Private & bespoke open innovation platforms are fully owned and dedicated to a single company, and can be located on domain names like innovatebrand.com or on sub-domain names like innovate.brand.com.
Shared open innovation platforms are owned by third parties and are shared by many companies. Companies can have presence at locations like sharedplatform.com/brand.
While the initial phase of open innovation focused on shared platforms because of speed and low cost, we believe that the private & bespoke platforms will start catching up.
Here is why:
Private platforms have better ROI
Shared platforms are initially more affordable but private & bespoke platforms offer better ROI
Shared platforms can be cheaper in the short term because they distribute their cost over many clients. However, that cost is not an investment in your company, but in the shared platform owned by a third party.
Private & bespoke platforms can cost more in the short term, but this is an investment in your company which pays off in innovation, community, marketing, brand equity, sales metrics.
Private & bespoke platforms are more innovative
Private & bespoke platforms can be innovated without limitations
Shared platforms offer a lowest common denominator features to all clients. This results in platform interface that uses mostly text forms. There are no features specific to a single brand or product. Also, shared platforms owners prioritize their sales & marketing innovation, while they keep the interrace in status quo.
Private & bespoke platforms can constantly release new features to offer more value to your company and innovators. They are unlimited in flexibility to add new features because there is only one goal – make your company successful. For example, 3D and AI require highly specific features.
Private & bespoke platforms are fully bespoke
Shared platforms do not offer customizations, private & bespoke platforms offer unlimited bespoke development
Shared platforms can not be customized and therefore are limiting innovation and brand growth of your company. For your company to cover only a part of its needs, it must buy presence on many shared platforms.
Private & bespoke platforms can be customized without limits. They can be highly creative and innovative to best present the brand, products, and build and engage all possible communities.
Private & bespoke platforms build your community
With shared platforms, companies build someone else’s community, with private & bespoke platforms, they build their own community
The main pitch of shared platforms is access to their large communities. But when companies use shared platforms, especially big brands, they are building the communities of the shared platform instead of their own. Some big brands spent more than a decade building communities for shared platforms with their brand equity and marketing budgets. In the same time they could have built their own innovator community on a private & bespoke platform of their own.
Private & bespoke platforms need to start from zero, but in time they can build a strong and diverse innovator community.
Private & bespoke platforms make you more competitive
On shared platforms you are also promoting your competitors
Shared platforms aim to get as many clients as possible, including your competitors. In such case your competitors share your community and features, and this reduces your uniqueness and competitiveness.
Private & bespoke platforms are much harder for competitors to copy, and therefore promote your company uniqueness.
Employee engagement is higher with private & bespoke platforms
Private & bespoke platforms feel “closer to home” for employees.
One of the main obstacles in shared platforms is that internal innovators (employees) are not very engaged to share their challenges on shared platforms. To them it appears as an external project owned by a third party.
Private & bespoke platforms are much “closer to home”, are part of the ecosystem of your company, and can engage employees in creating challenges and in innovating much more.
Private & bespoke platforms offer unlimited range of solutions
Private & bespoke platforms are not limited by focus and can solve all possible company issues
Shared platforms have focused communities that can be effective for only few solutions, and can actually deter many other solutions.
Private & bespoke platforms, because they are flexible and focused on your entire company success, can attract a wide range of innovators and solutions. For example, they can attract employees, customers, partners, and experts from unexpected fields.
Private & bespoke platforms can be integrated in sales, marketing, management
For open innovation to grow it is must be included in all company departments, projects, teams, processes.
Shared platforms offer no integration. They are an external tool with a reduced interface, with their own metrics and rules. They can not be connected to a CRM, newsletter, innovation tools, databases, data sharing, or anything else.
Private & bespoke platforms can be deeply integrated in sales, customer support, internal tools, data sharing, bringing open innovation to the entire ecosystem of your company. They can include features that offer fully custom management and analytics, facilitating open innovation rapid growth.
Lego Ideas – a great example of a private & bespoke open innovation platform
Lego Ideas demonstrates all of the benefits of a private & bespoke platform. It is fully integrated in the Lego ecosystem, business model, brand, management, sales, marketing. Lego took time to gradually build the most successful open community in toy design, outsourcing a substantial part of their product design to it. No shared platform would ever come close to this kind of success.
Start with OPEN OS
A perfect open innovation strategy should be based on a well developed private & bespoke platform as a foundation supported by a curated ecosystem of niche shared platforms and a progressive marketing and innovation plan.
While shared platforms were promoted as a tool for open innovation, they were in fact a solution for limited budgets and lack of design, development, and marketing resources that a private & bespoke platform needs.
OPEN OS offers a private & bespoke platform solution with a very fast low cost setup and maintenance. Inspired by our decades long experience in e-commerce and SaaS design and development, we help companies build private & bespoke open innovation platforms that promote their brands, grow their communities, engage employees, and improve sales, marketing, and innovation.
To use OPEN OS in building your private platform email Andrea at andrea@openinnovation.me.
PS We also have a shared platform at openinnovation.me :)
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