In the last weeks I wrote a new 30-page publication that will be published within the next weeks on www.innovationmanagement.se. The title: “How to make Open Innovation work for your R&D”

As we all know, Open Innovation is in the top spots of the agenda for many innovation managers. It describes a concept to increase R&D agility, effectiveness and to decrease risk exposure by opening up the innovation funnel to absorb external expertise and / or two find new paths to market for the firm’s Intellectual Property.

One key focus area in which firms are practicing Open Innovation is R&D-driven Open Innovation, i.e. absorbing ideas, concepts and solutions from academia, suppliers and technical experts.

This is a powerful lever for enhancing the firm’s innovativeness since it multiplies the firm’s R&D resources. Procter&Gamble e.g. estimates that there are 2 million global experts in its technology fields – which is more than 200 times as much as the 9,000 people that it has on the payroll of its R&D units. Merck Inc. states that although it is a global leader in its field it only produces 1% of the patents in its area annually

In the wake of Open Innovation pioneers, more and more firms from a broad range of industries are opening up their approaches to innovation. Judging from case evidence and numerous benchmarking studies most firms are pursuing one or more open approaches to innovation already – but only few are operating fully on the Open Innovation mindset and have a well-architected, integrated and managed Open Innovation portfolio in place.

The publication provides the knowledge required to conduct a critical assessment of the existing open approaches to innovation, to identify new opportunities and to plan for professional implementation.