OpenUp2Innovate

EP1: Open Innovation and Digitalization

Last week, Aurelia already gave you some insight on this series and open innovation, but today we will dig a little bit deeper into the topic on digitalization itself and I will explain to you how digitalization can be used to drive open innovation.

We will give you some advice on how open innovation can help to drive the transformation.

Open Innovation: accessing external knowledge to find solutions for pressing problems. In a business context open innovation means to use inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation. As a consequence the organization's boundaries become permeable, what allows to combine the company resources with the external co-operators. For example you can get access to important knowledge though experts. Moreover, companies can reduce costs and bring innovations to market more quickly.

How can open innovation help to support digital transformations? The explanation is based on these four key elements.

1.  Determine your strategy

2.  Developing the organisational culture

3.  Developing the right mindset

4.  Empowering your employees 

Open Innovation Tool: Adobe Kickbox

This episode was based on the blogpost from Tatjana Juskov; October 13th, 2020: How to Use Digital Transformation to Drive Open Innovation which was originally posted on a blog of the RMIT University in collaboration with Geoffrey Mann. Here is the link to the original publication*

*Engelsberger, A., Juskov T. and Mann, G. (2020), 'How to Use Digital Transformation to Drive Open Innovation'