https://www.rug.nl/staff/k.r.e.huizingh/openinnovationstate.pdf

Open innovation: State of the art and future perspectives

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Management innovation

We merge research into knowledge management, absorptive capacity, and dynamic capabilities to arrive at an integrative perspective, which considers knowledge exploration, retention, and exploitation inside and outside a firm's boundaries. By complementing the concept of absorptive capacity, we advance towards a capability-based framework for open innovation processes. We identify the following six ‘knowledge capacities’ as a firm's critical capabilities of managing internal and external knowledge in open innovation processes: inventive, absorptive, transformative, connective, innovative, and desorptive capacity. ‘Knowledge management capacity’ is a dynamic capability, which reconfigures and realigns the knowledge capacities. It refers to a firm's ability to successfully manage its knowledge base over time. The concept may be regarded as a framework for open innovation, as a complement to absorptive capacity, and as a move towards understanding dynamic capabilities for managing knowledge. On this basis, it contributes to explaining interfirm heterogeneity in knowledge and alliance strategies, organizational boundaries, and innovation performance.

A Capability‐Based Framework for Open Innovation: Complementing Absorptive Capacity

Following the process-based definition of absorptive capacity, this article identifies technological and market knowledge as two critical components of prior knowledge in the organizational learnin

Absorptive Capacity, Environmental Turbulence, and the Complementarity of Organizational Learning Processes

In an innovation contest, a firm (the seeker) facing an innovation-related problem (e.g., a technical R&D problem) posts this problem to a population of independent agents (the solvers) and then provides an award to the agent that generated the best solution. In this paper, we analyze the interaction between a seeker and a set of solvers. Prior research in economics suggests that having many solvers work on an innovation problem will lead to a lower equilibrium effort for each solver, which is undesirable from the perspective of the seeker. In contrast, we establish that the seeker can benefit from a larger solver population because he obtains a more diverse set of solutions, which mitigates and sometimes outweighs the effect of the solvers' underinvestment in effort. We demonstrate that the inefficiency of the innovation contest resulting from the solvers' underinvestment can further be reduced by changing the award structure from a fixed-price award to a performance-contingent award. Finally, we compare the quality of the solutions and seeker profits with the case of an internal innovation process. This allows us to predict which types of products and which cost structures will be the most likely to benefit from the contest approach to innovation.

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Innovation Contests, Open Innovation, and Multiagent Problem Solving

Overhaul your approach to innovation, or get out of the race. It's that simple-and that urgent.

Connect and Develop : Inside Procter & Gamble's New Model for Innovation

Durante generaciones, Procter & Gamble genero la mayor parte de su fenomenal crecimiento mediante la innovacion desde dentro, construyendo instalaciones de investigacion globales y contratando a los mejores talentos del mundo. Cuando las empresas eran mas pequenas y el mundo era menos competitivo, ese modelo funciono bien. Pero en 2000, el CEO recientemente designado, A.G. Lafley, vio que P&G no podria cumplir sus objetivos de crecimiento gastando cantidades cada vez mayores en I&D, a cambio de ganancias cada vez menores. De modo que abandono el enfoque sobre la innovacion de ?inventemoslo nosotros mismos? y adopto un modelo de ?conectar y desarrollar?. Al identificar ideas prometedoras en todo el mundo y al aplicarles sus propias capacidades, P&G se dio cuenta de que podia crear productos mejores, mas baratos y mas rapidamente. Ahora, la compania colabora con proveedores, competidores, cientificos, emprendedores y otros (tal es la parte de conectar), buscando sistematicamente en el mundo tecnologias probadas, paquetes y productos que P&G pueda mejorar, aumentar su escala y comercializar (en otras palabras, desarrollar), ya sea por su propia cuenta o en alianza con otras empresas. En parte gracias a este enfoque de conectar y desarrollar, la productividad en I&D de Procter & Gamble ha aumentado en cerca de 60%. En los ultimos dos anos, P&G ha lanzado mas de 100 productos nuevos, de los cuales algun aspecto de su desarrollo vino desde fuera de la empresa. Entre los productos de conectar y desarrollar mas exitosos de P&G se cuentan Olay Regenerist, Swiffer Dusters, Crest Spinbrush y Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. La mayoria de las empresas todavia se aferra a una infraestructura de I&D de ladrillos y mortero, y a la idea de que su innovacion debe residir principalmente dentro de sus cuatro paredes. Hasta que se percaten de que el panorama de la innovacion cambio y que su modelo actual es insostenible, el crecimiento en las ventas les sera esquivo.

Nabil Sakkab

Papers

Connect and Develop : Inside Procter & Gamble's New Model for Innovation

Conectar y desarrollar dentro del nuevo modelo de innovación de Procter & Gamble