Have you ever worked in a company where the boss or your manager hoards information? Unfortunately this is not all that uncommon. The old saying goes that “Knowledge is Power”, and those of us that are insecure in our abilities or feel threatened by those around us try to remain in control by hoarding information.
The question is: what’s your modus operandi?
Many businesses have embraced innovation and opportunity capture as an essential business tool to survive and win in these days of ever increasing information flow, market intelligence, and speed to market. There are many innovation/opportunity models including that of so called “Open Innovation”, and what is best described as internal or “Closed Innovation”.
Closed Innovation
In this case the company has all its innovation endeavours conducted and held tightly within, there is little sharing of knowledge and little interest in eliciting the assistance of outsiders to enhance their innovation initiative. Indeed the managers of these tightly controlled programs use their skills to drive the innovation program. Unfortunately, they may be missing a lot.
Open Innovation
In this case, though the business remains in control of its destiny and direction it enhances its innovation initiative by making connections to a seemingly disparate groups of outsiders and companies all looking to expand their horizons by building on combined know how.
These days, there are so many diverse technologies and specialties that it is simply impossible to have a grasp on what is happening on all fronts, thus the connected model has great merit.
Connecting the Dots
One of the great skills of clever entrepreneurs and innovators is to see the linkages between seemingly unrelated issues. This is where in the open innovation model, broadly skilled technologists and open minded thinkers come to the fore.
There is an endless list of seemingly unrelated disciplines that can be connected with an open innovation approach that encourages a wide search horizon.
Indeed this is why the new paradigm of “Opportunity Capture” is now emerging as the preferred approach to the more narrow discipline of traditional innovation.
What’s the Message
Managers in the open innovation space do not need to be great technologists, as perhaps with the closed model. Instead they need to be great networkers, able to build bridges between people and companies. This is quite a different skills set to that of the managers operating in the closed model.
Thus, stay open minded, expand your horizons and embrace the art of formal opportunity search, where the reach is unlimited.