Open Innovation's Champs and Also-Rans

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These individuals have a number of responsibilities, including ensuring that outside ideas make their way into the company's innovation pipeline.

These efforts by General Mills are highly relevant because they position the company to become a preferred partner, which means getting the first peek at new technologies and ideas and, in turn, a competitive edge.

Then there's Campbell Soup (CPB). The company jumped on open innovation through its Ideas for Innovation portal earlier this year. Unfortunately, this is more like a gimmick than a serious attempt to engage customers and business partners. While I'm singling Campbell out, the truth is that many other companies are just as clueless. Here are my specific problems with Campbell:

• Its intentions are too vague and unfocused. Campbell declares that it wants "ideas for new products, packaging, marketing, and production technologies that will help us meet the needs of our consumers and customers better, faster, and more completely." Gee, that could be almost anything, couldn't it?

• The company should be turning us on, not away. Campbell says it will take three to six months to respond to a suggestion, and if it turns down your idea, you won't receive any explanation. Why not try to make it more inviting?

• The whole thing reads like an ego trip. The Campbell Web site talks only about why open innovation is good for Campbell. If the company wants help, it should at least mention how collaboration can benefit its would-be partners.

In an e-mail, a Campbell spokesman told me that the company considered the site to be only an initial step. He added that management was pleased by receiving nearly 5,000 submissions, but acknowledged that the effort was not perfect and Campbell is working on future enhancements of the site.

To become a champ and not a pretender, here are issues that you need to deal with early in the process.

First of all, you need to ask the why question. Many people believe open innovation is the Holy Grail and race out without asking why it's relevant. Open innovation works only if it aligns with the overall corporate strategy. Many companies mess up here. They simply do not have an innovation strategy.

The next step is defining what open innovation is. Innovation, and even more so open innovation, can be defined in many different ways. Companies need to know what they're after, as Procter & Gamble and General Mills have done.

Before moving on to implementation, you must remember your people. A paradigm shift like this requires that employees change their mindset and obtain new skills. The key things here are the ability to view innovation in more holistic terms and to become better networkers.

Open innovation is by no means easy. But as I said at the start, the value proposition is just too good to miss out on.

Stefan Lindegaard is a Copenhagen-based speaker, network facilitator, and adviser on open innovation and intrapreneurship. His book, The Open Innovation Revolution, will be published in May, 2010.

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