VOIS - Area 1 - Module 2

  1. MODULE TITLE

Module 2: Main pillars of open innovation strategy
  1. AUTHORS

Ewa Kopczynska
  1. SHORT DESCRIPTION

To benefit from Open Innovation, your company will need an effective strategy accounting for your organisational vision and resource limitations. In this module, you will learn about the key elements of an Open Innovation strategy, such as creating a clear vision of Open Innovation strategy and activities and how to identify needs for external resources in the scope of innovation process. Going through the module, always keep your specific SME in mind to relate the contents to your specific context.
  1. LEARNING OBJECTIVES

    Upon completing this module, you should be able to:

  • Better understand the innovation process and the application of Open Innovation for overcoming shortages in your internal resources and capabilities,
  • Consider different types of innovation for possible application in the scope of your strategy,
  • Design a strategy accounting for a specific vision of your company,
  • Understand the initial steps of your Open Innovation strategy development and what other aspects should be considered afterwards.
  1. Training Content
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THE WHY of an Open Innovation strategy

In the previous module, you have learned what Open Innovation is and what benefits could your SME achieve by implementing Open Innovation in your overall business strategy. Open Innovation is a great tool for SMEs to overcome the limitations in knowledge, physical and human resources that your company faces that obstruct your ability to fast and effectively adapt to market changes. Open Innovation is a great tool to allow you to target exciting new opportunities you spotted, to react quickly to changing needs of customers, or to the moves of your competitors. It can help you get key knowledge about risks your organsation may face in the near future, and to get ahead of them. It can point you in the direction of new customer needs It can help you find out about new technologies that could be beneficial to your business or you can discover new markets that your company hasn’t explored yet. Through collaboration with external partners, your company can develop a wide range of innovations, share resources, and risks, and work toward a common benefit.

Image by pressfoto from Pixabay

As you may have realized so far, the world is changing very quickly, and customers are switching between products, services, and technologies quite frequently. To compete on the global market, your SMEs must innovate to remain profitable. After getting familiar with the opportunities of Open Innovation maybe you even already got excited about the possibility to become a part of an Open Innovation environment and about the idea of offering novel products and services to your customers, which for your individual SME may not seem feasible. While Open Innovation is a great tool for SMEs and in many cases a path to long-term growth and economic sustainability, it definitely is also a significant challenge. In this module, we will help you understand what the strategic requirements of Open Innovation are, what to pay attention to while planning your Open Innovation strategy and where to start. To this end, we will start from discussing the innovation process, followed by explaining how to identify whether Open Innovation fits your company’s vision and objectives, and finish with guidelines regarding how to define the Open Innovation approach that responds to your company needs. For that, we will introduce you to a few, key for your ability to build Open Innovation strategy, concepts:

  1. What is innovation, types of innovation and innovation process – including an example of SMEs innovation process in agrifood,
  2. Company vision and Open Innovation,
  3. How Open Innovation can effectively support innovation in SMEs?
  4. The key blocks of your Open Innovation strategy.

Interactive exercise (quiz question – multiple choice)

When engaging in Open Innovation you will share with your partners:

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