Open Innovation - The ABC of Openness?!

Did you already know that you could find the solution to your innovation problem outside your company? No? Then you should definitely read the following interview with Dr. Tanja Jovanovic (Head of Technology and Innovation Management at Bayern Innovativ GmbH) and Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr (Managing Director of JOSEPHS GmbH) until the end.

Tanja and Benedikt, what does open innovation mean to you?

Dr. Tanja Jovanovic: For me, open innovation means that innovation processes do not end at the boundaries of the company or individual departments, but that various external players are also involved.

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: Yes, that is also the most relevant point for me: opening up innovation processes to third parties. That can be completely different people. And for that, you have to open yourself up. By that, I mean that you have to establish an appropriate corporate culture in order to live and breathe the early display of innovations. At JOSEPHS, we do this by making solutions as tangible as possible. We do this by telling a story that is consistent in itself. That shows where you want to go and thus inspires other people to go along on this path in order to launch successful products and services at the end of the day.

Why should companies practice open innovation, Tanja?

Dr. Tanja Jovanovic: In my view, there is no way around open innovation. Whereas in the past people thought strongly in silos (e.g. departments), today thinking outside the box is a crucial success factor and the key to new ideas. We see a high competitive pressure, especially in today's world: the pressure to act on new markets, to produce more cost-effectively, to be more effective than other companies, etc.. And for this it is just important to realize that you do not have to master these challenges alone and that the integration of external know-how is extremely important. You can share costs and risks and thus also increase your knowledge of customers, markets and technologies.

Does that apply to companies of any size and in any industry, Benedikt?

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: In principle, yes. But you have to differentiate here. For example, digitization makes it possible to evaluate data from machines in various industries. For the machine builder, this data may not be valuable at all. But if, for example, a software company understands something about data itself and new algorithms, opportunities arise here to develop better products. So the result is hybrid value creation. And this point is of course relevant for companies of various sizes - even for SMEs.

How do I start practicing open innovation as an entrepreneur?

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: The first steps are for the company management to commit to wanting to open up and to allow employees to also talk about what concerns them with regard to open innovation. This can be, for example, the following topics:

• With which activities are you currently predominantly engaged?
• Which sales activities do you pursue?
• How do you design your research and development activities?

Innovation also arises outside the research and development department. And only through the fact that people interact with each other, innovations arise, but then again can only be brought to full development through the support of management.

How do you then proceed with Open Innovation?

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: You first define a holistic process. This goes from an ideational generation to an ideational selection to a prototyping of ideas. By prototyping, I mean first of all presenting or explaining my idea in order to convince potential suppliers, for example, followed by implementation. This is actually the very generic open innovation process, and you can only really make it work with the appropriate culture. And these topics are so intrinsically important that you don't just start at the structure, process or contract level, but really come from the employee.

Can you explain this opening up to customers and suppliers in more detail, Benedikt?

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: We call this innovation marketing. With it, you show what you can do and tell your story. If I say, for example, as a company, I now want to build a machine with artificial intelligence, then I could simply build an expensive machine and additionally pay many programmers to equip this machine with artificial intelligence . In this context, it makes much more sense to invest in a prototype and communicate your vision to convince potential external partners to share a common goal. This allows you to make a push without taking too much risk.

Is there some kind of method construction kit in the open innovation process, Tanja?

Dr. Tanja Jovanovic: Yes, there are different methods. What Ben has just explained can be summarized under the term cooperation. That is, the joint user-oriented development of solutions and ideas by involving external customers, suppliers and other partners in the development process. But there is also the possibility to start smaller by engaging in cluster - and networking activities or specifically approaching start-ups . Start-ups are, after all, known for being relatively agile on the move and developing quickly. This is a competence that larger companies can definitely benefit from. In addition, large corporations can use digital platforms, for example, to collect ideas or launch competitions. In this way, problems and ideas can be discussed and advanced as a community.

That sounds like Silicon Valley. How does it look then with it with us in Bavaria, Benedikt?

Dr. Benedikt Höckmayr: With this estimate you are correct, Kord. Innovation competitions are of course focused on getting end users to participate in something. And Silicon Valley therefore works very well, because here you scale the word. But that scalability only exists if you also have products and services that are focused on the end consumer. For example, mobility services like Uber focus very clearly on what people are up to on the road.

Of course, in our industrial landscape, we are much more responsible in the B2B area, i.e. supplier area. Here there are many hidden champions and a very different kind of complexity, value creation and innovation. That's why I would like to emphasize at this point that open innovation does not mean simply getting ideas from outside. An idea is far from being an innovation. An idea is if then an invention and only when an idea reaches market maturity and addresses a certain customer group do we speak of an innovation. To make an idea work, you always need several players. And these actors, you can find at Bayern Innovativ in the cluster and network activities, in the form of start-ups at ZOLLHOF and in the form of prototyping with us at JOSEPHS.

On which specific projects are you currently working?

Dr. Tanja Jovanovic: We are currently developing a kind of signpost as part of a transfer project. This should serve to better connect science and industry. SMEs in particular should also use this service to actively integrate themselves into this process and benefit from the research results. I would also like to emphasize that for us, innovation does not end at the state border of Bavaria, even though we carry the Free State in our company name Bayern Innovativ. That is why, for example, we offer the Enterprise Europe Network , a large consortium that is very active in Europe-wide partner activities and knowledge transfer.

In addition, together with the JOSEPHS, we have designed a workshop for SMEs in which we explain open innovation in an application-oriented manner. For this, we will work with different models and schemes, among others. The workshop will take place on December 01, 2020 in Nuremberg . Detail

The interview was conducted by Dr. Kord Pannkoke, Head of Business Development at Bayern Innovativ GmbH.

Listen to the full interview as a podcast: