9 Tips for Open Innovation Success

The Conference on Social Product Development & Co-Creation brought together several big names from the crowdsourcing and open innovation field. From all the great presentations today, we’ve extracted several great tips for managing a successful open innovation project.

If you’re in a company today that’s thinking about open innovation, get busy. Not only are enterprise companies using open innovation, but you’re competing against companies that are built from the ground up on open innovation.
David Ritter, CTO of Innocentive

John Rogers, CEO of Local Motors, suggests if you’re going to give your crowd money, you need to be able to give people tools at the same time you give them money. Local Motors gives users tools to understand why what they’re co-creating is better.

Toby Daniels, founder of Social Media Week and Crowdcentric, illustrated three key principles to consider with open innovation campaigns.

1. Qualify your crowd –  Core leadership, influencers, and community
2. Incentivize participants – Financial, recognition, relationships, and education
3. Don’t ignore the last hurdle (end goal) – Great ideas without execution are useless

David Ritter, CTO of Innocentive, is adamant that it’s better to structure your challenges than to open your suggestion box to the world. Ritter drills in the importance of asking structured questions by adding that if you ask a better question, you’ll get a better answer.

John Winsor, CEO of Victors & Spoils, states that compensation is only the fourth important reason why V&S crowds participate. The top 3 are:

1. Crowds want to work on interesting briefs
2. Crowds want to try new things
3. Crowds want to work with great talent

Let us know if you’ve used these tips or have tips of your own.