In a series of postings, we introduce some key figures and results from
our 2013
OIA Study – A Market Report & Comparison of more than 160 Open Innovation Accelerators (OIAs)
-- intermediaries, brokers, platforms, and consultancies for open innovation
and customer co-creation.
OIAs build on the involvement of
a community. OIAs connect clients through their communities with a
variety of external actors, most of them are new and unknown to the client
(this "looking out of the box" is exactly the value of open
innovation).
OIA services differ significantly regarding their community composition. In average, we find that OIAs have an existing pool of participants (their "community") of 20,000 members. But OIAs specializing on ideation or technical contests often have community of more than 100,000 members.
The general level of expertise of the community
significantly differs among the different services. OIAs offering technical
search services in form of technology scouting, for example, have access to
high level expert communities, while OIAs focusing on ideation and concept
generation often have a broad, very heterogeneous community of "average"
consumers.
From this pool, about 200 members finally join a particular project (in the case of contests, this number is 300). Again methodological aspects of the services influence the total participant number. Workshops have a natural limit for participants to be able to generate meaningful output.
To join the pool of
participants, prospective participants have to accept general terms and
conditions, but in general do sign not a formal contract. This is a core
difference of open innovation via OIAs compared to traditional forms of R&D
networks or alliances.
Our study clearly
shows that managers have to take large care when selecting an OIA.T the
composition in terms of expertise and heterogeneity of the community offered by
different OIAs is very heterogeneous and demands special attention – in the
end, the task have to fit the community.
We find a general focus on applied sciences. Yet expertise background is influenced by project targets. Services like technical search involve individuals with expertise preferable in natural and applied sciences and less in social sciences or arts. On the contrary community members for contests, e.g., design contests, or market search are characterized by experience in the field of arts or social sciences. Similar to the characteristic by background of expertise is the characteristic by the level of expertise. Problem solving projects demand a higher expert level than projects focusing on consumer insights.
THIS IS THE LAST POST OF SELECTED FINDINGS FROM THE OIA 2013 STUDY.
Find all earlier postings here.
For the full picture, refer to The Market for Open Innovation: The 2013 RWTH Open Innovation Accelerator Survey, with many more details, authored by Kathleen Diener & Frank Piller, 2nd edition, May 2013. Lulu Publishing: Raleigh, USA
Check all options how to get the study at study.open-innovation.com
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