OpenUp2Innovate

Dr. Schlegel lives in Melbourne and travels regularly to Germany so he knows both cultures very well. The main difference he sees between the two cultures that relate to innovative activity is that Australians are very open to experiments. That is something that companies in Germany are reluctant to. German companies are rather very protective of their own IP. If something goes wrong, Australian companies are very open to seeing it as a lesson learned, to take something out of it and understand how to fix this. This is more cultivated in Australia than it is in Germany.

Practical advice of Dr. Schlegel for our community:

- Companies are recommended to enter the market early, develop their product in close collaboration with their customers and learn from the Australian culture by increasing failure tolerance & willingness to experiment.- Use the structural process by Gene Slowinski Want, Find, Get, Manage
as a best practice for open innovation, especially to structure and communicating your open innovation process or R&D strategy.

Key takeaways of the talk between Dr. Martin Schlegel who is the executive chair and board member of ASTN - the Australien Sports Technologies Network.

1. Australian companies accept the premise that the current problems are way bigger than only one company can solve.
   

2. An open innovation mindset is the prerequisite for sharing and collaboration beyond the supply chain
   

3. Australia is a very multicultural society there are different viewpoints and lived experiences to find that add to being able to come up with solutions that otherwise would not be accessible.
   

4. There are structural differences between Start-Ups and SMEs. The definition of a start-up is "a temporal organization in search of scalable and profitable business modules where it is all about learning."
   

5. Successful collaboration between Start-Ups and SMEs needs a facilitator to overcome the psychological barriers of SMEs to share and source knowledge with start-ups.
   

6. Open innovation is in part reflecting the behavior of start-ups in the corporate world: The most important attitude in open innovation is to understand the problem your partner is facing. This actually draws from the normal approach of testing business models that start-ups do: First understand thoroughly what the customers are facing, understand the real need and driver. Why are not more companies developing their product with the customers instead of chasing investors?
   

7. There are attitudinal differences between Australia and Germany on how to approach sports - more to learn about in this episode. Tune in!