Open innovation is a term coined by Henry Chesbrough, a researcher at Harvard Business School. The idea is to promote a more collaborative and diverse form of innovation than the one traditionally existing in the market, with the aim of improving the development of products or services, increasing the efficiency of development and innovation processes within organizations. In this process, there is the involvement of several external parties of a company, as in the case of partnerships with startups.
Open innovation has the role of accelerating the innovation process within organizations, expanding the boundaries of companies, making internal resources and ideas accessible and didactic together with external collaborators. On the other hand, we have closed innovation that uses the innovation process only internally without any exchange of contact with external areas and resources.
There are two main types of open innovation: inbound and outbound. The process of inbound open innovation is when companies, technologies and ideas are mapped that can be an opportunity to solve an internal problem or even a new product opportunity to be launched in the market. In outgoing open innovation, the elaboration of ideas and generation of opportunities takes place exclusively in the company’s internal environment. It is only after this step that the mapping of external partners takes place to validate the project.
Benefits of Open Innovation
As open innovation seeks access to technology and solutions that have often been made and tested, investment in research and development is lower. In addition, the risk of the technology or the idea of ​​the solution not being ideal or even not working is also reduced, since the product is semi ready or ready and some versions have already been tested.
In addition to these two essential benefits of open innovation, others can be highlighted, such as:
Accelerates the speed of innovation: as there is a division of labor within the innovation process with external partners and internal collaborators, the project develops with much more agility and speed;
Increases the efficiency of innovation projects: the incorporation of technologies, ideas, patents from third parties means that solutions that many times would not have been thought and produced are adopted. In addition, it is possible to use resources that the corporation sometimes does not have;
Increase of the innovative environment within large companies: partnerships of innovative startups with large companies are a good opportunity for corporations to embrace the culture of innovation and incorporate it within the company in a more active way;
- Innovation of existing products: products already developed within a corporation can often be improved, all it takes is a team that generates new ideas and solutions.
The open innovation process has been increasingly applied in Brazil, with extremely positive results. In addition to generating good financial results, open innovation helps our market to be more dynamic, improving customer experiences and positively impacting our day-to-day routines.