In-house innovations are great, when the companies and individuals have the capability, when these innovations are utilized to address the market need, when one does not stop at one-off innovations and off course when these innovations does not cost earth. But these are the exact challenges you and me face with in-house innovations, one or more of the above is usually not true.
I believe that more and more companies are opening up to "open innovation" as an extended arm to their in-house innovation effort. BT, P&G, Nokia to name a few.
Open innovation, apart from giving you a wider perspective on the solution, can as well change your problem definition itself!
Organizations do innovations, and then wait for one of them to click, the new trend however is towards “on demand innovation”, benefit from it, and move on to next one. It does not matter from where the ideas come from, what matters is how much you can benefit from it.
Software as a service and now cloud computing, in open innovation you pay only for results, these new trends make essential services accessible and affordable.
You no longer write one on one snail mails, nor do you refer Britannica encyclopedia, your city has grown to become your country and your country has expanded and has now become the world, and you access the world from your desktop. This connected world has opened up the new ways of doing everything and innovation is no exception, future of innovation is “open”, the world has opened up, and so has everything you do.
