I mentioned the bbq I went to this past weekend in a prior post, but I forgot to post a great image I captured when we were leaving. It is one of NYC’s famous hot dog stands being hitched up to the owner’s BMW as he closes up shop for the day. You have to love NYC.
Open innovation is an exciting concept and many corporations have jumped onto the bandwagon hoping to collect ideas from their employees, customers, suppliers, etc. But ideas alone are not enough. Like a$$holes, everyone has an idea.
Frank Piller, an Aachen University (Germany) professor and MIT researcher spoke about the pitfalls of this when discussing BMW’s innovation efforts.
He comments about BMW, “Companies are very good at creating platforms for external input; but they’re very bad at using this input. BMW gets a thousand good ideas each year. Maybe they use one every two years.”
So while creating a better mousetrap to collect ideas and getting thousands of ideas may seem like progress, if none of them are executed upon, then this is just senseless activity. Collecting ideas via your open innovation portal is just the start but if the processes, incentives and systems to turn these ideas into reality is not in place, then open innovation efforts may just be a waste of time.
