Marketing 0

Embrace Open Innovation
Despite being centered around teams, the agile approach does not
mean that companies must do everything in-house. To cut time to
market, companies must leverage both internal and external

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resources. The concept of open innovation—a term introduced by
Henry Chesbrough—is aligned with agile marketing. The approach
gives companies access to a global pool of ideas, solutions, and
specialist talents. Moreover, with this model, companies do not need
to build their innovation labs or research and development centers,
which have a higher cost structure.
Today, businesses open up their innovation process, using both
inside-out and outside-in approaches. Major companies open-source
the technologies that they have created behind closed doors to the
outside world. That way a worldwide community of developers can
build on those technologies and return the improvements to the
source. Google, for example, has open-sourced TensorFlow, its
advanced artificial intelligence (AI) engine.
Businesses have also accepted ideas from outside networks.
Customer co-creation and third-party collaboration are proven to
accelerate and improve the quality of innovation. There are several
ways companies can embrace external ideas. The most common is
the open innovation challenge. Companies can publicly post the
challenges they face and request for solutions. Singapore Airlines
seeks for digital solutions that redefine its customer experience via
the AppChallenge. Zurich Innovation Championship looks for
technology ideas for the insurance sector, which include AI and
natural language processing (NLP) applications.
Another way to gather external solutions is via an open innovation
marketplace. One such platform is InnoCentive, which serves as the
bridge between innovation seekers and a network of solvers for cash
rewards. Companies can also build their network of external
innovation partners. A prominent example is P&G's
Connect+Develop, a platform that helps the company to manage