Open innovation stands as the cornerstone of our innovation-driven era. As markets across industries reach saturation, gaining a competitive edge demands a fresh approach. In the relentless race to stay ahead, timely, novel ideas are non-negotiable.
Research and Development (R&D) departments must remain vigilant, tracking trends and establishing innovation observatories to anticipate emerging changes. This 360° strategic approach ensures future readiness. Today’s companies are embracing open innovation, forming partnerships with start-ups, scientific labs, universities, and more, fostering knowledge exchange and co-creation. It’s an ecosystem where fresh concepts aren’t just optional – they’re imperative for survival.
Open innovation is a strategic way to tap into the knowledge base of external sources coupled with internal sources to take your innovation to the next level.
Here are 5 reasons why your organisation could benefit from open innovation.
- Opportunity for lucrative partnership
Gone are the days when R&D departments are solely in charge of the entire innovation process. Today, open innovation programmes have broken the traditional silo mentality of corporate innovation secrecy. Companies are ready to collaborate and share ideas even if that means sharing IP (Intellectual Property) rights or issuing licencing agreements. Co-creating can bring not only new product ideas but also new perspectives and new approaches which is a win-win for both parties.
You can access a higher volume and a more diverse structure of resources, otherwise insufficiently developed inside. You must understand these partnerships aren’t a threat but great opportunities to explore and expand your market. Cosmetic giants L’Oréal for example, believes its incubator hubs nurture upcoming start-ups, embracing disruptive tech and ideas in the world of beauty. Their partnerships with beauty start-ups help them to co-create the future of beauty.
2. Accelerated time – to – market
In traditional corporate culture, companies like to innovate in-house to keep company secrets and IP rights. But looking at how fast paced today’s world has become and increased market competition, it is important to shorten product development time. Through open innovation, the innovation process is freed up through division of labour with partners. They also help companies to react quickly to new technologies and new market requirements.
3. Cuts down the innovation budget
Large sums of money can go into funding a project or a product when innovation is done internally. Rather than inventing from scratch, with open innovation, this burden is lessened as participating groups, research labs, software vendors or start-ups come with their resources such as toolsets and skills to fill the gaps which you might have in your innovation funnel or R&D departments.
4. Increase market share and profitability
The overall aim of open innovation is to engineer new products that will disrupt the market, increase revenue, and market share.
When you open your innovation funnel to allow external ideas in, it expands your knowledge base, and you are able to develop products that have a high chance of being a hit on the market or finding new niche areas. Furthermore, with the division of labour, production time is reduced which helps speed up your timeline and products are launched on the market faster which increases revenue.
5. Risk Management
Compared with closed innovation, open innovation can effectively exploit diversity and share risk. Risk is spread across and as such your company doesn’t bear all the risks in case of emergencies. Moreover, the sharing of resources increases flexibility to adopt to new market requirements or emergencies.
How Skopai helps clients to launch their open innovation programmes
Here at Skopai, we help companies, who want to start an open innovation programme by partnering with start-ups, have access to a wide start-up ecosystem on our platform.
We have defined in 4 simple steps how to successfully launch an open innovation programme, and how Skopai supports you through the entire process.
- Define the need
The first phase is to define the problem you want to solve or the objective you will address with the open innovation programme. Narrowing your needs into one pain point will help you find the right target keywords that you can use to begin your search on the skopai platform. Our project managers will help you define your need and explain how best to use the platform to discover the right start-ups that meet your needs.
2. Build a landscape of potential targets
Powered with AI and NLP technologies, you can easily identify all start-ups that match your selection criteria and put them into one personalised landscape. In this landscape, interesting start-ups can be added or removed. Teammates can use the collaborative tools to share thoughts and ideas about this list.
3. Perform deep analysis
To get the most out of this programme, you need to select companies that are providing solutions tailored to your need or that are experts in a market you would want to enter. It is therefore important to perform your due diligence in the selection of these partners. Skopai makes it possible to make an in-depth analysis of each start-up to get a 360° overview of them based on metrics like business model, technology, patent, maturity, funding, team etc.
We provide deep tech insight on start-ups for you to have a deep understanding of them through graphs and charts. You can also make comparisons between start-ups using the comparison tool which places side by side two start-ups, matching them against various metrics for a clearer forecast.
4. Pick your winner
The final selection is based on your initial selection criteria and your organisation’s needs. We help you select the best start-up to participate in your open innovation programme.
After this entire process you can continue exclusively with the selected start-up or engage Skopai to continue searching for new innovative companies based on your preferred industry or continent for all your innovation projects.
We are ready to help you do this! Contact us at contact@skopai.com to commence your open innovation programme. You can also book a demo with our experts now to discover our platform and services.
