WWG and Open Innovation

Incremental innovation is the most common form of innovation. Use your existing technology and increase the value your customer perceives in relation to the product/service you’re offering them.

You can have this kind of open innovation by adding new features, changing the design, trying new features or even removing others. Small updates to the product or user experience can add value. Enhance your experience.

Disruptive innovation, also known as invisible innovation, involves applying new technologies or new processes to one or more of your company’s flows. It needs to be planned very carefully as the latest technology is always a challenge and will often be perceived as inferior to the one in use. It’s often more expensive, it needs integrations, and it’s more difficult to use, and maybe it’s not such a pleasant habit.

However, the latest technology surpasses the old and, sometimes, upsets all existing companies on a market. This type of open innovation must be considered a continuous improvement process. Companies that have teams that are not really geared to change without this invisible change may suddenly find it difficult to deal quickly with the newest technology.

Architectural innovation simply consists of taking lessons, skills and technologies that have proven to be good practices for a sector and applying them in a different market. This innovation is surprising to increase new customers as long as the new market is receptive to change.

Most of the time, the risk of architectural innovation is low due to the dependence of a working group on a process that is never a good thing ("we have always done so"). This type of open innovation leads to the introduction of a technology already tested elsewhere. Most of the time it still requires small changes to meet the requirements of the new market.

Radical innovation is what we think most about when we consider open innovation processes. It creates new companies, sometimes new industrial sectors (or swallows up existing ones).

It involves the creation of revolutionary technological processes. This often leads to processes of custom software that become authentic case studies for many.

Depending on the customer’s needs, it is possible to participate actively and openly in an open innovation process, building innovation communities, maybe online, collaborative in which researchers and solution providers work together. Or use hackathon to convince outside professionals to contribute to a business goal or assign a product launch to an outside group as a test.

Open innovation may appear to be aimed at large companies. But it is an approach that can be used by all companies, particularly startups and small businesses. All of these companies have similar business problems (developing an idea, a communication campaign, creating an app, a site, an e-commerce) and can deal with them in an agile way with an open innovation process. Here are all the advantages of Open Innovation:

1. Creation of new products and services

If you’re a startup, there’s nothing more exciting than launching your first product on the market. If you are a company that wants to have the highest degree of digital maturity you have to think about what else you could provide to your customers. If you are a professional who asks how to bring value to your team and then to your customer open innovation can help you increase your profits and create buzz.

2. Innovating old products and services

Sometimes it is not necessary to create new products. Sometimes, your old service has the potential to be better or has the potential to attract new customers. This is the moment when you need to bring together a creative team to improve what you already do. One of the advantages of open innovation is that the process never ends. You always think about how you can improve your organization and every single member of your teams.

3. Building a strong community

Regardless of the size of your organization, a great advantage of open innovation is that you can come up with a new way to connect with your fans, your customers, your followers, your soul mates and the talents you’ll need in the future. Find out what your community wants and then give it to them. In the process, you will find that enthusiastic community members are willing to devote their time and ideas to help you create something together with you. These relationships are fundamental and will help your company build a strong community strongly connected to your product.

4. Keeping employees engaged

One of the main sources of employee dissatisfaction is the lack of sense of belonging to the projects on which they work. Sometimes, your team may have some great ideas, but they may not feel comfortable carrying them forward. By bringing an open innovation initiative,your team can be involved in planning, what it really needs, turning it into a new project. When people feel more involved in the goals, writing and updating of Okrs, all this makes the work routine more challenging.

5. Staying ahead of the competition

By keeping your team and community involved in finding new ideas, you ensure that your organization remains useful and is seen as innovative in your community. Using open innovation can help you always find new quality niches and make your organization extraordinarily valuable.

6. Reduction of costs

When you work with other companies, you divide costs, you divide tasks, you focus on each individual task, on the people of the teams that are involved and find out if there are any blocks. Thanks to open innovation you become more and more efficient; each member finds a way to deal with what he is good at and will be motivated to catch up on what he is not well-versed in.

7. Acceleration of time-to-market

Instead of understanding how to make the desired product, train your people, buy equipment, prepare for launch, hypothesize sales scenarios you can start a collaboration with a company that has already tried all this. Open innovation means bringing a product to the market faster than what your internal resources would do by finding the time between the activities already planned.

8. New revenue streams

Did you know that some companies get more revenue from secondary products than from primary ones? Working with other companies will allow you to enter a new market with a new idea and maybe a new product you don’t know you have.

9. Reduction of innovation risk

Any innovation involves risks, but if you work with experts, minimize the risk of failure, especially if you are agile and receive regular feedback from all the people involved in the project activities.