Define your open innovation strategy

Open Innovation Manifesto.

The Open Innovation Manifesto will give you the strategic rationale and development plan for your innovation programme. It makes the case for open innovation and will help you communicate the programme effectively. It’s a manifesto because it is a statement of belief and intent.

"I keep six honest serving-men, (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who."

Rudyard Kipling


It is best to involve a wide selection of colleagues in building our open innovation strategy. You could conduct interviews with senior stakeholders using the questions in the Open Innovation Manifesto as a structure, or start filling it by answering the six questions in a workshop with colleagues or partners.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Why? 

Why are we innovating and why are we doing it this way? What is the rationale for being open? Are we using open innovation because it’s faster or cheaper or gets better results? Is it because we are seeking more radical ideas or urgently-needed technologies that we cannot create ourselves within the available time or budget?

What? 

What are our specific objectives? What type of innovation (e.g. product, service, technology, process) are we are seeking? What level of market readiness do we need? 

How? 

How are we going to achieve our objectives? What sorts of methods will we use? Will we use crowdsourcing or workshops to find insights or ideas? Will we run an open competition or scout for new partners with the skills and technologies that we need? Will we use social media and other communications to build and energise a network?

Who? 

Who will help make it happen? Who could provide the technology, service or skill that we need? What external sources of innovation (e.g. existing suppliers, entrepreneurs, universities, small businesses) will we likely turn to? Who needs to be on our team? (R&D, Production, Legal, HR, Risk, Strategy, Marketing?).

Where? 

Where is the value being created? What is the top level business model for open innovation? How will it create value for our partners and us? Is there a minimum business opportunity (e.g. £10m+ revenue a year)? What kind of value will this be – financial, social or cultural?

When? 

When are the significant milestones? When will different phases of our innovation process start and finish? When are we looking to launch? How long are we going to need for coming up with ideas? When are we going to commit to the best idea? How long will it take to prototype? Is there time to market test our idea before launch?

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HOW THIS TOOL FITS IN WITH OTHERS

The Vectors tool helps visualise your strategy developing over time.

The Crowdsourcing Platform tool can be used for involving your colleagues in strategy setting in an open and collaborative way.

The Network Builder tool helps you to plan and visualise a new open innovation network.

The Give|Get tool enables conversations about the exchange of value in partnerships.

The Open Innovation Models tool enables you and your partners to choose a mutually suitable business relationship.

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