November 10, 2009 at 4:56 pm · Filed under OI Chess Paradigm, Vision, courses, open innovation, strategy
De paradox:
In economisch zwaar weer geeft u zo min mogelijk uit aan onzekerheden, terwijl juist in deze tijden een innovatieve voorsprong van groot belang is…
Daarom biedt ideavents u de mogelijkheid om in één dag met uw hele team vertrouwd te raken met Open Innovatie.
Na de dag bent u in staat om met uw organisatie een Open Innovatie strategie te bepalen, zodat u bij aantrekken van de economie uw voorsprong kunt uitnutten.
De sessie start met een pittig theorie-gedeelte en kenmerkt zich vervolgens door interactie, inspiratie en participatie zodat de output van de dag concreet is en aanzet geeft tot vervolgacties. Hieronder vindt u het dagprogramma:
- 09:00u - 09:30u Inleiding social media & innovatie
- 09:30u - 11:00u Seminar Open Innovatie Strategy, impact & implementatie
- 11:00u - 12:00u Open Brainstorm & discussie; hoe kan de theorie op uw organisatie worden toegepast?
- 12:00u - 12:30u Pauze
- 12:30u - 15:00u Cocreatie sessie; in subgroepen uitwerken van mogelijke open innovatie strategiën en organisatorische impact
- 15:00u - 16:00u Discussie resultaten en follow-up
- 16:00u - 16:30u Uitloop & afsluiting
De hele dag kost slechts € 500 (excl. BTW), waarmee u in deze economisch zware tijd toch meerwaarde kunt creëren.
De sessie wordt op een door u gewenste locatie en aan groepen van max 12 man gegeven. Grotere groepen zijn bespreekbaar.
Meer informatie of een sessie voor uw organisatie bespreken? Neem contact op met Rob Veldt, 06-34501721 of rob.veldt@ideavents.com.
October 15, 2009 at 4:05 pm · Filed under Leergang Open Innovatie, OI Chess Paradigm, courses, events, open innovation, strategy
Hoe moet ik Open Innoveren?
Om deze vraag te beantwoorden heeft Ideavents, samen met Winkelman & Van Hessen-dochter DEB de “Leergang Open Innovatie” opgezet. De Leergang bestaat uit 4 middagen waarin het volgende aan de orde komt:
Sessie 1: Theorie: Masterclass Open Innovatie
Sessie 2: Praktijk: “Hoe voelt dat dan?”
Sessie 3: Toepassen van theorie op praktijk: “Your First Steps!”
Sessie 4: TBD, het is tenslotte Open Innovatie.
De leergang gaat aanzienlijk verder dan het beschrijven van kansen die Open Innovatie u biedt.
In de Leergang Open Innovatie leert u hoe u zélf Open Innovatie ambities kunt implementeren en begeleid ideavents u bij de eerste stappen.
De open inhoud van de laatste sessie wordt op de wensen van de deelnemers afgestemd.
Begin 2010 wordt de Leergang Open Innovatie weer georganiseerd. Bent u geïnteresseerd? Vraag dan het programma aan via info@deb-denhaag.nl.
September 18, 2009 at 1:45 pm · Filed under OI Chess Paradigm, Vision, open innovation, science, strategy
Effective implementation of Open Innovation ambitions implies a complex process of organizational change. An accurate change process from relative closed to a predefined state of opennes. With specific attention to people, operations, policy and culture. A carefully considered incremental approach containing appropriate leadership styles, little manageable steps, concrete budgets, and a crystal clear vision on where the organization is heading is pivotal to create an open organization with supporting open culture. To capture this essential but complicated set of input for effective use of Open Innovation we will introduce the Open Innovation Chess Paradigm.
Now that both research and business have extensively experimented with and iteratively analyzed the execution of Open Innovation, a closer look on how to open-up the organization itself is needed. After all, organizations can’t act open on the outside if they’re not open from the inside. Like described in my previous post, the great pitfall of Open Innovation is to reduce the scope of Open Innovation to the output: exploit Open Innovation as a stand-alone project or (marketing) campaign. Once an organization acts open to involve the environment in its innovation process, the organization causes expectations at the environment to be really open through its veins in follow-ups too. Which means no ‘not-invented-here’ syndrome or deathly silence after the environment submitted their effort.
Manage input
This is why becoming an open organization is the first essential step to effective execution of Open Innovation. Becoming an open organization is the input needed to result in the required output: effective execution of the Open Innovation strategy; (intensive) cooperation between the organization and its environment including adaptation of contributions from outside the organization. Despite of all the Open Innovation research on the output side of Open Innovation, knowledge and effective approaches to support the input side of Open Innovation is lacking heavily. Strange, since we all know: without input, there is no output.
A systematical approach (model) on how to manage the implementation process of Open Innovation strategy is an important need to bring Open Innovation to the next stage. We need an input-focused approach that guides the organization through the implementation process, which is in fact an enormous change for most organizations. This must contain concrete plans of action on the different levels of the (internal) organization in order to create the right circumstances and commitment to implement Open Innovation in a transparent and predictable way.
Component 1: parallel sub processes
The implementation model covers the full impact that Open Innovation has on the (internal) organization. In order to divide the implementation process in logical sub processes which can be managed parallel to each other, we distinguish people, operations, policy, and culture:
- The people process focuses on the impact on involved stakeholders (e.g. learning, networking, incentive structures, etc.).
- The operations process focuses on how both processes and infrastructure are able to adapt Open Innovation the best (e.g. facilitation of regular knowledge & creativity sharing, web access, job descriptions, etc.).
- The policy process focuses on identifying bottlenecks in current policies and make adjustments to support Open Innovation effectively (e.g. information policy, IPR-policy, communication policy, social media strategy, etc.).
- The culture process focuses on communication and creating commitment at involved stakeholders (e.g. trust, openness, self-learning, etc.).
Using these ‘parallel’ processes makes it possible to focus (assign distinct responsibilities) and enable the sub processes to leverage each other by synchronizing their timelines.
Component 2: phasing change
At the same time the implementation model anticipates on the incremental structure of the change process and divides the sub processes in little manageable steps which are aligned with the incremental structure of change. As we know for decades the adaptation of change takes at least four phases and we will use this known fact to break down the four sub processes to manageable pieces (Hersey & Blanchard):
- unaware / incapable: the early phase where the organization has to be informed about the new directions: telling;
- aware / incapable: the phase where the organization will try out the new way of working in a save environment in order to gain trust and commitment: selling;
- aware / capable: the phase where the organization will use the new way of working actively: participating;
- unaware / capable: the ultimate phase where the organization will actually be the new way of working: delegating.
The logical split between these four incremental phases provides us with manageable subprojects within the four defined sub processes.
The result? We have broken down the complexity of the change process to 16 little manageable pieces. The great advantage is that every little piece can be provided with its own budget and own plan of action, which makes the implementation of Open Innovation transparent and predictable.
The little pieces of this model also break down the absolute chicken / egg situation between the required Open Culture and effective Open Innovation. Breaking the implementation process down it is easier to solve chicken / egg situations using incremental exchange between ‘chicken’ and ‘egg’, since this also breaks down the narrow sense of the chicken & egg relationship to adaptable (manageable) pieces. Divide the process in little steps to reduce the perceived difference and enable involved stakeholders to gain experience and trust in a safe environment. In this incremental way involved parties try and experiment by little steps and implement the Open Innovation strategy together with the aligned open culture bit by bit.
Direction and effective leadership
Using the four sub processes and the four phases of change in the implementation model implies a high level of flexibility. The earlier phases affect the latter ones, while the different sub processes affect each other. A predefined static implementation plan is not feasible and anticipation becomes essential during the implementation process. Like Robert E. Quinn would call it: “the organization has to build the bridge as it walks on it”. To maintain common goals during this complex implementation process, a clear vision from a strong leader becomes pivotal.
In order to keep all activities focused on one common end point during the complex implementation process, the end point must be defined clearly. The definition describes the new Organizational Identity (Albert & Whetten; Ashforth & Mael; Dutton & Dukerich; Empson), which facilitates all involved parties with continuous awareness of who they become and what organizational goals are involved to reach the end point. The Organizational Identity represents the glue and purpose during the longitudinal change processes and corresponds with the clear vision of the transformational leader that’s leading the organizational change towards an open organization.
So, if effective implementation of Open Innovation strategy requires a visionary leader that empowers the organizational members to work fully committed to one common goal, Transformational Leadership (Bass; Aviolo) is a precondition while managing change. The change process needs a leader who oversees the complex matrix structure of sub processes and phases of change. And who is able to adjust his / her leadership styles to the different phases of organizational change. The Transformational leader is a role model that expresses the values of the new Organizational Identity in every phase and is able to align the Organizational Identity with stakeholders, subprojects and budgets.
Open Innovation Chess Paradigm
When we put all above together in one picture, we have constructed the conceptual model of the change process we deal with while implementing Open Innovation Strategy:
This conceptual model contains all important elements of the implementation process. The conceptual model provides overview on the complex matrix structure of (internal) processes progressing along the different phases of change from relatively closed to a predefined state of open organization. It describes the persistent role of the Organizational Identity throughout the change process and the different leadership styles aligned with the subsequent phases of the change process.
The conceptual model is very useful for boardrooms, since it describes the abstract flows of the implementation process. It could be used as an easy speaker’s note while discussing the whole process, but is unfortunately yet not tangible enough to be used as steering wheel while implementing Open Innovation. It’s too abstract for a management tool that must be communicated (and identically understood) throughout all levels of the organization. To make it really suitable for effective management of Open Innovation implementation, it needs to be cut down to the ultimate level of simplicity.
Chess metaphor
To make this theory more tangible for communication, execution and monitoring purposes we will represent this conceptual model along a chess metaphor:
We suppose everybody is familiar with the basic rules of chess, so we have turned the conceptual model 90 degrees counterclockwise to convert it to a chess game. A game that’s remarkably comparable with Open Innovation implementation, since it’s a strategic game that contains different scenarios, anticipation, clear goals, and simple rules. Further chess includes different pieces (roles) and the game can be analyzed as a collection of little steps.
Let’s use the chess metaphor: Along the four (internal) processes of people, operation, policy, and culture we will play the chess game from a relatively ‘closed’ baseline through four phases of change (info, try, use, and be) towards the ‘open’ end situation. To cut it down to concrete manageable steps we have used the black and white squares of the chess board to represent the collection of concrete steps that have to be taken in order to complete the implementation process.
Finally, from a communication perspective, we have assigned roles (chess pieces) to all leading parts of the paradigm. In this way all involved parties will understand their role in relation to the ‘game’ and the other ‘chess pieces’. These pieces refer to the leading parts as follows:
- The King represents the new Organizational Identity, the predefined end point of the change process which will be ‘protected’ by the rest of the chess pieces.
- The Queen represents a third party coach, which is able to guide the organization and the Transformational leader through the implementation process. The third party coach knows the rules of the game, overviews the paradigm, has an objective view on the organization and serves the King.
- The Rooks represent the management and will cover both columns and rows, which corresponds with the structure of the implementation process: per change phase.The management is able to interact with the King (‘castling’), in order to translate the new Organizational Identity to the respective level of execution.
- The Knights represent the Ambassadors. A selection of stakeholders that will be involved early in the implementation process to scout bottlenecks and solve (‘jump over’) hurdles before the rest of the stakeholders confront it.
- The Bishops represent the rest of the stakeholders excluding the employees: suppliers, customers, experts, environment, etc. The existing stakeholders have to ‘keep in the same color’, which means that they must be kept aligned with the changing situation. New stakeholders may arise when the open strategy implies that some internal processes will (partly) be outsourced to parties outside the organization (specialists, customers, crowd, etc.)
- The Pawns represent the employees, probably the most influent role since they can make or break organizational change. In terms of chess: “Pawn is the soul of chess”, the Pawn structure determines the strategy.
The Transformational leader plays the chess game and makes sure that all projects stick to their planning and budgets and serve one common goal: fulfilling the new Organizational Identity …of an open organization.
In this way the Open Innovation Chess Paradigm becomes a very useful tool that enables the management to focus on concrete manageable steps (squares) and deal with all consequences separately. Management can assign own budgets and plans of action to these little steps. This will make the implementation process transparent, predictable and measureable. It makes it possible to prepare the implementation process as a set of projects, each with its own scope and own targets. Besides, it’s far easier to gain commitment for little steps separately.
Organization implements by itself
With the Open Innovation Chess Paradigm the organization is able to implement its Open Innovation Strategy by itself! In a matter of fact, the organization must do it by itself in order to be able to maintain the end situation after the change process. The role of the third party Queen is (‘only’) to coach and guide the organization through the implementation process. Sharing experience, feeding the management with knowledge. keeping overview, and monitoring the progress.
Filling the gap between the available abstract theories on Open Innovation and the need for more concrete approaches on how Open Innovation could be effectively managed, the Open Innovation Chess Paradigm aims to initiate the next step in Open Innovation research. The Open Innovation Chess Paradigm provides more insight on the input of Open Innovation and how to manage the impact on the organization. This will help organizations maximizing the output of Open Innovation, because it structures the input needed for the output: effective Open Innovation!
This post is a follow up of “Implement Open Innovation Strategy: Start Focus on Input”. In the following posts I will elaborate on (1) Change Management, and the role of (2) Organizational Identity and (3) Leadership during the implementation of Open Innovation Strategy.
Rob Veldt (http://www.linkedin.com/in/robveldt) is researcher, consultant and public speaker on Open Innovation implementation. Serial entrepreneur and investor; owner and founder of www.ideavents.com, www.ThinkTankThursday.com and www.Cash4idea.com, among others. Follow Rob at Twitter: http://twitter.com/innpowerer or email him at rob.veldt@ideavents.com.
July 31, 2009 at 3:10 pm · Filed under OI Chess Paradigm, Vision, open innovation, science, strategy
It’s about time to take the next step in Open Innovation theory and practice. Too long we have only been focusing on certain ‘utopian’ output that Open Innovation should bring: shorten innovation cycles, involve customers, out-of-the-box thinking (or as Prahalad would call it: challenging the ‘dominant logic’), increase customer loyalty, access to exclusive knowledge and creativity, and create competitive advantage by opening-up the organization (among others). All about output without questioning the input that is preliminary to this output; it’s time to develop concrete strategies on how to implement organization’s Open Innovation ambitions in a sustainable way.
Since Henry Chesbrough introduced Open Innovation to the greater public in 2003, both science and business investigated extensively in the subject of Open Innovation. Great potentials have been identified, especially due to the ability to innovate more (effectively) while actively integrating marketing targets at the same time. Open Innovation has hyping potential because Open Innovation activities serve the organization in several ways: (1) it leads to new innovations, (2) it represents the company and its proposition to the outside world, (3) it empowers internal resources, and (4) it fulfills the increasing need of influence consumers have on the products and services their paying for.
Scientists and thought leaders studied the opportunities of Open Innovation in detail. By now we know exactly what kind of Open Innovation should be most effective in certain markets, we know which parties to involve while ‘doing’ Open Innovation, and how to stimulate them. We even developed toolkits (Von Hippel) and strategies (Chesbrough & Appleyard; Ulrich & Lichtentaler) on Open Innovation execution. Further, research identified barriers to adopt Open Innovation, like (e.g.) intellectual property, corporate influence, business model, and culture (e.g. Chesbrough & Appleyard; Munsch; Read & Robertson), and more specific the well-known ‘not-invented-here-syndrome’ has been subject of discussion (Van de Vrande et al; Katz & Allen).
Research even suggests ways to deal with those barriers, but the great lack in current research is a practical toolbox that enables organizations to implement their Open Innovation ambitions in a sustainable way, taking these barriers into account. It’s exactly the ‘opening-up the organization’-part that’s underestimated in current theories. Open Innovation research to date is focused on how to organize the execution of Open Innovation, without questioning requirements an organization has to meet to execute Open Innovation effectively by itself.
Without Input No Output
Research keeps focusing on Open Innovation successes and analyses success factors instead of failure factors, which seems to be a false start! As if success can be guaranteed in a dynamic environment…
We shouldn’t only be analyzing output of some (lucky? temporary?) successes, while the successes are coming from a few pioneering organizations and lots of other initiatives are failing (Ulrich & Lichtentaler). Rather focus on what environmental characteristics must be met in order to decrease the chance of failure. There’s a need to learn more on how to effectively manage Open Innovation (Haverbeke; Van de Vrande et al.; Chesbrough) and the organizational needs that are essential to make sustainable implementation of Open Innovation possible.
From this moment, research must start focus on input. Without the essential knowledge about the needed input it’s not relevant to know how to deal with the output. Which internal and external barriers are organizations really dealing with in their aim to make effective use of Open Innovation; and how to deal (concrete) with these barriers? Input is needed to achieve a predefined output. Without input, no output!
Impact of Open Innovation on the Organization
Executing Open Innovation purely based on output is like starting just another marketing campaign, only this time with an innovation twist. Unfortunately that’s exactly what’s happening at the moment: stand-alone Open Innovation projects, without mandate, without clear corporate vision and without a well defined (corporate) strategy. That seems to be the reason why there are so many Open Innovation failures: ‘campaigns’ hardly pay attention to the impact of Open Innovation on the organization. These campaigns are simply not intended to involve organizational impact and don’t have the budget and mandate to do it either.
Looking at the input side, Open Innovation has significant impact on the internal organization. Imagine what Open Innovation means to:
- involved people (employees, clients, suppliers, other stakeholders) in terms of new ways of working, incentives, fading distinction between work and (social) networks;
- operations ((e-)processes and (e-)infrastructure) in terms of (e.g.) web access, communities, facilitation of knowledge and creativity sharing;
- policy (written and unwritten rules) regarding (e.g.) intellectual property, privacy, outside communication; and
- culture (e.g. openness, learning, networking) to create the right (and safe) atmosphere.
And all of them with impact on both inside and outside the organization. As a result, effective use of Open Innovation has a huge impact on an organization’s business model, since all underlying elements of the business model have to deal with the impact of Open Innovation and so must be redefined in terms of Open Innovation.
Manage impact
The above means that effective implementation of Open Innovation ambitions implies an organizational change from a certain state of ‘closed’ to a predefined state of ‘open’. Implementation of Open Innovation results in a change process involving people, operations, policy and culture. As a result, implementing Open Innovation requires professional change management skills, extensive preparations and effective leadership in order to be sustainable. During the change process the organization must be guided effectively through all barriers regarding the transformation from ‘close’ to ‘open’. The organization and its environment have to be informed about the new goals, have to gain experience with the new ways of working in a safe environment, and have to participate freely to finally become open through their veins.
This requires a concrete plan of action and true leadership with a clear vision. Everybody must know where the organization is heading. Leadership styles that adjust to the developing situation, from transactional in the starting phase to transformational during the change process (Bass). The leader has to involve all parties, guide them at the start and empower them during the change process in order open-up themselves in the end.
To solve these complex structures at the input side of Open Innovation current theories unfortunately won’t help. Existing models and strategies are far too abstract and output focused. In my next expert blog at Openinnovators.net I will introduce a new paradigm which enables organizations to implement Open Innovation ambitions in a sustainable way. A concrete implementation strategy existing of a clear plan of action, concrete goals, roles and leadership during the change process, and extensively paying attention to the essential input needed to bring the organization to the desired output: effective use of Open Innovation.
June 2, 2009 at 3:32 pm · Filed under OI Chess Paradigm, events, open innovation
(click to enlarge)
May 21, 2009 at 1:56 pm · Filed under OI Chess Paradigm, Uncategorized, open innovation
“First focus on input instead of possible output”
After lots of research we proudly present our Open Innovation Chess Paradigm:
Inspired by a lack of theory about the input of Open Innovation (“OI”) –what is needed to make effectively use of OI– we developed the OI Chess Paradigm. Where existing theories and global thought leaders keep focusing on the output of OI –what should be possible using OI–, the OI Chess Paradigm answers the questions business deals with.
With the Open Innovation Chess Paradigm we developed a concrete toolbox for durable implementation of Open Innovation (“OI”). Focusing on the change process becoming an ‘open organization’, the Paradigm offers a concrete plan of action for organizations with ambitions in (open) innovation.
The OI Chess Paradigm helps your organization on how to divide the change process in manageable steps. It describes how to make use of different leadership styles and organizational identity in order to control the transformation on all levels of the internal organization: people, operations, policy and culture.
Please note that the slideshow contains only a slight overview of the OI Chess Paradigm. Feel free to contact us for more information.
May 4, 2009 at 11:57 am · Filed under events, open innovation
May 15th at 7PM (GMT+1) Rob Veldt (ideavents) will provide a webinar at the 24 Hours of Innovation.
During a one hour timeslot Rob will elaborate his vision on Open Innovation, present his break-through theory on Open Innovation (“How to Implement Open Innovation: a Closed-Open Paradigm”) and he will speak about the (free) ThinkTankThursday initiative.
The 24 Hours of Innovation is a non-stop, online marathon of innovation initiatives around the world. The event takes place during a full day and night on May 15-16 from 10.00 am to 10.00 am (CET). (as a reference: Sydney 6 pm, New York 4.00 am, Los Angeles 1.00 am)
Rob will have a timeslot next to global thought leaders like Henry Chesbrough (for those of you who are familiar with open innovation), NineSigma and Pfizer.
Rob’s 1 hour timeslot starts at Friday 15 May 7PM (GMT+1). The webinar represents the pre-launch of Rob’s Closed-Open Paradigm, a toolbox for implementing Open Innovation from a business perspective.
If you’re interested, you can follow and join the 24 Hours of Innovation on May 15-16. You can confirm your interest and participation on the LinkedIn event page.
January 24, 2009 at 6:20 pm · Filed under open innovation
With a tough recession ahead we all save money while there’s a greater need for competitive advantage! These contradicting preconditions represent the ultimate stage for open innovation.
Using open innovation (Henry Chesbrough, 2003), organizations combine internal & external sources of knowledge in their innovation process. They seek inspiration from outside an organization’s frame of reference: suppliers, users, specialists, hobbyists, etc. to notice out-of-the-box chances and solve problems from another point of view.
Leveraged by web2.0 open innovation has grown to an effective innovation method. In particular ‘crowdsourcing’ (Jeff Howe, 2006) uses the full potential of new ways to share knowledge. By the use of crowdsourcing a whole crowd is challenged with a particular assignment at once. The collaborative knowledge & creativity of this crowd is able to find innovative solutions and bring the assignment by itself to a higher level.
Involving crowds has many advantages, like thinking across sectors. Often a specific problem has already been solved in another sector. Crowdsourcing channelizes and widens the use of knowledge & creativity. Another great advantage is low costs. Knowledge holders are rewarded for the knowledge & creativity they share. But these costs are not even close to in-house knowledge –which you should recruit, maintain and provide with a profound infrastructure. As a result crowdsourcing means cheap labor, even for expertise which organizations can’t permit to possess their selves!
Crowdsourcing enables organizations to look further than regular solutions. Crowds take organizations down The Long Tail (Chris Anderson, 2006). The crowd offers countless creative solutions, mainly by the use of less obvious knowledge. Knowledge from –like it seemed to be– less relevant opinions (niches) which can force a breakthrough (hit) from new point of view.
Please share some thoughts about why you think organizations should (or not) use crowdsourcing during these tough times of recession!
November 5, 2008 at 8:31 pm · Filed under open innovation
De recessie staat voor de deur, dus de hand gaat weer op de knip. Tegelijkertijd vraagt economische teruggang organisaties juist onderscheidend te zijn om te kunnen concurreren. Twee naar het lijkt tegenstrijdige randvoorwaarden welke samen het perfecte toneel vormen voor open innovatie! Een moderne vorm van innovatie waarbij organisaties gebruik maken van de kennis en creativiteit die aanwezig is in de omgeving van de organisatie.
Organisaties die gebruik maken van ‘open innovatie’ (Chesbrough, 2003) zijn in staat gedurende het innovatieproces interne en externe kennisbronnen te combineren ten gunste van het eindresultaat. Dit betekent inspiratie van buiten de referentiekaders van de organisatie. Ofwel inspiratie van klanten en toeleveranciers, of verder nog, gebruikers, specialisten, hobbyisten, studenten, etcetera. Het stelt organisaties in staat om ‘out of the box’ te denken, kansen te zien en problemen op te lossen vanachter een hele andere bril.
Crowdsourcing
Open innovatie heeft zich door de ontwikkeling van het internet ontplooid tot zeer lucratieve innovatiemethodiek. In het bijzonder een meer specifieke vorm van open innovation genaamd crowdsourcing maakt slim gebruik van de mogelijkheid tot kennisuitwisseling die het interactieve internet biedt. Middels crowdsourcing wordt een innovatievraagstuk in één keer voorgelegd aan een grote groep kennisdragers -individuen en organisaties. De collectieve kennis en creativiteit van de massa zijn in staat innovatieve oplossingen aan te dragen en als organische zwerm ook met elkaar het vraagstuk an sich op een hoger niveau te brengen.
Goedkope arbeid & onderscheidend vermogen uit The Long Tail
Het betrekken van ‘crowds’ kent vele voordelen. Zo wordt hiermee over specialismes en sectoren heen gedacht. Zo is het vaak het geval dat een specifiek vraagstuk in een andere sector al eens is opgelost. Deze belangrijke kennis wordt middels crowdsourcing gekanaliseerd en breder toepasbaar gemaakt. Ander groot voordeel is zeker niet minder relevant, namelijk: lage kosten. Natuurlijk worden kennisdragers beloond voor de kennis en inspiratie die zij delen. Echter staan de kosten hiervoor in geen verhouding tot wanneer de gebruikte kennis in de organisatie zelf geworven, onderhouden en gefaciliteerd moet worden. Goedkope arbeid dus, notabene voor specialisme dat veel organisaties zich niet kunnen veroorloven zelf in huis te hebben.
Bovendien stelt crowdsourcing organisaties in staat verder te kijken dan de mainstream oplossingen zoals deze doorgaans worden toegepast. Crowds zijn in staat organisaties mee te nemen in The Long Tail (Anderson, 2006). Naast de oplossingen waarvan bekend is dat deze succesvol zijn (geweest), biedt de crowd een scala aan creatieve oplossingen gebruikmakend van meer en minder voor de hand liggende kennis. Kennis, vaak uit minder relevant geachte hoeken (niches) die vannuit een nieuw oogpunt een doorbraak kunnen forceren.
Oplossing in economisch slechte tijden
Uit voorgaande blijkt wel dat open innovation, en met name crowdsourcing, organisaties veel te bieden heeft. Zeker in economisch slechtere tijden biedt het onderscheidend vermogen tegen relatief lage arbeidskosten, zónder dat de organisatie een dienstverband hoeft aan te gaan. Ingrediënten voor een goed recept om concurrentie te verslaan in zware tijden! En dan hebben we het nog niet gehad over de klantenbinding die ontstaat door intensievere samenwerking met de gebruikers…
