Five Innovation Rules
An article on the Chicago Tribune website listed “Five Innovation Rules.” One of the key rules is “Openness Trumps Secrecy.” The article cites Cisco which rather than maintaining a large R&D effort, scanned the world for smart technology developed by other companies. Often, these were startups formed by engineers at companies like Lucent, and Cisco would partner with them, invest in them or buy then outright. That, in essence, is the reasoning behind open innovation. No matter how innovative your organization is, most of the smartest ideas are going to be developed somewhere else. So, while protecting proprietary information remains important, you need to make sure that you don’t close yourself off.
Click here to read the full article.