Open innovation wp fv

Envisioning Open
Innovation in Destinations
<<TOURISM 3.0 WHITEPAPER SERIES >>
1. Open Innovation: Key concepts and ideas 2
2. Approaches to Open Innovation 4
3. Development strategies for destinations 9
4. Open innovation strategies for different kinds of outcomes 24
5. Implementation 30
CONTENTS
Jordi Pera Segarra
Envisioning Tourism 3.0 CEO
February 2020

ENVISIONING OPEN INNOVATION IN DESTINATIONS
w w w . e n v i s i o n i n g t o u r i s m . c o m 2
1. Open Innovation: Key concepts and ideas
Innovation is changing its paradigm. It will no longer take place exclusively within the
organizations, but rather be the result of the collaborative efforts between the organizations’
human resources and expert innovators external to these organizations. This paradigm shift
has already taken place in many business sectors, but in others it is still yet to come, or is just
beginning, as is the case regarding tourism destinations.
What is Open Innovation? It refers to the practice of integrating contributors from outside
the organization in the innovation processes, not only in the stage of generating ideas but
potentially in all the innovation stages. To be considered Open Innovation, the contribution of
the outside innovators must be significant. Open Innovation can be used for all sorts of outputs,
such as products, processes, marketing contents, business model innovation, etc.
With Open Innovation, up to 80% of the innovation-related activities may end up being carried
out externally. The internal staff are left with the roles of project dissection, orchestration and
reassembly, as well as monitoring and evaluating the outsourced innovation activities. The
judgement-based roles of hypothesis generation and design should preferably be carried out
externally, as this is likely to result in a much broader range of research options. It is then up
to the internal staff to select and evaluate all these options.
1.1 Why Open Innovation?
Since innovation is a key factor to competitiveness, having an innovation strategy is key to
improving and sustaining competitiveness. Open Innovation is the best innovation strategy to
leverage the collective intelligence and creativity from the stakeholder system, which in the
case of Destinations 3.0, especially contributes to bringing in expertise, knowledge and new
ideas at no cost in many cases. As has been explained in previous White Papers, non-profit
organizations have a unique power to foster free contribution, as do mission-driven
organizations, such as Destinations 3.0.
Open Innovation reflects a new open mindset to carry out innovation, as long as it takes
advantage of all the potential collaborators available in the stakeholder system and their will to
contribute. This contribution may be driven through crowdsourcing, co-creation, collaborative
innovation, etc. but what really matters is that the innovation processes integrate the insights,
know-how and creativity from different agents, so as to enrich the innovative concept and
make it more suitable for all types of stakeholders to use directly or indirectly once
implemented.
Apart from bringing in a much wider variety of expertise and innovative approaches, Open
Innovation outperforms traditional “closed” innovation by better managing diversity, as well as
reducing risks and costs.
Firstly, opening the innovation process to a greater diversity of innovators increases the
likelihood of bringing in a greater variety of innovation approaches to tackle the challenges. It
will most probably yield better solutions in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and profitability,
as well as shortening the innovation process. Leveraging diverse perspectives and approaches
is the core of the Open Innovation practice.

Secondly, with regards to risk-sharing, the financial risk has to be considered, i.e. paying for
something without assured return, technical risks, and execution risks concerning feasible
ideas but which have not been developed successfully. In Open Innovation, these risks are
shared with the contributors, some of which are willing to take high risks, while other
innovators’ skills and expertise allow them to tackle the innovation challenge at a lower risk. In
some Open Innovation models, the innovation assignments are chosen by the innovators
themselves, who have greater expertise than anyone regarding their innovative capabilities.
They are therefore able to take the risk of working with a fee pattern based on results.
Finally, the innovation marketplaces are lowering the costs of the searching for experts and
contracting, by developing standardized agreements including intellectual property issues. All
in all, they make the process much more efficient and cost-effective. The faster and more
effective the matching of assignments and innovators, the greater the reduction of the
innovation cycle which thus increases the expected profitability and paves the way to an “eBay
of Innovation”. It is necessary to note that the Open Innovation system is most likely to be
applicable only in the case of large destination management organization and government
bodies, though simplified structures could also be designed for smaller organizations.
1.2 Key concepts and ideas
There are some concepts related to Open Innovation which must be defined precisely in order
to properly understand some of the coming explanations.
Crowdsourcing is – according to Wikipedia – “the act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally
performed by an employee or contractor, to a large group of people or community through an
open call”. It may be considered as a tool for organizations to obtain external inputs in their
open innovation process. Crowdsourcing can help organizations collect ideas, and test these
ideas prior to developing them into products or services.
Co-creation refers to the process of collaborative creation of a product or service between the
company and the customers. The participation of customers is the main difference that sets it
apart from Open Innovation. Some customers want to play an active role in the product
experience from the outset, in the design stage, in order to obtain a more and better
personalized product or service that satisfies their needs and aspirations.
User-driven innovation is a technique which consists of observing the product or service
during its use in order to obtain valuable insights for its improvement. Unlike in co-creation,
the users or customers play a passive role in the process, as they are observed but not asked
to contribute with their ideas in the innovation process.
Ecosystem is the network of innovative contributors encompassing all the potential categories,
and including all types of stakeholders: from suppliers to clients, and from government-
supported bodies and initiatives to competitors. Building a cooperative and innovative culture
throughout the ecosystem is a key factor for the success of the Open Innovation system.
Collaborative innovation refers to the innovation practice consisting of the collaboration
between businesses from different sectors which combine their expertise to create and develop
new products, services or processes. This is like a joint-venture deal with selected partners, in
which each partner has to contribute with its expertise in developing innovative solutions.

Seekers and Solvers. In an Open Innovation system there may be businesses and many
types of organizations looking for solutions to their challenges. They are called the ¨Seekers¨.
On the other side of the platform is a large pool of innovators and experts who are expected to
propose solutions to the challenges presented by the Seekers. These innovators and experts
are the ¨Solvers¨. These terms are frequently used throughout this White Paper.
Open innovation platform is the hub where innovators are called to be registered and to
sign up for related events. In the case of non-professional contributors, it is the place to
submit content or ideas, whereas in the case of professional contributors this becomes an
essential tool, as the innovation challenges for professionals are fully managed through this
platform and entail more complex procedures than the non-professional ones.
2. Approaches to Open Innovation
Open Innovation may be carried out in many different ways, depending on the goals and the
available resources. There are two main approaches: challenge-driven innovation and social
media, although other examples are also presented here.
2.1 Challenge Driven Innovation (CDI)
According to Innocentive – leading Open Innovation platform –, “Challenge Driven Innovation
is an innovation framework that accelerates traditional innovation outcomes by leveraging
open innovation and crowdsourcing along with defined methodology, process, and tools to help
organizations develop and implement actionable solutions to their key problems, opportunities,
and challenges”. What sets CDI apart from other methods is that the innovation efforts are
focused on a well-defined challenge, problem or innovation goal. Once the challenge is
formulated, it may be announced (crowdsourcing) through one or many different channels.
There are up to three types of innovation channels, according to Innocentive:
 Internal Channels, reaching the internal staff of the organization
 Invitational Channels, reaching select groups of partners (suppliers, customers, etc.)
 External Channels, reaching the public communities of experts and innovators
The nature of the challenge will determine if it is appropriate to communicate it through one or
many channels at a time. According to Bingham and Spradlin – authors of The Open
Innovation Marketplace –, the Challenge Driven Innovation method establishes seven stages:
1) Idea gathering: listing all the ideas available in order to select the most interesting ones
2) Filtering: selecting the most suitable projects in accordance with the business capabilities
3) Dissection: decomposition of every project into modules, each of which is a challenge
4) Channel distribution: assignation of every module or challenge to one or more channels
5) Evaluation and confirmation: the reception and evaluation of the delivered assignments
6) Assembly and integration: the reassembling of the modules into marketable projects
7) Launch: market launch of the product or service
The focus of the innovation efforts in a specific challenge is what makes this framework
outperform others, usually characterized by dispersed attention and effort diversification.
Further, the precise formulation of the challenge is what makes the method especially efficient.
The challenge has to specify the need, the problem, success criteria (KPIs) as well as establish
the inducements. It should also anticipate the target audience and the conditions to engage
the target contributors. So far, this framework has been used for technological innovations,
but it is applicable to other types of innovation, namely product or business model innovation.

Integrating the CDI approach into the organization as a common practice is also likely to
provide a better understanding of the business strategy and goals to the stakeholders, thus
fostering a mindset shift towards a more strategic and goal-oriented organisational culture.
These are called Challenge Driven Enterprises (CDE), as they understand that challenges are
actually the most effective and efficient way to organize work and achieve the desired results.
CDE organizations are characterized by three key competencies and behaviors:
 Open Business Model: focus on the core competencies and mission, while orchestrating and
empowering stakeholder networks to contribute in overcoming the business challenges.
Needless to say that vision and open mindset are a must, as the most ambitious innovations
need to question some of the deepest assumed paradigms and beliefs.
 Talent management: understand the importance of engaging not only employees but also
outsider contributors to attain and sustain competitiveness through constant innovation.
Anticipating the organizations’ needs, identifying the talent pools, reaching and engaging
them requires vision, focus, agility and flexibility, at the very least.
 Challenge culture: employees and external stakeholders embrace innovation challenges as
the key drivers to business success, caring about getting problems solved with transparency,
project monitoring, and incentive systems aligned with contribution and results, while politics,
bureaucracy and “not-invented here syndrome” are left apart.
When defining and prioritizing the innovation challenges, it is essential to understand the gap
between the service provided and the customer’s desired outcomes, the importance of every
attribute to deliver the desired outcome, and the satisfaction assessment about each attribute
of the service. The most likely successful innovations stay in the attributes assessed as most
important which at the same time have an average or low satisfaction assessment.
2.2 Open innovation through social media
Apart from the most advanced approach (CDI), there is a second one, especially suitable for
low budget cases, or just to get a first Open Innovation experience before tackling more
ambitious challenges: open innovation through social media platforms. The idea can be just as
simple as asking questions and getting feedback from your customers and other stakeholders.
But this simple idea entails a change of paradigm: not using social media just to gain
awareness and reputation by getting people to talk about your brand positively, but getting
also other kinds of information that are not so interesting to spread throughout the social
networks, but which are critical for the product or service improvement. These could be:
 Following up a query posed by a client to ensure that the issue has been solved, showing
empathy and trying also to find out the root of the problem and to better understand
the needs of the customer. Asking not only “what” but also “why”. This could also be done
with a feedback form, and is a way to identify opportunities for improvement and innovation.
 Asking the customers about several key attributes of the service, not just to make a
quantitative assessment, but rather as an open question searching for qualitative insights
that will drive the marketing team towards key ideas for improvement. However, as we will
see later, it is convenient to contrast ideas with the stakeholders before going ahead.
 Asking the customers for new ideas to improve or better market the product or service, in
the shape of a contest or just as a next step when they are already engaged in one of the
aforementioned conversations. Engaged customers like to be listened to so that they can
share their opinions and ideas, and that these can be taken onboard.

 Testing prototyped ideas with customers in order to collect their input. As it is usually
done through market research institutes – not necessarily by substituting them, but
complementing their services –, but in a much cheaper and faster way. It is always
interesting to listen to the engaged customers’ opinions to the new product ideas before
being launched on the market.
 Asking about the kinds of uses given to the product or service, to discover new demand
segments and better tailor the product to every need or use (segment). In some cases this
could lead to the development of new product categories and new markets, the dream of
most marketing innovators.
All these uses are actually bridging qualitative research and brainstorming, market intelligence
and innovation, and this is how it always should be in order to better meet market demands
and to catch market opportunities. To put this into practice, any social media platform that
allows text, image and video is suitable for this purpose. The social media platform used for
this purpose should be some of the same used for marketing purposes, where customers are
already engaged with the brand. Furthermore, it is necessary to train the social media team in
listening (showing empathy) and qualitative research skills. It is actually highly recommended
to integrate qualitative research and innovation team members into the social media
marketing team regularly to exchange ideas and provide practical training.
There are three main approaches to make that work:
Goal-oriented open call to action. Whenever there are special needs that require
substantial participation (more than would be expected from the ongoing conversations), it
may be convenient to organize a call to action in the shape of a contest, with rewards for the
best contributors. To avoid providing contributors’ insights to the competitors, it is
recommendable that participants send their insights in a way that is not visible to anybody else.
Goal-oriented short-listed call to action. It is convenient to control the followers whose
opinion and ideas are more thoughtful and creative in order to create a short list of
participants for some open innovation events where the issue is more confidential (i.e. should
not be viewed by competitors). When there are special needs which are considered confidential
or which require a few but well elaborated insights, a short-listed call to action may be the best
solution.
Focus group. This is a method frequently used for qualitative research consisting of a group
discussion led by a professional with a sample of participants belonging to a specific type of
customer segment or stakeholder group. This is to make them talk about critical issues and
obtain qualitative insights to understand their way of thinking. Focus groups can also be
carried out on social media platforms, as long as the group is private. The focus group
discussions should be recorded.
Ongoing conversation. This consists of taking advantage of the ongoing conversations about
the product or the brand to gain further insight for innovation purposes. It is interesting to
introduce at least two members of the social media team (as anonymous customers) playing
different customer roles, to the conversation – e.g. the satisfied & positive and the critical – to
invigorate the conversation and encourage others to participate in the discussion.
For the “Ongoing conversation” it is convenient to define protocols for dealing with the
discussion participants, setting a sequential order for the issues to deal with: “Following up
queries”, asking about “kinds of uses”, “attribute assessment”, and asking for ideas.

2.3 Other approaches to open innovation
Apart from these two approaches, there are a number of case studies where open innovation
has been carried out in many different ways.
Dell launched IdeaStorm program, where anyone could post ideas related to the computer
business, as well as vote, comment about them, and see them being implemented in some
cases. My Starbucks Idea program follows the same pattern. They both use www.digg.com
to vote for ideas, although the most voted ideas create bias by overshadowing the other ideas.
Toyota’s approach to open innovation is open for their employees only, who are supposed to
know where the main points for improvement are and how feasible every idea can be. As a
result of that, close to 95% of over 1.000.000 ideas are implemented every year.
Cisco launched its I-Prize competition, which resulted in them collecting over 1200 ideas
from all over the world. The ideas were then filtered according to their adequacy, technical
feasibility and financial viability, and the best 40 ideas were assigned a mentor to turn them
into a realistic business plan. Afterwards, more filters were applied till choosing one winner.
IBM’s Innovation Jam was the first of its kind in 2001, and has been repeated every year
since then, engaging over 150.000 employees and stakeholders – employees’ relatives, clients,
partners and university researchers – from all over the world during three days, 24 hours per
day. It provided participants with a sense of empowerment and the feeling of being listened to
and having a certain engagement with the brand. It was structured in different innovation
fields or categories related to specific purposes, where contributors felt free to brainstorm and
discuss all the ideas in a forum or wiki platform. It was also structured in two phases:
 Phase #1. IBM posted information providing explanations on key technologies about which
contributors where expected to provide ideas on new purposes, improvement ideas, new
concept ideas, etc. All ideas were considered and accepted to go through the filtering, which
was carried out by 50 IBM executives, in order to select the best 31 ideas for the 2nd
phase.
 Phase #2. The second phase was to refine the ideas selected in the first phase, and
contributors were given the option to work on a business plan related to every idea. However,
it was hard to get contributors to refine rather than bring in new unrelated ideas. In 2008,
this was restricted to a few participants, provided with real-time chat sites.
After the second phase, another 50 IBM executives selected the ideas that were considered
more likely to become profitable businesses. Latter editions reduced the Jam to just one 72
hour phase, given that participation in the second phase had not met expectations. There are
many lessons and achievements to take out of this experience:
 Some of the ideas had been discussed before without any positive result, but by putting them
again on the table, new approaches were identified and collected.
 Collecting both big and small ideas was profitable as many small ones were complementary
with the bigger ones, and so their combination made them better.
 Considering all the ideas before the first filtering helped executives think out of the box and
inspired their visions of new products, improvements, and business units.
 It helped leverage many interesting ideas from people throughout the organization that had
not been listened to, and provided them with funding for idea development.
This innovation model is used for innovation processes in many companies worldwide, through
online platforms or in a corporate intranet. This model is also called Crude Crowdsourcing.

The so-called Smart Crowdsourcing sets itself apart from previous crowdsourcing by limiting
the number of participants, filtering them by qualitative criteria, namely their expertise. This is
to avoid massive contributions that take too much time and money to filter, and leaves
potential participants who are not expected to bring in contributions with the needed quality
standards apart. To connect with the desired expert contributors, professional networks, such
as professional associations, academic research groups or LinkedIn groups, can be used.
Another option is to use internet search motors with keywords related to the innovation project.
The challenge is to balance the need for relevant expertise with the chances of obtaining out of
the box solutions and lateral thinking shortcuts, which are more likely to come from innovators
working in other industries.
There are two options to take into account with this approach:
 Overt Crowdsourcing allows contributors to see and comment on other participants’
contributions, and in some cases also to vote their ideas. This can enrich the idea generation
process, but it can also create groupthink, i.e. individuals’ tendency to converge to a few
ideas in accordance to group leaders’ way of thinking, and thus minimize dissent, diversity of
ideas and original ways of thinking. It may also facilitate the collection of ideas by
competitors.
 Covert Crowdsourcing does not allow contributors to see other participants’ ideas, and so
favors independent thinking, avoids groupthink syndrome and crowd-killing of ideas in the
early stage of development. It also avoids the risk of competitors taking advantage of the
generated ideas, as these are voted by company employees or executives only. However, it
misses the potential of idea generation and refinement inspired by others’ contributions.
Finally, it is possible to include some other approaches originally related to technological
developments but progressively used in other fields, which match only with the free idea
generation – not responding to a challenge brief by a company – and driven by the innovators
initiative, of which some companies may wish to take advantage, attending to see if any of the
exposed ideas suits their businesses. There are many approaches to this model:
 Bar Camps are gatherings of innovators or developers organized by themselves where they
expose their latest works and ideas and set their presentation timing in a free timetable.
 Lightning talks work like Bar Camps, but take place during a conference that participants
are attending, becoming micro-alternative rounds of presentations, parallel to the main event.
They set timings between 15 to 20 minutes for every presentation.
 Open Space Technology (OST) are dynamic meetings led by a facilitator, where
participants elaborate the sessions agenda where the discussion groups will be generated and
participants are free to move from one group to another. This takes place when there is an
issue that raises interest amongst many people, but the issue is not possible to tackle on an
individual basis, and so cooperation between many participants is needed in the short-term.
Once the agenda is organized, every participant gives a speech and moderates the debate on
the presented issue.
These kinds of events are mainly to invigorate the informal exchange of knowledge and ideas,
as well as to wire innovators’ networks. They usually entail a great deal of online information
to be shared previous to the event, during the event and also afterwards. These events are
appropriate in the stage when the stakeholder community has adopted the culture of
collaboration and innovation and feels empowered to take the lead in these matters.

The Chinese Government strategy for tourism development planning biddings deserves a
special mention. It consists of selecting a short list of consultancy firms and dividing the
project in several phases. The firms selected to carry out the first phase compete to pass
through the second phase and are paid according to three levels of rewards (the 1st, the 2nd,
and the rest) depending on the quality of their outcome. Only half of them pass through the
next phase. This process continues up to the final phase where only two firms compete. The
winner gets the best reward and is assigned to lead the implementation, with the support of
the other firm, as long as the final outcome also incorporates some of their ideas.
This procedure is expensive but manages to stimulate competition to the utmost and takes
advantage of many qualified contributions, as long as some of the ideas presented by the
eliminated firms may also be incorporated within the project. In addition, it reduces the bias
that expertise and track records creates in many public biddings, where the most experienced
firms overshadow other applicants which could do a better job or at least bring in interesting
innovative approaches. Furthermore, in many cases only the projects carried out are
considered when assessing the candidates, disregarding their achieved results.
It is a must to talk about the innovation platforms, which work as intermediaries between
the innovators’ communities and the companies that require their contributions. Such
platforms, like Innocentive, have gained a reputation among the communities of innovators,
and so are quite successful at drawing the innovators’ attention with their calls. They also
develop advanced tools and methods that optimize the efficiency and effectiveness of the
process, working with the aforementioned Challenge Driven Innovation approach. They are
likely to become key players in the near future of Open Innovation.
Beyond the approaches, two key ideas should be considered when putting OI into practice:
 Whether you look for ideas or solutions to problems, being precise in the description of the
problem, what you want to achieve, constraints or other conditions to make it feasible and
viable, is a must to make the process efficient and effective.
 Targeting the right innovators is obviously a key success factor. Targets should include not
only industry experts but also special clients, suppliers, partners, and experts from related
industries that are more advanced in product, business model innovation and technology.
3. Development strategies for destinations
Open Innovation is actually part of the destination’s innovation strategy, as is explained in the
following innovation roadmap, which consists of five main steps:
1) Create an innovation team. Before thinking about Open Innovation, top executive efforts
have to be concentrated inside the organization, by developing a group of innovation
leaders throughout all areas of the organization, strongly supported by the top executives.
Further, they have to make them work as a team, also identifying their weaknesses and
providing the necessary support in key skill development.
2) Define a vision to foster innovation. In order to engage employees into an innovation
mindset shift it is necessary to define what the destination wants to become and achieve in
the future, as well as define the strategy path to attain all the desired achievements. The
strategy path needs to have innovation at its core, and all the organization’s members
have to feel empowered and stimulated to participate actively. A clear vision of the desired
future with a well-defined and coherent strategic pathway is essential to inspire will and
confidence among all stakeholders in order to move them to take action.

3) Develop innovation communities. Once the inner stakeholders are engaged, it is time to
structure the human capital into innovation communities related to different interests,
where innovators and stakeholders from outside the organization are also invited to
participate, thus integrating open innovation in the corporate innovation strategy. As has
been scientifically proven, building innovation teams related to specific interests is the most
likely successful formula to make innovation thrive. Despite the common interest, members
of every community should represent all functional disciplines and also be diverse in terms
of seniority, to bring in different approaches to innovation.
4) Get wins and celebrate them to trigger further engagement. Selling the vision is the
first step in engaging stakeholders, but only when the vision roadmap starts to become
reality through visible wins, are the mainstream stakeholders likely to believe that the
matter truly deserves their attention and effort. So the innovation roadmap should be
structured in stages with their correspondent milestones, so as to help stakeholders see
the progress being carried out and create confidence and engagement with the innovation
roadmap. It is also convenient to set very attainable milestones at the beginning and
publicly reward its contributors in order to motivate others.
5) Creating performance-centricity through building an Innovation Culture. Once the
innovation framework is created, and the organization has started to thrive through the
innovation roadmap by getting the first achievements and building engagement throughout
the stakeholder system, the final challenge is to build a culture of collaboration and
innovation to further improve the innovation performance. The White Paper “Building a
culture of collaboration and innovation” explains in detail the benefits and the strategies to
develop both the collaborative and innovative mindset throughout the organization and
external stakeholders, in order to boost the innovation performance.
3.1 Key strategy mistakes to avoid
The innovation process is by nature a continuum of trial and failure, idea iteration and testing,
with an average success rate rather discouraging in many cases. However, a lot can be learnt
out from previous failures and mistakes in other innovation experiences. These are some of
the most common mistakes in the innovation processes:
Not knowing entirely what we want or need. As explained before, defining precisely the
problem in order to solve or the desired outcome is essential to achieve both efficiency and
effectiveness in the innovation process. An accurate formulation of the challenge or goal is
therefore the first step towards successful innovation.
Same people, same ideas. When trying to innovate it is essential to integrate new people
with different backgrounds, who can bring in truly innovative approaches. The usual
contributors are likely to come up with the same ideas that are running the business. This is a
key point in Open Innovation: opening the process to a wide range of contributors.
Excessive focus on competitors. Benchmarking with industry competitors is a common
practice, and it is convenient. But this is not innovation. True innovation is about developing
something new in your industry, and so you cannot get such innovative ideas from industry
incumbents, but rather from other industries´ leaders.
Brainstorming leaders overshadow innovative introverts. Brainstorming sessions are
usually dominated by bosses or informal leaders with outstanding communicative skills, but
without innovative thinking skills, hence overshadowing innovative peers with lesser
communication skills. Blogging and online forums may be the solution for them.

Creativity killers neutralize innovative initiatives. In brainstorming sessions, new ideas
are usually welcome with many sorts of negative comments such as “That’s not our business”,
“They won’t let us do that”, etc. that discourage innovators from going on in the iteration
process up to a viable idea. Negative and narrow-minded individuals should not be invited.
What happens after brainstorming? Even after productive brainstorming sessions with
plenty of ideas being put forward, there is no idea about how to proceed. This is actually an
opportunity to craft or modify a business plan (for a new product) or a marketing plan, if many
products and other issues are to be reviewed.
Innovative ideas get stuck in further development stages. Beyond the brainstorming
session, there are many stages that the innovative idea has to overcome. Involving
innovative-minded champions from each of the development stages could be the solution to
foresee and prepare solutions for all the obstacles to be overcome.
Massive group discussion kills innovation. It has been proved that massive innovation
forums kill many ideas, whereas short-listed groups with selected participants in combination
with individual work is far more productive and allows innovative ideas develop up to a more
advanced stage. In small groups people feel more free to share ideas and solicit feedback.
3.2 Basic development strategy of the Open Innovation system
Being one of the key assets to invigorate creativity and sustain the destination competitive
advantage, it is necessary to design a set of strategies that engage stakeholders in
contributing and leveraging the most of their intelligence. The Open Innovation platform
intends to unlock their creativity – first and foremost the organization’s employees, followed by
its closer partners, and beyond. One of the key factors to make Open Innovation work is to
constantly connect with external networks, which are more likely to bring in new ideas than
creativity alone. Further, encouraging the network members to travel, research and learn
about other destinations should nurture the innovation ecosystem with inspiring ideas.
Most productive innovation networks are characterized by a decentralized structure with many
leaders who have collaborative mindsets. Such decentralization not only unlocks initiative and
creativity, but also fosters further interaction and collaboration amongst the network members.
In order to generate trust among innovators, non-profit innovation challenges should be
especially promoted (as long as collaboration between innovators can be more easily
orchestrated and there are no Intellectual Property issues to generate conflict). As long as
trust is built, groups for rewarded innovation challenges may also be created.
When developing the Open Innovation ecosystem there are four critical steps to follow from
the design phase, to the execution and management of the network:
1) Connecting and organising people:
 Research networks to identify potential contributors. Create a database with their skills,
experience, education, achievements, professional interests, open mindset, associated
networks, and personal remarks regarding their concerns, values and aspirations.
 Combine different kinds of innovators. Idea generators, researchers, experts, and producers
are the main profiles. Consider also different profiles in terms of skills, seniority and field of
expertise, and mix people from different cultural, educational and industry backgrounds.
 Identify potential leaders. As Open Innovation has to work as a decentralized system with
many leaders, it is necessary to have one in each field of expertise at the very least. These
experts should have collaborative mindsets and empowering leadership styles.

2) Setting goals and engaging members:
 Plan how to establish trust among network members and engage them quickly. Trust is
critical to foster collaboration and thus achieve relevant innovation goals. A system that gives
visibility to all contributions carried out in collaboration is the main way to do it.
 Set innovation goals and metrics to track results. Consider all kinds of desired outputs, set
innovation goals and formulate specific, measurable and time-bounded objectives. Then,
design a set of metrics to monitor the project’s results.
 Market contribution as an opportunity to showcase their skills, connect with like-minded
professionals, build reputation within their professional community, get rewards, achieve
visible results that may bring them more professional credit, etc.
3) Supporting and facilitating:
 Organize a kick-off Open challenge. It is necessary to showcase how the system works and
engage contributors with an initial success story in which they can be rewarded. Listen to
their reviews and suggestions, and let them know how useful their contribution has been.
 Organize training workshops. Training potential contributors in co-creation, marketing,
storytelling, leadership and operation of the Open Innovation system is crucial for them to
feel empowered and bring in good contributions.
 Identify needed infrastructure and support. It is necessary to provide all the tools for the
members to facilitate their collaboration and contribution. Beyond the initial plans, it is
necessary to ask them whether they have any difficulties to identify extra needs for support.
4) Managing and tracking:
 Determine accountabilities and timing. It is important to track and assess performance and
this may be done by setting a calendar of milestones with clear and measurable objectives
and metrics. Accountabilities are necessary to let everyone know what to focus on.
 Reorient strategy and review accountabilities. Decide who takes new responsibilities and who
leaves responsibilities, according to the results achieved and by measuring the evolution of
everyone’s workload to ensure balance and adequate assignments.
 Design reward system. Research the market fees for each type of contributor to have a
comprehensive fee list considering field of expertise, experience, achievements, proven skills,
and other relevant variables. The section 3.7 develops this point in detail.
3.3 Conceptualization and structure of the Open Innovation system
An Open Innovation system works like a platform where innovation seekers (operators,
tourism boards, governments, consultants, etc.) look for new ideas on how to tackle their
challenges by connecting with innovation solvers (trade professionals, consultants, designers,
and experts in various fields) through open challenges where the problem is precisely
formulated so as to help solvers envision possible solutions and submit proposals, which are
then to be assessed and rewarded as long as they help in solving the problem effectively.
The Open Innovation platform should be structured in many areas of innovation, according to
the nature of the needed expertise. Five areas of innovation are envisioned:
 Technological solutions (mainly IT-related to streamline operations)
 Technological solutions for environmental challenges
 Product development
 Marketing designs, contents and merchandise

 Business model innovation, marketing and competitiveness (strategy and operations)
 Strategy innovation to tackle environmental and social issues
Every innovation area should have its pool of contributors, who receive updates about the new
challenges where they are invited to participate. There are three categories of challenges:
 Private challenges posted by private companies
 Public challenges posted by governments or public institutions, including marketing contests
 Public challenges for mission purposes, posted by non-profit organizations, related to
cooperation programs or for mission-driven destinations
The difference between private and public challenges is mainly the publicity of the challenge,
which in the case of private challenges is more likely to be directed exclusively to a short list of
innovators without revealing the name of the innovation seeker, thus keeping maximum
confidentiality. Conversely, public challenges are open to the whole platform, without the need
to keep the identity of the innovation seeker confidential. The main operation system for
professional contributions should be challenge-driven innovation, as previously explained in
section 2.
The public challenges for mission purposes should be non-rewarded and tackle issues such as
cooperation with destinations in developing countries, those recovering from natural disasters,
social and environmental issues, etc. which should showcase how contribution to the greater
good is one of the most powerful motivators in innovation, drawing attention of a large pool of
creative talent compared to other challenges. Such a strategy is not only to support the
mission-driven challenges, but also to raise awareness throughout the industry about the
potential of mission-driven tourism, as the Open Innovation system leverages more
intelligence for this type of purpose than for any other, hence providing mission-driven
destinations with a great competitive advantage, and compensating many of the constraints.
Furthermore, there could be an “Ideation bank” to collect solvers’ initiatives on identified
problems or opportunities which have not yet been presented as a challenge, as they are not
among the top priorities for seekers or there is no budget to award solutions at that moment.
This “Ideation bank” should give room to creative initiatives and work as a social media
platform where solvers may pay for enhanced advertising of their ideas and participants may
vote for their favorite ideas. The posted ideas should comply with a series of parameters,
requiring detailed and structured explanation of the idea, to filter the mass participation. The
“Ideation bank” would not only foster innovation, but also promote new talents in the industry.
The platform should engage a vast range of shareholders within the industry by encompassing
private businesses, educational institutions, governments and even non-profit organizations.
To provide these innovators with relevant networking opportunities, the platform should have
many features such as blogs and wikis about topics that contributors want to read and talk
about. Furthermore, there should be features to let innovators:
 Present their professional profile within the innovator community
 Be recognized for their contributions to the community and build their reputation
 Find news and relevant information about various topics related to the innovation challenges
 Facilitate communication and networking with other innovators and stakeholders
 Create special interest groups with other innovators as a discussion forum and facilitate the
Seekers sourcing and other kinds of interaction with stakeholders
 Create discussion groups to facilitate collaborative work on challenges

The innovation platform should also provide every innovator with the chance to have his/her
personal homepage with the following information and functionalities:
 Professional information such as education and work experience
 Main professional interests
 Publications (White Papers, other academic papers, books)
 Professional association memberships and the platform’s special interest group memberships
 Current challenges in which he/she is participating and intended contributions
 Challenges in which he/she has participated, contributions and related results
 Recent discussions, off-challenge provisions and requests for help
 Ratings for provision of advice, information, mentorship, collaboration efforts and generosity
in sharing rewards with those who have provided help
 Recommendations for peers
 Recommendations from peers
 Search function for an innovator filtering by expertise, results, ratings, location, etc.
 View and respond to messages
 Invite an innovator to join a collaboration
 Invite an innovator to join a special interest professional (platform-based) group
 Search for mentorship from more experienced professionals
 Let Seekers contact them to participate in an innovation challenge or other collaborations
Mind mapping, a tool to foster innovation and collaboration. Mind mapping consists of a
visual approach to thinking through an idea, project or product, in which the core idea is drawn
with many branches leaving from the core, each of which relates to a certain aspect of the idea.
In each branch, there can be ideas, attachments, images, links, related to the branch aspect of
the core idea. The final, finished picture will depict the idea in a visual way with all the relevant
details properly structured in separate branches.
This methodology is appealing to both right-brain and left-brain members, as it is visual and
structured with details at the same time. It is possible to use a mind mapping software to
facilitate online collaborative innovation, with contributors being in distant locations. There are
many suppliers, including those who offer it as an online service and those who offer it as
downloadable software, as well as many free tools.
The funding of the platform may come from three complementary sources:
 Brokering commission for every challenge managed to be paid by the Seeker.
 Sponsorship by many industry stakeholders, including the Government.
 Exploitation of own patents bought by the platform to innovators
3.4 Operation of the Open Innovation system
The Open Innovation platform should be managed by a pool of Project Managers (PM) in
charge of dealing with the innovation challenges. Every time a stakeholder (Seeker) wants to
open a challenge, a PM is assigned to the challenge and follows a series of steps:
 The PM works with the Seeker on the formulation and definition of the challenge.
 Once the challenge is defined, the Seeker has to set the rewards for the winning solutions.
There may be many rewards of different amounts in order to encourage greater participation.
 The PM has to define with the Seeker the terms of agreement to be offered in the tender.
 Beyond the registered innovators, the PM should search for others outside, especially when
the challenge requires expertise that is rather scarce among the registered innovators.

 Once all potential innovators have been invited to participate to the challenge, these have to
submit their solution by the specified deadline, complying with the stated requirements.
 When submitting the solutions, the PM screens them all to ensure that they all meet the
requirements established by the Seeker, prior to delivering them to the Seeker.
 Then, the Seeker may decide which solutions are suitable and award as many as he/she
considers, or none at all if no solution is good enough.
 In the case of discarded solutions, Seekers should sign an agreement upon which they cannot
use these ideas without the Solver’s permission. To guarantee its compliance, a controller
could carry out audits on the “Seeker firm” to make sure that the ideas are not used.
Beyond this synthetic presentation of the operation system, there are many critical issues that
require a more thorough and detailed explanation.
Formulation of the challenge. The critical starting point in challenge-driven innovation is
defining the problem that needs a solution. It is convenient to formulate it in ways that lets
professionals from diverse scientific or industry fields understand it. This involves describing
the problem without the usual technical terminology, but rather using more conceptual
terminology. Furthermore, it is essential to think and describe the constraints of the desired
solution thoroughly and accurately, so as to make sure that the presented solutions can adapt
to the demand, but also to allow for some out-of-the box solutions to be presented.
Making the deal. Intellectual Property (IP) rights should be carefully protected. The initial
broadcast of a challenge should include only an abstract of its definition. Solvers interested in
details and requirements should first have to accept a “Solver Agreement” that describes the
reward and the time allowed for submission, as well as the time period for reviewing and
judging solutions, and the confidentiality and IP transfer clauses for accepted solutions.
Anonymity is sacred. Innovators working on a particular challenge should be unaware both
of who is working on it and of how many solutions are being submitted as well as the nature of
these solutions. The identity of both Solvers and Seekers should not be revealed to either
party, especially in private challenges. Public challenges are more flexible regarding this issue,
whereas in non-profit challenges, the visibility of both the Seeker and Solver is recommended.
Short-listing of potential solvers. In some cases, Seekers might wish to make a short list of
the Solvers who want to get involved in their innovation challenge, in order to save them time
in assessing a large number of proposed solutions. To help them do so, it is possible to get
listings of innovators specialized in specific areas or with proven specific skills, which would
also be ranked according to the ratings based on peer assessment and results obtained.
Intellectual property (IP) transfer. This depends on the nature of the assignment,
considering that some innovations are only applicable to one Seeker, because of the
uniqueness of Seeker or because it is exclusively tailored, like in the case of graphic design. In
the cases where the proposed solutions could potentially be applicable to more Seekers, there
are different options to take into account:
 IP may be fully transferred to the Seeker, when the reward is related to the innovation.
 IP may be transferred under a non-exclusive license to the Seeker, if the reward is too low.
 The platform could act as an IP investor, when the Seeker is not offering enough rewards
given the value of the potential solution. Seekers should relinquish any rights to use the
information provided in a solution that is not accepted. This should be enforced by contracts
between the platform and the Seeker allowing the right to audit the Seeker in case of doubt.

Assessing contribution. When the challenge is formulated the requirements and assessment
criteria have to be clearly defined and properly communicated to the platform innovators.
When the solutions are presented, there is a board of experts in the matter in charge of
screening every proposal and deciding whether it is suitable or not. Then, selected solutions
are forwarded to the Seeker, which may count with the support of the board in deciding the
most appropriate solutions and assignment of rewards. One prize or multiple prizes may be
assigned, or no prizes at all if there are no suitable solutions. In the case of solutions worked
out by a group of innovations, the criteria to assign rewards to each contributor should be
clearly defined at the outset. There should be a chat and videoconference feature that could be
recorded so as to fairly assess each solver’s contribution.
The Open Innovation System should also encompass “passive participation” consisting of
“liking” or “disliking” proposed ideas (voting). That would actually be one of the main functions
of the system. Voters’ reputation could also depend on how certain they have been in their
assessments when voting on others’ contributions. It should not be visible for voters to see
how many votes every option obtained, to avoid group behavior bias. The section on reward
and reputation system develops this in further detail.
Orchestrating solvers collaboration. There could be “team project rooms” with group-work
tools such as digital white boards, wikis, online chats with voice over IP, shared file space,
group/virtual meeting capabilities, mind mapping applications, and the like. Groups could
adapt these tools to their convenience and collaborate from different locations and time zones.
Innovators attempting to tackle a challenge would have all the means in the platform to find
the kind of collaborators they need, according to their expertise, skills, etc. They are also
provided with guidelines to negotiate the collaboration terms – to be submitted in the platform
– tools to work in collaboration (like mind mapping and others), and to record each
participant’s contribution so as to fairly distribute the rewards if their solution is selected.
Cooperative challenges could be organised following these methods and rules:
 Each solver could contribute to a project through three kinds of actions: submitting a
proposal, changing an existing proposal and voting on a proposal
 Creating a proposal by using a Wiki
 If solver X believes that solver Y´s (author of the original proposal) solution is good but
needs improvement, he/she can submit a change on Y’s solution, through the wiki. Then:
A) If solver Y accepts X’s proposed change, the changes would be incorporated to the original
solution and only the changed version would be visible in the wiki. Both X and Y would earn
money if the solution is awarded: solver Y (the creator) would earn more money, but other
solvers would be rewarded based on the relevance of their contribution.
B) If solver Y does not accept the change, there would be two versions: the original version
of solver Y and the modified version of solver X. If the modified solution is awarded, solver X
would get a significant share of the rewards – much higher than if solver Y had accepted X’s
proposed change - and so there would be a high cost for solver Y to overlook other solvers’
proposals for change, so to make solvers seriously consider any suggestion. This would also
decrease the number of proposed solutions and make it easier to choose a winner. If the
solution chosen is the original solution (Y’s), solver X does not get any reward.
 Any solver could vote only one solution or up to three (giving three points to the best, and
optionally two to the 2nd
and one to the 3rd
). A). Voting an awarded solution would be
rewarded – even more if you vote at the beginning – but less than proposing a change.

The section 3.7 on rewards and reputation system develops in further detail how this
collaborative innovation system might work regarding the effects of every kind of contribution.
In the cases where two or more innovators want to collaborate from the outset in crafting an
innovative solution to a challenge, there could be two kinds of collaboration deals:
1) Asymmetric collaboration deal: an innovator looking for technical support in a part of the
solution would propose to another one to share a given percentage of the award. The other
innovator could negotiate his percentage of the award, and if an agreement is reached, they
would form an official team that would submit the solution under the terms agreed upon.
The terms of the agreement would be published on the platform site.
2) Symmetric collaboration deal: in many cases, solvers might want to join their forces on the
equal bases, so long as the workload is expected to be alike or the expertise and skills are
expected to be equally valuable. The agreement would be published on the platform site.
Solvers who are part of an official team would not be allowed to submit individual solutions for
that challenge, and would not be allowed to be part of any other team. However, two or more
teams could merge to form one team, but only if all members of all merging teams agree.
Innovators having collaborated on the same team would be able to rate each other in terms of
collaboration and professional skills, to help them build the deserved reputation.
In the case of Ideation, consisting of brainstorming challenges that require only brief
submissions on the most cost-effective approach to a solution based on rather a few
requirements, would work similarly to what was previously explained, except for not creating
groups, given the simplicity of the challenge and the likely short deadline for set up. Each call
to contribution should have a landing page explaining the requirements to qualify, the
definition of the desired inputs, the submission deadlines and the assigned rewards.
3.5 Identifying key human resources and attracting talent
Identifying potential contributors. With regards to the target contributors, there are many
different kinds of candidates, depending on the type of the input you are looking for:
 Business model innovation: participation is limited to qualified stakeholders, and also
includes crowdsourcing initiatives opened to networks of external experts. Training on
business model innovation methodologies should be considered to set a common framework
for facilitating discussion.
 Technological innovations: in many operational areas of the business there are likely to be
challenges solved through technological innovations, as explained previously. These would be
accessible only to qualified professionals, who would have to submit their professional
credentials to participate in this type of innovation challenges.
 Co-creation of experiences (product development): opened to all stakeholders, this
section should feature vibrant discussions where local entrepreneurs and enthusiast tourists
exchange and pre-test ideas on life-changing experiences to be developed in the destination.
There could be contests to foster participation of the majority of stakeholders.
 Story creation (marketing content): open to all stakeholders. Participation of bloggers,
journalists, writers, YouTubers and other influencers should be encouraged especially during
the initial stages of the destination’s development with the organization of “press/influencer
trips”. Later on, contribution should be stimulated through the celebration of contests.
 Marketing designs: participation in this section is stimulated through creation contests or
crowdsourcing to professional designers. For the image bank, key influencers such as the
“Instagramers” could be invited to the destination as well as bloggers and journalists.

Professional contributors such as experts may be researched through social media such as
LinkedIn, professional associations, universities, etc. also considering partners, suppliers, or
customers. Non-professional contributors such as tourists, students, or other local residents
could be researched through the mainstream communication channels or local partners.
Marketing the value proposition. The open innovation platform should market its value
proposition not only to the whole industry stakeholders in the region, but also to all potential
contributors in and outside the industry. The process starts by identifying a pool of champions
willing to showcase the benefits of open innovation for both potential solvers and seekers.
By identifying a group of visionaries in both sides of the platform, the conditions are set to face
the first challenges, the ones which have to showcase how open innovation works, and how it
may contribute to improving the competitiveness of the whole industry. As soon as a few of
these innovation challenges show successful results and satisfaction on both sides of the
innovation process, a greater group of early adopters is likely to become eager to participate.
As stated before, beyond rewards, the great motivators to take into account are the will for
contribution to the community’s progress and well-being, and the will for recognition and
prestige among industry peers. Such motivators suggest two main strategies to attract talent:
 Promote innovation challenges for non-profit purposes.
 Organization of events to award best contributors and give them public recognition.
Such or other strategies should be supported by marketing the open innovation platform to
potential contributors in their communities and favourite media channels, which would entail
social media, magazines, journals, public presentations, etc. Furthermore, bear in mind that
the value of the innovation platform stays in the amount of challenges and opportunities
offered, in order to attract skilled contributors, and so it should be open to many businesses
and institutions to publish their innovation challenges.
Talent attraction strategy. Beyond identifying the internal talent that is critical to the
innovation processes, the key to developing a successful Open Innovation System is to attract
and retain external talent who are not engaged as employees, but as occasional collaborators.
Engaging a larger number of experts in the innovative process is likely to bring in a greater
amount of new ideas which can help in accelerating the process and also improving the final
result. Apart from that, the contribution of external experts is likely to bring in new techniques
of problem solving and therefore an educational experience for the internal innovators.
To attract external talent it is first necessary to foresee the kinds of challenges that the
organisation is likely to face in the short-, mid- and long-term, so as to identify what types of
talented professionals will be needed. According to Innocentive, leading organizations
encourage the use of external talent by developing an external talent strategy plan that:
 Seeks to understand where the challenges will lie in the transformation
 Secures top level support
 Integrates master agreements with external talent providers at the center
 Creates a common language of innovation and external talent
 Implements the processes and systems to manage and measure innovation efforts
 Creates guidelines for when and how to use different external resources
 Have someone who owns and manages the external innovators efforts
 Educates employees on how to engage owners and champions
 Recognizes and reward those who go outside in search of external support
 Get cross-functional input into problem definition and challenge formation
 Make resources available for integration
 Work to make the organization more flexible and adaptable

The external talent attraction strategy should answer the following questions:
 Who should be involved in your innovation efforts? Mention both the internal staff involved
and the kinds of external talent you search for depending on the type of target outcome.
 What types of innovation are you focused on? What types of contribution do you look for?
The types of outcomes (see section 4) and contributions desired by everyone.
 When will you be looking for innovation input? The frequency of the search for every type of
input, which in some cases may be regular.
 Where should the contributors go to bring in their inputs? The method or interface used to
communicate the call for contributors and the submission of the contributions
 Why should they be willing to contribute? The incentives and rewards offered to the
contributors, encompassing not only financial rewards, but also other types of recognition.
 How can they participate? The criteria to qualify as contributor for every innovation area, as
well as the procedure to register as contributor and participate.
3.6 Designing and developing a network of innovators
Shaping innovation networks is both an art and a science. Any network is unpredictable and, in
the end, impossible to control. Focusing on the replacement of one or two ineffective members
has less impact than establishing the conditions for vibrant networks and taking advantage of
the connections through which they flourish. Making networks more decentralized is another
way to improve collaboration and performance. Innovation networks, like cross-functional
teams, require different skills and profiles. They include combinations of several archetypes:
 Idea generators prefer to come up with ideas, think that asking the right questions is more
important than having the right answers, and will take risks on high-profile experiments.
 Researchers mine data to find patterns, which they use as a source of new ideas. They are
the most likely members of the network to seek consumer insights and to regard such
insights as a primary input.
 Experts value proficiency in a single domain and relish opportunities to get things done.
 Producers orchestrate the activities of the network. Others come to them for new ideas or to
get things done. Producers are also the most likely members of the network to be making
connections across teams and groups.
Once the talented contributors are identified and interested in participating in the open
innovation platform, it is time to build networks and boost engagement and collaboration.
Engaging different profiles. When trying to engage the stakeholder community it is
convenient to segment them according to how critical their contribution is, how they may be
selected and engaged, as well as depending on their expected contribution. Furthermore, the
network development strategy should depict the sequential phases of this development and
the targets to engage in each phase.
The suggested target groups ranked according to their sequential priority would be:
1) Leaders and influencers
2) Employees outside of the marketing team
3) Partners
4) Local community members and value-driven communities and individuals
The most strategic stakeholders to engage from the early beginning are the community and
industry leaders. These are the ones who are likely to become the most influential brand
advocates within the community members and stakeholders, as they hold trust and their
opinion is listened to and well-considered within their circle of influence.

As explained previously, they are to be engaged in the project from the earliest stage when
defining the mission of the plan. By engaging them from the outset and telling them how their
contribution has been useful in the mission definition, they establish an emotional connection
with the project as they feel like co-creators and are more willing to keep on collaborating as
contributors in the Open Innovation System and brand ambassadors to eventually tell a story
of success in which they had a significant role.
When searching and trying to engage with leaders and influencers, consider these tips:
 Determine who influences your target audiences and evaluate the likelihood of their
engagement by researching on their interests and concerns to figure out if there is any
connection with the project.
 Evaluate their reach in social media, their relevance in community or industry events, how
often they deliver content or participate in discussions, etc. Then, prioritize accordingly.
 Develop a relationship with them by following them in social media, leaving thoughtful
comments on their blog, engaging in their discussions, sharing their content, etc.
 Introduce yourself formally by email or through social media and explain briefly what the
project is about and what kind of contributions you would like to obtain from him or her.
 Understand that they are very busy people and so it is mandatory to be patient with them
and make things as easy as possible for them to collaborate. Agree upon little contributions.
 Thank them for their contribution and ask them to share the content with the audience if it
consists of marketing content. After a while, let them know the results of the contribution.
A second group to engage are the employees outside of the marketing team, who should
convey the idea that content creation and storytelling is a shared responsibility beyond the
marketing department. Along with the shared values and institutional standards of behavior,
employees have to become community change agents and lead by example in the local
community. To encourage employees outside of the marketing team to create content,
consider the following tips:
 Explain the value of content marketing for the destination and mission pursuit
 Train them at the beginning in creating their pieces of content until they start enjoying it and
feel confident to do it by themselves
 Ask the CEO and the top executives to include content creation in the annual goals and to
lead by example by giving ideas and co-creating content with the marketing team.
 Explain them how they can build their personal brands and become thought leaders
 Create in-company contests to stimulate employee contribution, offering some symbolic but
significant prize for the winners in many categories, so that many people can win.
 Encourage them to share their content within their circle of influence and spread the word
about the mission-driven purpose, the new content creation and storytelling system.
A third group of key stakeholders to be engaged are the destination partners, all those
associated businesses and organizations with which the destination will establish a long-term
business deal including also a co-marketing agreement. These should encompass all the
needed business partners along with other value-driven institutions that may contribute as
brand ambassadors or in other roles (channel partners, NPOs, suppliers, educational
institutions, cultural institutions, etc.). To search and engage the most appropriate
partners, consider the following tips:
 Assess their technical capabilities, but also their scope of influence within their community to
evaluate their potential audience for delivering contents.
 Assess their reputation and their current practices and values to prevent them from spoiling
the destination’s brand integrity.

 Sense their concern for the issues that the mission intends to address to evaluate their
potential engagement. You may do this when calling participants for the mission definition.
 Elaborate a pre-selection list of reputable partners to be engaged first in order to use their
name when trying to engage other partners.
 Invite potential partners to a business-oriented presentation of the new marketing model to
let them know and assess the partnership potential of business development.
 Design at least two partnership formulas, like “Premium partner” and “Official partner”
offering co-branding agreements in exchange for delivering content, where the Premium
partner has an exclusivity deal within its sector but more obligations than the Official ones.
Finally, the last group of stakeholders to be engaged in contribution, content delivery and
brand advocacy are the local community members and value-driven communities and
individuals. This is the group with the highest potential in terms of dimension and
geographical scope, as they encompass all the consumer communities, and value-driven
communities led by the creative activists. As explained in the targeting strategy section, they
are the main targets to attract as tourists, but in order to engage them as contributors and
brand ambassadors the following tips should be considered:
 Develop many communication tools in order to convey the kinds of contribution they can
make, the rewards and the ultimate purpose of their contribution.
 Train them with storytelling, graphic design and product co-creation workshops to empower
them in creating valuable contributions.
 Monitor their conversations in the social media to find out possible mistakes or pain points in
the communication strategy or tactics.
 Identify community leaders to focus the communication efforts and prioritize attention and
support. Allow them to control the brand integrity by being transparent in all activities.
 Ask them about the prizes or recognition they are motivated by in order to develop an
effective incentive system for their contributions.
 Explain how they can develop their personal brands with their content, build thought
leadership by communicating and be convincing in their visions and ideas.
Apart from the specific strategies to engage each type of target, consider generic strategies
and tactics to foster engagement throughout the whole stakeholder community:
 Polls asking the stakeholders’ opinion, thanking them with rewards, and letting them know
how their opinion is useful to improve the destination. Furthermore, it also spurs discussion.
 Reward top content sharers as well as those who bring in new followers and engage them to
register for contests or workshops, to become contributors or for volunteering programs.
 Asking each target about what types of reward they appreciate and designing an incentive
system considering many kinds of rewards to satisfy them all.
 Letting contest participants invite their friends to vote for their content as a way to expand
brand awareness, and the network of followers and potential contributors.
 Building an emotional connection with tourists through the life-changing experiences and
showing how their contribution powered the destination towards the mission accomplishment.
 Offering something valuable to users when they leave their personal contact data in the
landing page is to further encourage them in registering for certain activities.
To engage new brand ambassadors consider some guidelines for an advocacy strategy:
 Formulate specific goals for the advocacy program
 Maintain transparency to prove integrity
 Develop tools to track and measure success

 Consider that blogs, forums and networks are the most valued information sources
 Ask their opinion in the initial stages and let them know how valuable their contribution has
been in order to build a sense of ownership and emotional connection.
 The way to cultivate influential advocates is to interact, listen and respond in conversations
 Using customer feedback to improve the destination’s services also strengthens the potential
for advocacy as long as you tell them how useful their feedback has been.
 Consider that there are five types of advocates when drafting the advocacy strategy:
 Connectors are active participants in broad social networks
 Communities are groups of people with a common interest
 Mavens are enthusiasts who rate and review products and services in a specific category
 Experts are people with credentials and technical knowledge in a specific field.
 Endorsers are celebrities whose charisma enhances the brand reputation and awareness
Beyond the strategies to engage new stakeholders, it is necessary to manage the network
members who are already engaged. For this purpose it is convenient to collect the network
members’ contact data as soon as possible in the engagement process, either by asking for
their email when downloading a piece of content or the mobile number to send information to
their cell phone. Once the data is collected, there are many ways to keep them engaged:
 Ask them about their preferred types of content, so as to send them only what they are
interested in. Ask them to update their preferences regularly.
 Ask them about their opinions and assessment about destination content, activities and
various issues, encourage them to give suggestions and give them feedback on their ideas.
 Ask them about the frequency and preferred means of communication (email, SMS, etc.)
 Send them Christmas and birthday gifts depending on their contributions or other variables
 Try to identify disengaged individuals and ask them about why they have disengaged
 Give them daily visible gadgets or content materials such as calendars so as to make them
keep the destination brand and the mission purpose at their top of mind
3.7 Reward and reputation system to foster contribution
It is necessary to develop incentive systems to foster and reward collaborative partnerships
between innovators. Bear in mind that the most powerful motivators to drive contribution are:
Contribution to the greater good. As long as innovations contribute to improving the
community’s quality of life to some extent, this is itself highly rewarding. Intrinsic motivation is
actually the primary driver, as a satisfactory result is already quite rewarding for them. To get
the best out of this powerful motivator, it is good to first make potential participants envision
the likely positive impacts generated by their contribution, and let them know at the end,
through a publicly visible platform, the final impacts generated over time.
Peer recognition. One of the highest motivators – probably the highest – is the status and
recognition attained through contributions. It is therefore crucial to find ways of recognizing
contributors, rewarding them with appropriate community prestige, for instance, through the
development of a reputation system based on their behaviour according to the corporate
values, the quality and quantity of their contributions, including visible peer recognition related
to both behaviour and contribution.
Compensation. It is necessary to think of a flexible system of compensation, according to the
various motivations within the pool of innovators. It is therefore convenient to survey regularly
on what contributors are interested in. Beyond financial rewards, it is convenient to find out
other kinds of compensation that contributors would be willing to strive for: things that cannot
be bought, like extra holidays or employee participation in executive board meetings.

The Rewards & Reputation system would mainly focus on satisfying the last two, although
contributors would also receive information about the impacts of their contributions to non-
profit challenges, and these results could be shown in their platform’s professional profile.
As has already been explained, contributions could be classified between professional and non-
professional, and so the Open Innovation System would work differently for either kind of
contributor. Therefore, there is a differentiated operation system for the “Professional
contribution system” and the “Open contribution system” (for non-professionals).
Professional contribution system. This system would operate through the following steps:
 Appropriate credentials would have to be submitted to register in the system.
 Individuals would be classified according to field of expertise, stating all relevant information
of their professional profile, such as education, experience, skills and achievements.
 Every solver would have a profile page explaining all their relevant professional information.
 The profile would have to be updated at least every six months.
 The system would provide information on the results of the participant’s contribution in the
innovation system: all projects in which he/she has participated and related contribution.
 There would be a section of the profile page for peer rating and recommendations.
 The main information about contributions and results would be accessible to outsiders, so to
help them leverage their gained reputation beyond the open innovation platform. This is to
encourage contribution from the lesser known innovators who want to gain reputation in the
professional community, so the innovation platform works as a marketing platform for them.
Open contribution system. This system would operate through the following steps:
 Participants would register on a page where they could access all instructions and fill in or
upload all the information or content related to their contribution.
 In order to filter massive contributions, it could be necessary to fill in several fields answering
specific questions about the adequacy of the contribution to the innovation challenge. In
order to filter participants, failure to comply with the requested information would not allow
the participant to progress through the contribution process nor to attempt to do so for a
certain period of time. Instructions should be very clear so as to avoid mistakes.
 Registration and uploading of the contribution should be accessible via web and app.
 Rewards could be mostly special gifts such as overnight stays or packages, vouchers, a prize
ceremony with diplomas and media exposure. Financial rewards could also be appropriate.
Reputation system. Participants’ reputation should be built upon the quality and quantity of
their contributions, the skills and behaviors perceived by their peers in their collaborative
experiences. More precisely, the criteria to define every solver’s reputation would be:
 Peer ratings, recommendations and comments (skills, values and behaviors)
 Non-profit contributions, considering number of projects and value of each contribution
 Results achieved in all kinds of contributions
 Certainty of the solver’s votes to others’ proposed solutions
There should be a ranking of contributors in every field of expertise – and categories according
to the ranking – and a synthetic rating integrating all the criteria mentioned above. It should
be also possible to see detailed information about every solver´s performance for each criteria,
to better know what could be expected from his/her contribution. Reputation would also be the
basis for the allocation of training assignments, participation in benchmarking trips, etc.
Reward system. Assigning rewards to contributors may be a very complex challenge itself,
especially for collaborative innovation, where each contribution has to be assessed accurately
to assign the fair share of the total reward given to the solution. In the case of challenges
worked out individually, the solver either accepts or negotiates the reward with the seeker, in

accordance with market fees – the platform should offer illustrative information about this –
and other variables such as special skills and reputation. Likewise, when two solvers build a
team for a challenge they should negotiate each one’s share of the final reward beforehand.
In the case of collaborative deals – technological challenges only – where there are
contributions from several solvers, but not being part of a team the platform should have a set
of criteria to assess each solver’s contribution and assign fair rewards for each one. As
explained in the operation system section about assessing contribution, collaborative working
discussions should be carried out and registered through platform tools such as mind mapping,
video conference, online forum or chat. This way, each solver’s contribution could be
accurately assessed and idea authorship be identified. Contributions could be classified in four
categories:
1. Bold ideas and lateral shortcuts are the core of any innovation, and are only attainable
by visionary innovators and thought leaders. Due to their scarcity and considering the
associated value of leadership, these should be conceptually the highest valued kind of
contribution, before considering the amount of workload involved.
2. Idea development to put the former into practice may be a daunting task and requires
highly skilled team contributors. However, the value – before considering the time invested
– is lower than the former, as it usually requires just adapting of existing solutions. If the
development of the idea requires innovative approaches its value would equal the former.
3. Refinements or changes to prototypes proposed by qualified outsiders – not team
members – may help perfecting the main idea or its effective development, by bringing in
new approaches and knowledge. These contributions could be assessed as more valuable as
any of the former or much less. Team innovators and voters should decide on this.
4. Votes to the presented solutions help the seeker decide on the best solution or solutions to
reward. The reward of the vote should depend on the number of options to review, how
early the vote is given (the earlier the better) and how certain they have been. These would
have the lowest reward, but should be significant to motivate participation.
Beyond the conceptual value, the workload invested in the contribution should be considered.
This must be justified and approved by the platform’s board of experts. Furthermore, other
assessment criteria could be originality, expertise value, feasibility, detailed development of
the contribution and critical value for the feasibility of the project.
4. Open innovation strategies for different kinds of outcomes
Destinations approaching the Vision of Tourism 3.0 could obtain different kinds of outcomes
from the Open Innovation System. These could be classified in four categories:
 Business model innovation: includes marketing strategy and operational system
innovation, strategy innovation for addressing socio-cultural and environmental issues, etc.
 Technological innovations: includes new technologies to streamline operations or create
more value, and technological solutions to tackle environmental or social challenges.
 Co-creation of experiences: consists mainly of product development, focusing on the life-
changing purpose of the experiences 3.0.
 Story creation: consists of the development of stories in various formats, carried out by all
kinds of contributors, in close relation with the development of experiences.
 Marketing designs: includes graphic designs and pictures to be exploited in the
development of branded merchandising products.

4.1 Business model innovation
Business model innovation consists of all the activities carried out to revamp the model, such
as constant brainstorming, reflection and discussion about improvements in either of the
building blocks to achieve current goals, or to analyze new approaches to pursue the mission,
improve profitability, streamline operations and adapt to the ever-changing environment,
foreseeing in advance the upcoming challenges and opportunities. The collaborative system
should empower new leaders to drive new initiatives with the cooperation and support of the
other stakeholders. Participation is limited to qualified stakeholders, also considering
crowdsourcing initiatives opened to networks of external experts. Training on business model
innovation methods should be considered to set a common framework for collaboration.
In order to identify strategic and operational weaknesses, the monitoring system is to gather
information that eventually should help in determining improvement priorities and orientating
improvement direction. This information is obtained as a result of researching the tourists’
needs, problems, and concerns in view of identifying insecurities and discomforts to be
addressed through improvement or development of new services and facilities. There are many
kinds of possible outcomes within this category:
 Marketing strategies: new target customers, new marketing & sales channels, new
partners, repositioning strategy, pricing strategy, etc.
 Marketing operations: new infrastructure, tools, activities, system streamlining, etc.
 Mission-related strategies: new strategies for addressing social and environmental issues.
 Competitiveness improvements: new infrastructure and service programs to reduce
visitors’ discomforts and insecurities, as well as to improve the services’ quality standards.
 Other strategic issues: supplier’s strategy, cost optimization, organizational structure,
revenue streams, key resources & activities, building and sustaining competitive advantages.
There could be many open innovation strategies to obtain these kinds of outcomes:
 Forum discussions to detect weaknesses and new ideas
 Non-profit innovation challenges, especially for the mission-related innovations
 Rewarded innovation challenges, for all other kinds of outcomes.
 Ideation challenges for brainstorming ideas.
 Short-listed bidding for consulting services, following the China’s Government model (pag. 8).
Beyond these outcomes, both the open innovation and monitoring systems are flexible and so
permanently open to add new features and activities to tackle new challenges in the most
appropriate way, and thus the variety of outcomes may increase constantly.
In order to facilitate understanding and discussion on this topic, it is essential to educate
contributors in the use of a common framework. The Business Model Canvas is a strategic
management template for depicting the rationale through which a business creates, delivers
and captures value. It is a strategy blueprint with elements describing a business’ value
proposition, infrastructure, customers, and finances to assist business leaders in aligning their
activities by illustrating potential trade-offs.
This business model framework describes the key components that define the business’ DNA:
 Competitive advantages & value proposition. Core strategic edges that provide
advantage over competitors, experiences provided to the tourists and mission-based value
provided to all stakeholders. This is what sets the destination apart from others, and so the
reason why tourists should go and why other stakeholders should collaborate with the
destination.

 Customer segments. The target segments that the destination wants to attract, based on
criteria such as geographical markets, as well as sociological and motivational profile.
 Customer relationships. The kind of relationships the business model wants to establish
with tourists, how to deliver the experiences and how to engage them with the destination.
 Marketing channels. The types of channels through which the destination is to deliver the
stories and other marketing contents to engage potential tourists and other stakeholders.
 Key activities & management system. The most important activities to sustain the
competitive advantage through continuous improvement and executing the value proposition,
as well as the platform’s management system including strategic goals, performance
standards and metrics to measure the health of the business model.
 Key resources and organizational structure. The necessary assets to start operating the
platform and attracting stakeholders, which encompasses human, financial, physical and
intellectual resources. Every position is defined by its mission and key competences.
 Key partners. The network of partners which are necessary to deliver the value proposition,
as they bring along know-how, resources and other value which are beyond the core
capabilities of the business model, but should not be internalized, in order to reduce risk and
costs, and to optimize operations.
 Cost structure. The balance between overheads and variable costs, determining the
potential to generate economies of scale or economies of scope.
 Revenue streams. The way the business model generates income from the delivered
services and products to different target clients and partners.
 Social & environmental costs. The negative impacts that the tourism business may cause
in the natural environment and to the local communities. Here, we may also consider the
negative impacts saved by the Tourism 3.0 approach, in comparison with the usual practices.
 Social & environmental benefits. The positive impacts that the tourism development is
having both on the natural environment and local communities. They are to be measured
through a series of metrics to assess the progression on the mission accomplishment.
The White Paper “Envisioning destination models 3.0” explains all this in further detail.
4.2 Technological innovations
Beyond the business strategy-related innovations, open innovation can also deliver many
interesting results with regards to technological innovation. Actually, so far this has been the
main outcome that open innovation has been useful for in all industries, including the tourism
industry. Needless to say, technological challenges should be only open to professional
contributors. There are many examples of possible technology-based innovations which could
be developed using the open innovation framework:
 Apps for managing congestion and mobility within the destination
 Apps for marketing experiences and selling services in the destination
 Apps for delivering technology-based experiences such as Augmented or Mixed reality, etc.
 Apps to facilitate marketing content generation and contribution to open innovation
 Apps to facilitate contribution to the Open Innovation System related to strategy innovation
 Technological solutions for the environmental challenges, like monitoring positive and
negative impacts, managing waste, fostering use of renewable energy, etc.
 Advanced gear for specific activities
 Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things and other cutting-edge technologies leveraged for
the improvement of the customer experience.

To start with, it is possible to use some open innovation platforms such as Innocentive, which
has long expertise in dealing with technological innovations and a vast network of innovators
to leverage for these kinds of challenges. Innocentive is an excellent benchmark to consider
when developing the Open Innovation System, especially with regards to challenge-driven
innovation for technological solutions.
4.3 Co-creation of experiences
In technical terms, this corresponds to product development, although in Tourism 3.0 it is
usually preferred to highlight the concept of experience, referring to the life-changing
experiences that set destinations 3.0 apart from others. The co-creation process is inspired by
the stories read, the experiences lived and the contributors’ imagination, and so it is open to
all kinds of contributors, professionals and non-professionals. Beyond these inspiration sources,
the destination’s monitoring system may provide many valuable insights such as:
 Tourists’ motivations and concerns to sense the convenience of developing new products or
mission-driven tourism activities.
 Tourists’ opinions to pre-test ideas on new products or marketing initiatives, to ensure their
viability and adequate development.
 Tourists’ reviews about the experiences lived in the destination, to identify needs for product
improvement and new ideas. Also the tourists’ ratings on different variables are useful.
Once the bold ideas for product development and improvement have been collected, the main
steps of the product development are the following:
1. Conceptualization
2. Business model design & test
3. Feasibility study and assessment of social and environmental impacts of the product
4. Business Plan
5. Launch
6. Monitoring performance & improvement
Even if the Product Manager is solely responsible for the product development, in Tourism 3.0,
the co-creation and the ideas coming from the open innovation bring support in the steps 1, 2,
3, 4 and 6. Steps 1 and 2 are supported by the contribution of the co-creation workshops and
the Open Innovation System through various types of contributions: professional and non-
professional; whereas steps 3 and 4 have to be carried out by professional contributors only,
and step 6 is supported by the visitor’s creative reviews after their product experience.
The case of the life-changing experiences is where co-creation and open innovation play the
most decisive role, due to their complex nature, as they have to provoke some kind of
personal transformation in the visitor far beyond the usual tourism experiences. Their
development process is therefore more complex as well. The development of life-changing
experiences entails the following steps:
1. Starting from the mission as an inspirational mantra, and listening to related stories to
better understand the life-changing idea, define the experience concept based on its life-
changing goals (effects or impacts), the constituents of the positive change (those who
benefit from the activity), and the activity behind the experience.
2. Try to include storytelling training as a part of the experience, to generate new stories
In this case, the Product Manager has to supervise the adequacy of the ideas being
developed through the open innovation, the product development contests and the co-creation
workshops, to help improve and refine them, and to invigorate contribution.

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