“Compete or cooperate” is one of the key management decisions, like “make or buy”. Companies can both compete or cooperate with everyone – customers, employees, partners, distributors, investors – and managers must know which is a better option. They should compete only when there is no possibility to cooperate.
Unfortunately, many managers decide to compete by default. This makes everything into a conflict and misses cooperation opportunities. Making a new product will be a competition with customers. Making new distribution channel will be a competition with distributors. Making a new business model will be a competition with investors.
This competitive attitude is the result of a lack of methods and tools that provide alternatives. Historically it was challenging to make change without competition and conflict. Today open innovation offers an alternative.
By including stakeholders in the innovation process, asking for their opinions and ideas, sharing some of the decisions with them, competition will be drastically reduced. Stakeholders – customers, partners, distributors, investors – will not be competitors, enemies or the changes, but participants in the change.
Competition was a dominant method because there were no alternatives. Today, open innovation offers a very simple alternative, and it is easy for companies to switch from forcing their internal ideas onto everyone else to making ideas together with everyone else. Work together, instead of fighting.
To start using open innovation email Andrea at andrea@openinnovation.me.
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