People like Angelo are mostly not the nice guys. They tend to tell you what they think directly and fearless. When our little discussion came to open innovation, Angelo seemed to get exited. He claimed that he is now following this trend for more than three years. Most of his experiances are not positive at all. His critics was aiming at three issues:

Angelo explained me that open innovation from the persepctive of a small engieering company makes him feel powerless. Power is shifting to the big players, they ar in the driver seat and rule the game. Supplies become part of a selection process that they dont understand well. This makes him feel small and
replacable. For Angelo, this is poison to innovation.

Powerful innovations are growing in a dialogue and the dynamics of dense communication. It is naïve to assume that one initiator has a request and there is the ready to apply innovation out there to find easily.
This will in the best case lead to incremental and inferior solutions. With open innovation, realtionships
become obviously weaker and the importance of the communication process is more and more neglected.

The most important claim from Angelos side is the lack of trust. He would never ever give his ideas in a generic OI platform any more. There is literally no reason to trust that his ideas will be protacted as they should. Some companies may have the right values but they don´t enforce them. One bad experience and the faith is gone.

All this is though. Are we on the wrong track with the more and more emerging concept of Open Innovation? To make it very clear: If people like Angelo will not play this game and paticipate, the concept of open innovation will fail.Let´s start to think how we can deal with these three critrical aspects.

Can we build in more trust, better relationships and more balances power in open innovation processes? What are the smart solutions to involve Angelo in the game and to get the best from him?

It was becoming late this Sunday, the second bottle of red wine was done and the mosquitos were biting us so that we had to leave. It was one of these great learning days.

These tendencies can be very well examined in the context of organizations and corporations these days. The actual dreadful economic crisis carves deep traces in the landscape of firms and has an impact in the mindset of their employees. This is not all bad. We see interesting changes that can be of tremendous value for companies, if canalized in the right direction. But let’s start from the beginning.

The logic of the crisis is putting high pressure on affected companies. Three critical issues can be identified in many industries. First, there is the weakness of the markets and a decline in sales. As a result of fewer transactions and lost turnovers the requirement of resizing and eventually restructuring the supply side is the second pressure. Given that severe costs cutting and changes in almost all fields of operations will follow. And the third pressure point are increasing  difficulties to refinance the system as credit supply dried out.

In the past, only singular companies experienced such a dramatic mixture of challenges. In the crisis, it’s a general business condition. The competence and skills to cope with this unusual situation and finally solve the problem is not to be found in the DNA of our usual success spoiled corporations. And if you have no experience in solving such problems there is only one way out: Creativity!

And here we’ve come full circle. Our initial observation an increased density and intensity of communication is symptomatic for emerging creative processes. People in pressure situations increase their level of cognitive activities. Urgency produces adrenaline and makes most people far more inventive and imaginative than usual. The power for this raising creative sphere is again communication and – here we come – openness. Reaching out for other experts in order to solve tactical questions for a mutual benefit is one of the best choices you could make in these tough times.

In almost any large corporation, a few visionaries have already started to focus on new possibilities and dimensions resulting from external co-invention. The fear of failure seems to be much less painful than the pressure currently experienced.

What if this openness and collective creativity could enter the DNA of organization? What if a different understanding of how to innovate and invent finds its way in the culture of corporations? What if the expected return of protected ideas ist less then the value of sharing ideas? What if Open Innovation becomes the key paradigm for the culture of co-creation of value?

We believe that Open Innovation is a tremendous step in the ongoing developement. It has the potential to become a completely new pattern and culture of problem solving. It is based on dense and intense communication, on a collaborative mindset and on the value of sharing.

Open innovation represents the next step of innovation management, which unleashes more positive effects and creative power.

This post is a contribution to 24 h of Innovation.

Authors: Clemens Frowein, Marcella Gäb, Frank Mattes