Rather than attract and retain key talent in-house, have you ever thought about building or using a platform like innocentive? Innocentive connects seekers of solutions with solvers. By using this type of platform, you can pay talented individuals based on the number of transactions you need instead of retaining them for a reoccurring salary. They provide this service based on the number of transactions you need rather than for a reoccurring salary.
Start-up or young companies often can’t afford the fixed cost associated with the salary of hiring top talent nor are the founders willing to give away ownership during the early stages when the stock’s value is low. Open innovation is about operating in a world of abundant knowledge where not all the smart people work for you. Your job is to find the innovation, connect it with your firm, and build it into product lines.
Even big companies like Eli Lilly, Procter and Gamble, and Nestle all recognized that in order to achieve their growth objectives, they had to extend internal resources, establish relationships with strategic partners, and co-create new market solutions. Sometimes, organizations from outside your industry can offer valuable insight, patents, and knowledge. For instance, Dyson used technology from sawmills to make his vacuum. A key activity of any technology-based business is to build or mine from external entities that can help the company.
A key resource for your company will be the gateway to these external sources, such as Innocentive. To take advantage of external resources, you will need to establish a budget to purchase or reward contributors to your solutions. On the flip side, you can sell your innovations to those outside your industry. If you have innovation capacity, especially if it is idle or not engaged productively in one of your projects, consider whether or not it can apply to other industries. If it is applicable, then package and try to sell it. By enabling others to exploit your unused internal ideas or people, you can add additional revenue to your company.
Would buying a key innovation and combining it with your platform be more cost effective than trying to create your own? Do you have some key technology that you could sell or license to someone outside your industry for additional revenue?
