How Integrating Open Innovation Will Help Grow Your Business

Open innovation is the concept of looking beyond your traditional organizational structure for new ways of doing things. It’s collaborative and engaging, and can help you grow your business far beyond where it may be at the moment. Open innovation means working with external stakeholders, the public, and even people already in your business that do not usually participate in the innovative aspects of your company. By opening up the marketplace of ideas, you can expand what might be an otherwise limited view to achieve success. Here’s how integrating open innovation will help to grow your business.

Sometimes, what gets a startup to a new level is entering into a strategic partnership that allows both entities to grow. If you integrate open innovation, it is more likely that you will find a beneficial partner or investor to help. By using an open innovation platform, you can share your expertise and ask for help with problems, which will get you in touch with other like-minded businesses.

Some of these will be able to offer innovative solutions that you can leverage to help your business. In other cases, you may be able to offer solutions to another company, which can drastically increase your revenue. Not only that, but with partnerships in place, you can share the risk of innovating and developing new products and services. That way, if something doesn’t work out as you’d hope, you won’t be on the hook for all of the financial fallout.

By sharing expertise, your business can gain relevancy and a solid reputation in your sector. The more your profile grows, the more investors will be looking at you as a solid place to put their money. Sometimes all you need is a cash infusion to help develop new ideas into something you can put to market.

Get Products to Market Faster

Developing a new product or service isn’t just a matter of coming up with an idea, and then selling it. There is a lot that has to happen in between. The longer it takes, the more you are bleeding cash waiting to reap the revenue benefits. Traditionally, you need to plan how to create the product, hire someone to get it done, purchase any necessary equipment, and provide training in relation to that product to anyone who needs it.

With open innovation, you can find a willing partner who already has the infrastructure in place to get the product made and to market faster. Not only that, but through an open innovation platform you can get a wide range of viewpoints and ideas to better develop your product quickly. In normal circumstances, after someone comes up with an idea, it may take a long time for the particulars to go through everyone in the chain of command before approval. Getting products to market quickly and affordably means less of an investment in time and money before you can start to see revenue benefits.

Marketing

You can’t grow your business without effective marketing. It might surprise you to learn that embracing open innovation will give your marketing efforts a boost. For instance, you can reach outside to third parties for help with strategies, concepts, and practical tasks. Need a new logo? You can use a logo maker platform to have one created for you. Running a business is time consuming enough, so focusing on marketing can be difficult. Through open innovation you can have others help with your marketing, while not paying the full price of hiring a marketing agency.

When you have multiple stakeholders working with you, you can have better access to the data you need to be more efficient with your marketing. You can use that data to better target potential customers, and figure out what’s working and what isn’t. Also, through open innovation, there is more of a chance of going viral when you have several other interested stakeholders sharing your materials and promoting your business.

Access to Experts

If you’re a recent startup and running on a shoestring, making the choice to invest in growth is difficult. It’s even harder if you aren’t exactly sure how to proceed. Open innovation means that your ideas, concepts, and strategies do not have to come from your internal team. There is a world of experts out there who know what you are going through, and who can help. Why rely on your own knowledge of a technology, or a strategy, when you can go directly to someone with more experience and a deeper understanding than you have? You never have to feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. There are people out there who can help. You just have to reach out.

Compete Against the Big Guys

One of the amazing things about open innovation is that it is another way in which the digital world is allowing smaller companies to compete against the big guys. Never before has everyone had access to the same technologies and services that large companies also use. In the past, the big companies could buy out a smaller company and use their products for themselves. However, more startups are finding it profitable to keep their services available for all, as opposed to becoming proprietary of a larger entity. Not only that, but a small company can create a de facto R&D division by using open innovation, when in the past they had to rely on their internal team. The playing field has never been more level, and startups are using open innovation to not just compete, but thrive against larger competition.

Never before has so much information and expertise been available to so many. Growing your business means moving beyond your current restraints and reaching a new level of revenue and visibility. Embracing open innovation is not just helpful to your business, but in a crowded marketplace it is an absolute necessity. If you aren’t being creative and innovative, then you will find that your business will fall behind your competition. Try out some open innovation platforms and find out how they can help you succeed.