Experiential Open Innovation and Co-Creation - Essay Example

Experiential Open Innovation and Co-Creation University’s Name Submitted by Name Tutor: Date: Introduction Innovation is always taken to be one of the main drivers of economic growth and plays and plays an important role in determining the success of many organizations, especially in the private sector (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). In order to withstand stiff competition in the business environment, companies heavily invest in innovative activities. Traditionally, companies used internal research and development to generate new ideas and innovations. However, internal R&D has proved not to be sufficient, especially due to increasing technological complexities. Consequently, companies have shifted from inter to open R&D structures in order to benefit from external sources of knowledge. Organizations are now using open innovation and Co-creation to improve the quality of their goods and services. The report, therefore, focuses on open innovation and co-creation by reflecting on my participation on various online open innovation platforms. Participation and Engagement in Online Open Innovation Platform I participated in a number of online open innovation platforms. However, I was majorly attracted to OpenIdeo, LocalMotors and 99Designs because I found the platforms interesting and involving. Interestingly, I realized that many people are eager to come up with new ideas and solve various simple and complex problems facing individuals, groups, and organizations. I also found that the majority of people who participate in the platforms are young people who are curious and eager to come up with something new. OpenIdeo is an online open innovation platform for creative thinkers where people design better and for the social good. The platform allows people from different disciplines to share ideas and converse in order to find solutions to complex social issues. I was able to participate in various ongoing challenges that I found to be active. The first challenge is the one that is aimed at raising children awareness of the benefits of fresh food. The other challenge was the one involving the means of enhancing the availability of affordable learning equipments. I found the former challenge more interesting because people were coming up with numerous ideas. I went through the suggestions and ideas that had been posted by other people. Throughout the participation, I learnt that people are more willing to address the issue of increased obesity, especially among children, as most ideas were geared towards promoting less obese society. Another challenge that I participated was the one involving ways of combating health threats such as Zika, Ebola, and malaria in imaginative ways that was sponsored by the USAID. I contributed by suggesting that the best way of combating the diseases like Zika and Malaria is to change human behaviors, which is a more sustainable solution. I also participated on another challenge that was dabbed “How might we improve the livelihoods of small-scale farmers by reducing food waste and spoilage?” sponsored by Amplify. Through participating in various topics in the OpenIdeo, I realized that people are willing to contribute towards solving various social issues affecting the society. Apart from OpenIdeo, I also actively participated in 99Designs open Innovation platform. It is a design content marketplace where individuals and organizations can run competition on various issues such as logos, book covers, and web designs. Like many online open innovation platform, 99Designs also run challenges where designers compete against each other to financial benefits. It is, therefore, a very competitive platform that attracts many designers. First, I participated in a competition involving book covers that was posted by a client. However, I only managed to participate in the first round that was open to everyone and failed to move to the next level due to the stiff competition involving experts. I also participated in the designing of the new logo for the platform. The pictures below include some of the new logos that were suggested by various participants. During my participation in the online open innovation platform, I realized that individuals and companies can benefit, especially in reducing the cost of innovation and reducing the time taken to implement a new idea. An individual or organization will not have to spend a lot of money and time carrying out research to improve the quality of goods or services (Chesbrough, 2011). However, I was also able to learn some of the weaknesses of the Open innovation. One of the major weaknesses of open innovation platforms is that they lack focus because they welcome almost every idea that is posted by a participant. Therefore, it takes relatively longer time to come up with radical ideas that can bring significant change. In addition, the majority of ideas that are brought forward by the participants cannot achieve radical innovation goals or solve complex problems. Besides, open innovation platforms lack privacy for confidential discussions because it involves many partners and participants. Organizational Implications Open Innovation Open Innovation refers to the creating and innovating by incorporating external stakeholders like consumers, suppliers, and the large community. It is a platform used by organizations to seek and acquire knowledge beyond their boundaries (Dahlander and Gann, 2010). Open innovation develops an environment where organizations and individuals can actively participate to come up with mutually beneficial solutions to various problems. It involves the interaction between broader groups of stakeholders to solve specific issues and challenges. Therefore, open innovation is an inclusive way means of solving complex issues affecting organizations and communities. It is a purposive inflow and outflow of ideas and knowledge to enhance innovation in an organization. Co-innovation Co-innovation means collaborating with the end-users of a company’s products or services in order to share knowledge and resources with the aim of improving the quality and value of a commodity. Unlike open innovation that is open to many stakeholders, co-innovation involves defined group of stakeholders, especially customers (Christensen, 2006). However, it is a form of open innovation. It is a way of promoting user engagement by directly incorporating them in the product value creation and development processes taking place within the company. Co-innovation, therefore, is the collaboration and interaction between producers and consumers initiated by an organization to create value for customers (Chen, Tsou and Ching, 2011). Implications of Open Innovation One of the major implications of open innovation in an organization is that it boosts performance. Open innovation allow many organizational stakeholders to participate and collaborate to solve a particular problem and to come up with new ways of improving products or services (Chesbrough and Crowther, 2006). The participation of many partners in the product development process is believed to be less risky and generates high quality products that give a firm a competitive advantage in the market. Besides, open innovation increases the creativity of employees, which ends up enhancing their performance and productivity. Consequently, increased creativity through open innovation promotes the performance of an organization. Open innovation also promote the generation of new ideas, especially in cases where stakeholders are competing. Studies have shown that employees and external partners are able to generate novel ideas when they compete for funding. It also enables an organization to interact with outside elite experts who can come up with great ideas that can solve various complex problems or improve the quality of commodities. Open innovation also enable organizations to use ideas generated by users who are believed to be more creative and score relatively high in terms of novelty, customer benefits, and quality (Dodgson and Gann, 2006). However, open innovation involves the generation of large quantity of ideas that have to be filtered to select the most beneficial ideas, which may be time consuming. Organizations have become more creative due to open innovation that enhances creativity. Any organization that wants to benefit from open innovation must be ready to restructure its business model. Such organizations are forced to transform from the traditional business models to user-centric business models that enhance participation of consumers and other stakeholders (Chesbrough, 2003). Firms must also develop complementary external networks that enable them to be in touch with outsiders in order to acquire knowledge that can improve their creativity and innovation. Therefore, in order to accommodate open innovation, organizations must restructure their organizational structures and systems, organizational culture, and organizational climate that can allow the participation of outsiders. Companies must be ready to change their managerial practices like delegation of duties, lateral communication system, sharing of knowledge and ideas (Boudreau and Lakhani, 2009). Companies find it hard to deal with the issue of intellectual property protection when it comes to open innovation. Many organizations would like to safeguard their intellectual properties, but open innovation allows the flow of idea and knowledge across company boundaries (Howe, 2008). Therefore, companies that embrace open innovation have been forced to change their corporate policies on intellectual properties. Such companies are willing to share their ideas and knowledge with the outside world. As a result, companies have become more open and transparent due to the open innovation, which is a new trend in the business environment. Consequently, to survive and to enhance their creativity and innovations, companies have been forced to alter their business strategies (Chesborough and Appleyard, 2007). Conclusion Open innovation and Co-innovation significantly replaced the traditional internal R&D that was traditionally used to enhance creativity and innovation in organizations. A number of open innovation platforms like 99Designs and OpenIdeo have emerged that enable companies to interact with outsiders. At the same time, the platforms have largely changed the organizational culture, structure, climate and practices, as they have to adapt the requirements of open innovation that is increasingly becoming inevitable. Reference List Boudreau, K. J. and Lakhani, K. R. 2009. How to Manage Outside Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review 50, 69-76 Chesbrough, H. 2003. The Era of Open Innovation. MIT Sloan Management Review, vol. 44, pp. 35-42, 2003. Chesbrough, H. 2011. Bringing open innovation to services. MIT Sloan Management Review, 52(2), 85-90. Chesborough, H., and Appleyard, M. 2007. Open Innovation and Strategy. California Management Review. Vol. 50, NO.1 Fall. Chesbrough, H. and Crowther, A.K. 2006. Beyond high tech: early adopters of open innovation in other industries. R&D Management 36(3): 229-236. Chen, J.S., Tsou, H.T., and Ching, R. K. 2011. Co-production and its effects on service innovation. Industrial Marketing Management, 40(8), 1331-1346. Christensen, J. F. 2006. Wither core competency for the large corporation in an open innovation world. Open innovation: researching a new paradigm. Oxford, 36. Dahlander, L., and Gann, D.M. 2010. How open is innovation?. Research Policy, 39(6), 699- 709. Dodgson, M. and Gann, D. 2006. The role of technology in the shift towards open innovation: the case of Procter & Gamble. R&D Management 36(3): 333-346. Howe, J. 2008. Crowdsourcing: How the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. Century. Read More