
pace. The next universal benefit is the blanket distribution of
knowledge and labor.
By sharing of ideas and innovation work through the network, it allows
the most efficient and cost effective people to work on and get input
from all angles.
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8. GROWING BUSINESS WITH INNOVATION
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