expernova-white-paper-the-best-practices-for-leading-an-open-organization

© 2015 - Expernova.com
ForewordA UNIQUE INITIATIVE
Following the success of the first European version of our White Paper, which attracted contributions
from over 600 decision-makers in the field of innovation, this new White Paper is a response to the
growing need among professionals in this field to share and improve the best practices for confronting
the emergence of new business domains which require the sourcing of external expertise at an
international level.
This pressing need, detected by the Expernova team, has been the inspiration for our unique
initiative:
Unique, because of its collaborative nature: every reader can also be a contributor. It is
this open concept that has resulted in the involvement of hundreds of professionals in
highlighting trends and best practices
Unique, because of its global dimension: in keeping with the majority of innovation
ecosystems, where it is necessary to identify and interact with the benchmark organisations
wherever they may be located.
‘From the wide-ranging concept of open innovation to precise business processes’
The decision to focus on a precise, operational process, namely how to ‘identify and select future
partners’, has been a strong motivating factor for contributors.
This dynamic will in turn lead to a focus on other key processes in collaborative innovation, as well as
a more detailed analysis of practices which are of particular importance.
IN WHAT WAY IS THIS WHITE PAPER COLLABORATIVE?
Quite simply because it has been written with the participation of over 120 decision-makers in R&D
and innovation, based on a survey which Expernova has been conducting since April 2015.
We have also invited several specialists to provide their ‘Expert Analyses’, in which they talk about
the challenges of open and collaborative innovation- you will find these throughout the White Paper,
addressing key issues relating to open innovation and best partnership practices.It’s much more than
a white paper- it’s a community!
The main objectives of this White Paper are:
To bring together decision-makers who wish to share their experiences and to refine methods
and processes in order to simplify the implementation of open innovation projects in innovative
companies.
Key Opinion leaders and decision-makers come together to discuss innovation!’ - This is the major
focal point of our white paper which makes it an unprecedented initiative in this rapidly evolving
sector.
●
●

HOW DO I SIGN UP TO THE
COMMUNITY AND CONTRIBUTE
TO THE INIATIVE?
It couldn’t be simpler! You can start by taking 3 minutes
to respond to yourself to our survey on best partnership
practices by
clicking here.
Other initiatives will follow in due course. We will have
the opportunity to look in more and more detail at
specific subjects and operational issues...
Sign up to stay informed at the website
www.open-innovation.pro

Table of Contents
I - NEW CHALLENGES
II - INVENTORY OF CURRENT APPROACHES AND BEST PRACTICES
1. Identify new potential partners
2. Benchmark and select future partners
3. Manage the costs and constraints
4. Anticipate possible obstacles
III - EXPERT TESTIMONY
1. What are you trying to achieve and Why?
Mr. Steve Bone - Nu Angle
2. Focus on questions, not ideas.
Mr. Stephen Shapiro - Innovation Instigator, Business Advisor, Keynote Speaker
3. Embrace being open: to new people, ideas, and models
Mrs. Shannon Lucas - Vodafone Global Enterprise
4. The power of creativity
Mr. Adam Radziszewski - L’Oréal
‘We can be open and create value being open and not
necessarily by opening our R&D’
Mr. Wim Vanhaverbeke - University of Hasselt

5. Richness comes from the diversity of profiles and fields
Mr. Mohammed Youbi Idrissi - Air Liquide
6. Rethink your strategy and research methodology
Mr. Guillaume Lamarque - Alma CG
7. A Case Study - How to create a successful Open Innovation Strategy
Mr. Andrea Mills - SThealth Ventures
8. Technology scouting: identify and contact new partners
Mr. Christian Hommas - Siemens AG
9. Selecting Partners
Mr. Pascal Magnier - Expernova
10. A good worker never blames his tools!
Mr. Campbell Lockhart - Innovatorslikeme.com
11. Tool classification, limits and trends
Mr. Albert Meige - Presans
12. Start-ups, large accounts & technology transfer
Mrs. Catherine Pommier - Business Innovation Center Montpellier Métropole
13. Facilitate technology transfer between academic research and
companies
Mrs. Frédérique Sachwald - Ministry of Higher Educadtion and Research
14. Pfizer’s Center for Therapeutic Innovation: a creative example of
collaboration between scientists and academics
Mrs. Samantha O’Connor - Pfizer
15. Innovating Better - Providing new solutions to our customers
Mr. Richard Peres - Tarkett

WIM VANHAVERBEKE
Professor of Strategy and Innovation
University of Hasselt
BELGIUM
STEPHEN SHAPIRO
TEDx NASA Speaker
www.stephenshapiro.com
UNITED STATES
GUILLAUME LAMARQUE
Innovation & New Product Development
Alma CG
FRANCE
SHANNON LUCAS
Director of Innovation, TEDx Hayward Speaker
Vodafone
UNITED STATES
ADAM RADZISZEWSKI
Former Director of Innovation
L’Oréal
UNITED STATES
MOHAMMED YOUBI IDRISSI
Life Science Group Manager
Air Liquide
FRANCE
CHRISTIAN HOMMA
Senior Consultant Technology Scouting
Siemens Corporate Technology
GERMANY
PASCAL MAGNIER
CEO & Co-founder
Expernova
FRANCE
CAMPBELL LOCKART
Founder
Innovatorslikeme.com
FRANCE
ALBERT MEIGE
CEO
Presans
FRANCE
CATHERINE POMMIER
Director
BIC Montpellier
FRANCE
FRÉDÉRIQUE SACHWALD
Deputy Head of SITTAR
Ministry of Higher Education & Research
FRANCE
SAMANTHA O’CONNOR
Executive Director & Head Strategy &
Business Planning
Pfizer
UNITED STATES
RICHARD PERES
Group Innovation Director
Tarkett
LUWEMBOURG
ANDREA MILLS
Chief Innovation Officer
SThealth Ventures
UNITED STATES
STEVE BONE
Director & Co-foundeur
Nu Angle
ENGLAND
Who’s who?
Click on the picture to access the Expert Testimony,
Click on the name to access the LinkedIn Profile.

This initiative is supported by
Mrs. Axelle Lemaire,
French Deputy Minister for Digital Affairs
Photo credit © Mein-PatrickVedrune

PART I
NEW
CHALLENGES
All statistics are based on the results
of the Survey we launched in April
2015 (120 R&D experts surveyed).© 2015 - Expernova.com


Yochai Benkler, Yale University
This famous quote, illustrates perfectly the context in which innovative companies are operating
today. They are forced to confront a new reality:
The proliferation in the volume of scientific data and
the emergence of grey literature
The mushrooming of different sources of
information, disseminated on a global scale
The emergence of highly dynamic new countries and
operators
The interconnection of many different scientific
fields
A shortening of product life cycles
In addition, economic criteria also come into play, , often adding complications to the situation faced
by innovative companies.
The conclusion is inescapable: keeping informed of the research ecosystem and the scientific and
technological environment surrounding an innovative company is becoming increasingly complex
and costly.
THE WORLD IS BECOMING TOO FAST, TOO COMPLEX, AND TOO
NETWORKED FOR ANY COMPANY TO HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS INSIDE.

Whether the objective is to pool risks and costs, to
seek leverage or to enhance flexibility in order to
achieve more rapid commercialisation, research
partnerships provide a strategic solution.
INNOVATING FASTER AND GENERATING
BUSINESS
The notion of time to market, which is the
consequence of the shortening of product life
cycles, is assuming an increasingly important
place in R&D processes.
A partnership approach enhances a company’s
capacity to innovate and the frequency at which
it innovates.
BENEFITING FROM EXTERNAL KNOW-
HOW
For the majority of those surveyed, an R&D
partnership is necessary for the launching of a
project which is outside their field of expertise.
A culture of cooperation is emerging: to be sure to
get the best out of their collaboration, the parties
are capitalising on the pooling of their respective
areas of in-house expertise.
CREATING VALUE OUT OF IN-HOUSE
EXPERTISE
A 2012 INPI study 1
emphasized the importance of
intellectual property: 63% of respondents believe
that collaborative innovation creates value from
the strategic patents which they hold.
POOLING RISKS AND COSTS
All innovation involves taking a risk...
If you’re not failing every now and again,
it’s a sign you’re not doing anything very
innovative. Woody Allen
The pooling of resources and risks has become a
fundamental component in successfully carrying
out breakthrough innovation projects and in
shouldering all the potential risks.
ANTICIPATING OPERATIONAL NEEDS
Anticipating the skills required (both internal and
external) leads to a more clearly defined project
(budget, opportunities, time).
▪ Resolving potential bottlenecks,
▪ Identifying key skills,
▪ Designing collaborative projects in order
to access funding,
▪ Launching a project outside one’s field of
expertise…
Today, the majority of companies emphasize the
importance of preparation and responsiveness
when carrying out innovation projects - they
understand that they are more successful when
they pool their expertise:
32 out of the 40 companies in the CAC are
currently engaged in a partnership and have an
open innovation strategy. 2
R&D PARTNERSHIPS AS A RESPONSE TO THE DYNAMIC
EVOLUTION OF THE TECHNOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC
ENVIRONMENT.
of the decision-makers
surveyed said that
they engaged in at
least one research
partnership every year
75%

Partnering: A response
to operational needs
12
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PART II
INVENTORY OF
CURRENT
APPROACHES AND
BEST PRACTICES
All statistics are based on the results
of the Survey we launched in April
2015 (120 R&D experts surveyed).© 2015 - Expernova.com

Identify new
potential partners
12
0
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NIONS
120
D
ECISON MAKER OPINIO
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` l j f k
SURVEY
RESULTS

Responding to a specific problem or
dealing with a new technological challenge
increasingly requires companies to access
new areas of expertise outside their core
business and therefore to source new R&D
partners. The analysis of a company’s
research ecosystem is an important starting
point for this process!
A. DRAWING ON THE IN-HOUSE TALENT
POOL
Your future partner is perhaps part of the network
of one of your employees!
The company of tomorrow has to operate
in open mode... It is essential to manage
in a different way, to achieve a system of
governance where the decisions are no longer
taken exclusively by senior management, but
rather where many of them are taken within
the community.Hervé Sérieyx 3
An inventory of the skills available in-house
is a pre-requisite for beginning the search for
a partner. Establishing a ‘common language’
between the various departments is a good start.
The objective is to promote mutual understanding
between the stakeholders so that they can move
forward together on key projects.
Promoting dialogue and the ‘horizontal’
transmission of information makes it possible
to identify the ‘champions of innovation’, the
network hubs and the key opinion leaders that a
company has within its ranks. It is then up to the
managers to mobilise them at the appropriate
moment.
New idea management and CRM tools dedicated
to innovation can be used to encourage creative
contributions from employees and to facilitate
the sharing of their knowledge about benchmark
organisations in specific domains. Suggestion
boxes, co-working and internal communications
platforms play an important role in this ‘inside
scouting’.
B. EXPLORING THE IN-HOUSE
ENVIRONMENT
MAPPING YOUR ECOSYSTEM
Mapping your ecosystem comes down to
identifying the different categories of stakeholder
(companies, SMEs, start-ups, research
laboratories, universities, clusters, etc.) and
understanding their positioning in respect of each
other.
Such an overview subsequently allows you to
rapidly mobilise the right stakeholder in relation
to a specific requirement. This mapping, generally
represented visually in the form of a mind map, is
the end result of painstaking research which is full
of complex information. In order to be relevant,
it requires the gathering, sifting and analysis of
disparate and scattered data.
New tools can help to save a considerable amount
of time on this type of preliminary research.
FAMILIARISING YOURSELF WITH YOUR
ECOSYSTEM
Trade fairs, conferences, professional gatherings
and even networking breakfasts are excellent
ways of familiarising yourself with the most
relevant stakeholders in a company’s research
ecosystem. They allow you to build up an address
book and to discuss specific subjects.
46% of participants in our
survey turn first and
foremost to their
existing networks.
said they had met
their future business
partners at events.
83%

DRAWING ON EXISTING COMMUNITIES AND
NETWORKS
If there are more ideas and intuition in more
heads than one, the most creative group of people
must be the world’s population…
Jean-Yves Huwar 4
The pioneers of open innovation did not wait
for the development of the Web 2.0 to come
together and organize themselves.
Numerous clusters exist in a variety of forms (such
as the think tanks, professional associations,
the pôles de compétitivité [competitivity hubs]
in France, etc.), focusing on specific themes.
Composed of a web of companies of all sizes
and of research centres, their role is to support
innovation by pooling resources.
Today, we are also witnessing the emergence
of theme-specific groups on social networks for
professionals (LinkedIn, Viadeo, ResearchGate,
etc.). Orientated towards discussion and
exchanges, they provide a platform for launching
debates, finding solutions to problems and
identifying the most dynamic contributors.
ATTRACTING THE MOST DYNAMIC PARTNERS
It is clear that it is increasingly useful to publicise
one’s innovation projects, the challenges to be
met and one’s intentions in terms of technology
transfer. The introduction of a communications
strategy dedicated to R&D and innovation
activities is the first step (website, blog, Twitter,
etc.).
Some companies also decide to go further and
offer crowdsourcing platforms which enable
them to express their requirements and to
manage, in a structured way, responses from all
types of participant (inventors, students, start-
ups, research centers, etc.).
The appearance of numerous capital risk
funds (corporate venturing), managed by
large companies, attracts the most innovative
projects in search of funding. This often enables
them to establish technological or commercial
collaborations in parallel with their investment
decisions.

Benchmark and select
future partners
12
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What are the key characteristics to look for?
Which factors appear to be decisive?
Once potential partners have been identified,
the selection should be made on the basis
of certain criteria. Defining the profile of the
‘ideal’ partner is not a task which should be
underestimated. Each project may require a
different partner profile, and so a list should
be drawn up of the requirements and specific
characteristics of the project in order to
define the set of skills and the partner profile
which are most suited to the situation.
Integrating a technology into a product
which is virtually finished in order to adapt
to a specific market won’t carry the same
implications as financing an exploratory
academic project whose aim is maintain one’s
position as a market leader. Pascal Magnier
TECHNOLOGICAL EXPERTISE AND SCIENTIFIC
EXCELLENCE
At first sight, this is hardly surprising- whether it is
to fill a skills gap in-house (through technological
expertise) or to engage in a research project
‘upstream’ (through scientific excellence),
according greater importance to specialists is a
necessity.
EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS
Selecting a partner who has experience in time
management and organisation and who is familiar
with the legal framework are just some of the
factors in overcoming the many obstacles.
INTERNATIONAL REACH
The international reach of a potential partner
(their collaborations abroad, their location
in a global hub of excellence, etc.) facilitates
rapid access to new markets and skills: cutting-
edge specialisation in a particular field, faster
acquisition of knowledge about a target culture,
the dissemination of research results, etc.
PRESENCE WITHIN A HUB OF EXCELLENCE
The presence of a potential partner in one of
these geographically strategic zones (clusters,
hubs of excellence) is generally evidence of their
expertise in that field.
A GOOD PARTNERSHIP: A HIGH-QUALITY
RELATIONSHIP
The difference between a successful person
and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack
of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
Vince Lombardi
A fully involved and motivated partner enhances
the quality of the relationship, improves
responsiveness, and results in greater creativity.
The degree of openness and an understanding
of the challenges are the decisive elements in
establishing a good partnership
thought that
technological and
scientific expertise are
by far the most sought
out characteristics in
partnerships.
said that experience
of collaborative
projetcs, previous
collaborations and
possession of an
established network
are important.
46%
29%

Manage the costs
and constraints
12
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RESULTS

An open innovation initiative is an investment
in both human and economic terms.
Although sharing risks, optimising time
and establishing a loyal relationship with
collaborators leads to reduced R&D costs and
facilitates economies of scale, measuring
associated performance is complex.
The choice of indicators is a source of
debate. Today, no exhaustive list exists.
INDICATORS WHICH ARE STILL SOMEWHAT
UNCLEAR
Scouting for a partner encompasses many
different activities, including:
● Participating in trade fairs and conferences
● Drawing up project specifications
● Responding to project propositions and
calls for tenders
● Monitoring scientific and technological
developments
● Auditing and analysing potential partners
● Business meetings, etc.
It is difficult to define the cost of these activities,
which is too often underestimated by operational
staff. It is particularly important to take into
account:
● Time spent on high-level profiles (salaries)
● Travel expenses
● Event participation fees
● Subscriptions to associations, networks,
etc.
● Licenses for tools and data access
The objective is, on the one hand, to increase
partnership opportunities and, on the other, to
optimise the management of the costs incurred.
Several global industrial companies even publish
the costs for the whole process of recruiting a new
partner, from identifying to approving them, and
these can reach €30,000 to €40,000 per search.
This is comparable to the sums quoted by
specialist consultancies.
THE LONGER THE SEARCH TAKES, THE MORE
THE COSTS ESCALATE
The challenge then becomes to structure the
process of seeking and approaching a potential
partner by using an appropriate method and
tools.
companies establish
over 5 research
partnerships per year.
1
in
5
didn’t know how to
quantify the cost
of scouting for a
partner as part of an
innovation process.
of these partnerships,
the search takes from
1 to 6 months
or more.
15%
For
52%
€43,000 on average
According to the Piller & Diener study,
theaveragecostofaprojectundertaken
by an open innovation intermediary is
€43k.
This cost can vary greatly, ranging from
a few hundred euros to over €160k.

Anticipate possible
obstacles
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Companies appreciate the benefits they
can reap from open innovation, but certain
obstacles persist and slow down the spread
of this practice.
CONFIDENTIALITY AND INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY
Managing exploitation rights and protecting
intellectual property remain the principal
hindrances to companies being more open.
DEFINING THE RULES AT THE EARLIEST
OPPORTUNITY
During the phase of negotiating IP rights,
more time needs to be devoted to the modalities
of exploitation than to property issues.
Hubert Kiehl 5
The establishing of strict rules, such as
confidentiality agreements (NDAs), enables
companies to decide on their degree of openness
and to control the dissemination of some of the
most strategic information.
However, the conditions of the contract with
the partners need to be properly clarified before
the project gets under way (budget, other
remuneration, etc.) and the exploitation and
commercialisation rights need to be negotiated.
CULTURAL CHANGE WITHIN THE
ORGANIZATION
Culturally, business practices still give rise
to many obstacles, and there is also a lot of
ignorance - a poor grasp of what is happening
at the present time. Jean-Luc Beylat 6
Developing the capacity to collaborate and to
manage new skills from outside calls into question
the working methods of the in-house teams,
whose philosophy needs to shift from possessing
to sharing.
GETTING THE WHOLE ORGANISATION
INVOLVED
Companies need to see open innovation not
as something special which is the preserve of a
handful of individuals, but rather as a routine
and a method which can be applied by every
employee. A.G Lafley 7
A reassigning of roles, collaboration between
the various departments, and an effort on the
part of all employees to keep an eye out for new
opportunities are often necessary elements.
THE COST
As mentioned earlier, a preliminary needs analysis
and a skills inventory are essential in defining a
project with clear parameters. It should be noted
too that pooling risks encourages economies of
scale.
THE DIFFICULTY OF INTRODUCING
PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
The number of patents registered, the time to
market, product satisfaction indicators and the
acquisition of select and strategic expertise are
potential means of assessing the performance of
a project.
Remember that innovation can be seen as taking
a risk, but it can also be seen as a incredible
opportunity to take a chance!
needed to keep their
research confidential.
were afraid of having
their ideas stolen.
consider that they
have the necessary
resources in-house
and are not looking to
the outside.
thought that
partnership initiatives
are always too
expensive.
30%
13%
14%
31%

WE CAN BE OPEN AND CREATE VALUE
BEING OPEN AND NOT NECESSARILY
BY OPENING OUR R&D
I like to stick to that idea because a company
applying open innovation has to create value for
some customers but also has to capture value.
Not all forms of openess are therefore open
innovation.
For example, Crowdsourcing is not necessarily
Open Innovation, it is openness toward a
crowd and you can use Crowdsourcing for open
Innovation when a company is creating value
through it, but that’s not necessarily the case, as
some crowdsourcing is never translated into an
economic benefit for the company.
“OPEN INNOVATION IS THERE TO
CREATE VALUE AND TO CAPTURE
VALUE” Henry Chesbrourgh
Limiting Open Innovation to R&D is limiting
the number of possibilities to apply the open
innovation principals.
Where I try to move away from the original
definition of open innovation by Henry
Chesbourgh, is that Henry focuses on big
companies where R&D is the main driver. I think
we can be open and create value by being open
and not necessarily only by opening our R&D.
BELGIUM
Expert Testimony
Wim VANHAVERBEKE
Professor of Strategy & Innovation
UNIVERSITY OF HASSELT

Expert Testimony
WE SEE THINGS EVOLVING IN OPEN
INNOVATION PRACTICES IN DIFFERENT
COUNTRIES, COULD YOU PLEASE POINT
OUT THE MAIN DIFFERENCES YOU HAVE
SEEN BETWEEN EUROPE AND THE UNITED
STATES?
The American companies tend to have a longer
history in R&D collaborations, particularly with
universities. Europe has been waking up to
the idea since the late 80s and 90s, whilst the
Americans started back in the 60’s and 70’s. So
Europe has woken up late but that doesn’t mean
that they are still lagging behind.
EUROPEAN COMPANIES ARE MOVING
INTO THE AGE OF OPEN INNOVATION
AND R&D PARTNERSHIPS.
It varies depending on the industry and the
type of company; I have seen very interesting
partnerships between Universities and
companies that go way beyond the traditional
R&D collaboration, which is basically “we pay,
you develop the technology and we use the IP
of it”.
However, we have to remember that there are
different ways of thinking about open innovation
in Europe. For example, in the north of Europe
where venture capital communities are more
common, - mainly in England, but also Denmark,
Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany – these
countries are ahead in R&D partnering where
Southern Europe is still behind.
PRACTICES IN BOTH EUROPE AND THE
UNITED STATES ARE CHANGING QUITE
RAPIDLY
We observe labor specialization on both
continents.
Companies are working in different ways
than before. Especially in Europe, they are
pushing the boundaries of R&D partnering and
creating collaborations based on trust. In these
collaborations, firms are going way beyond just
product development to also collaborate with
the purpose of joint competency building. Big
companies are sometimes going so far as to
shape the R&D and innovation strategies of
the local region through their interaction with
local ecosystems, government and universities.
This creates a smart environment in which the
strategies are co-aligned between big companies,
academia and policy makers who are all working
together to shape the innovation environment.
WHAT ARE FOR YOU THE MAIN
CHALLENGES IN OPEN INNOVATION
PRACTICES?
1. BEING PREPARED FOR IT!
This is the main challenge: companies try to reach
out and create partnerships because they see the
potential benefit of it, but they are not prepared
to execute it successfully.
You cannot start reaching out to partners
today if you were not prepared yesterday.
Companies have to organize and restructure
themselves differently internally, changing their
mindset in order to reach out effectively to
partners.
A lot of problems come from the management
of Open Innovation. It takes a lot of internal
reorganization before you are ready to integrate
external R&D resources as companies are used
to working only with internal resources not with
external ones. So, it’s not by just reaching out that
you are going to be able to learn directly how to
innovate more efficiently.
2. FITTING OPEN INNOVATION INTO A
STRATEGY
Why are you doing Open Innovation? That
should be the first question.
Open Innovation is not a solution for every
problem.
Companies have to figure out first if they have the
necessary resources themselves, or if they want
to develop a technology by themselves, and if not,
Wim Vanhaverbeke - Uniiversity of Hasselt

Expert Testimony
then you have the question “should you reach out
and if so, with who should you innovate”? Once
the firm has identified potential partners, it must
decide how it wants to reach out to them, and
which type of mode is required to collaborate.
There are a number of implementations, but
one of the major ones is to do with Intellectual
Property (IP).
IP changes its role in Open Innovation, as it’s now
becoming a strategic tool to build linkages with
other companies that have relevant knowledge
assets. So, the company’s legal department has
to adapt its role and the IP policy in the company.
3. DEFINING ITS MATURITY LEVEL
Firms have to gradually develop their Open
Innovation skills.
There is a way of learning and growing
into Open Innovation.
Companies have to be prepared when they
engage in Open Innovation. As many companies
just try Open Innovation without preparation,
their efforts tend to fail. Only few companies
manage their way up to higher levels of Open
Innovation and are able to reap real benefits from
opening up their innovation process.
4. HAVING THE APPROPRIATE RESOURCE
MANAGEMENT
You need people that can communicate with
the rest of the world, can source technology
and take risks.
Open Innovation has quite a lot of implications
for HRM. Companies have to think of a different
way of hiring people. Also the way people get
promoted and incentive structures should be
changed accordingly. If companies want people
to take risks, they will need to develop new
incentives and promotion schemes.
WHAT WOULD BE YOUR
RECOMMENDATION IN CHOOSING A
PARTNER FOR AN OPEN INNOVATION
PROJECT?
You have to look for the best partner in the
best position to deliver what you need.
But it’s not only about who has the right assets
complementary to what you need. It’s also about
the tradition and practice in working together.
Partnership intelligence or partnership
experience, is a very important element in
choosing a partner.
Open Innovation is not only about just being
open – it is necessary to assess who has the best
practice in opening up to other partners. The
preferred partner might not be the best partner
if he is not willing to take risks or to work in an
effective way with you, or if he has a history of
being very difficult with sharing IP or cheating on
partners.
Take a look at the IP of the company.
Regardless of the company’s resources, it is
necessary to know how you are going to do
business with them. When considering a partner
you have to look at the company’s IP and their
willingness to share this IP. A partner should be
willingtodevelopjointtechnologyandreasonable
in how the joint IP will be dealt with afterwards.

Expert Testimony
You have to make a distinction between what I call Hi-Tech SMEs and Low-Tech SMEs.
In Hi-Tech SMEs you develop a technology and then commercialize it via big companies who
have the required assets to bring it to the market.
It is difficult for SMEs to deal with big companies: how do you dance with a giant?
You have to make sure that you and your partner have distinctive competencies and that your IP
is protected and your agreement with the large company is well arranged. Once you have your
patented Technology, you can negotiate about how your technology will be accessed and used
by the large company. Remember it is important to look at companies who have a tradition and a
good reputation in collaborating with small companies.
For the Low-Tech SMEs, it’s a bit different. Companies that have mostly been working on
commodities are now facing razor thin margins and increasingly global competition. Most of
them have never been innovating, and they now have to make a jump into innovation and
reach out immediately to partners who can do the job for them.
SMEs work in different ways than in big companies as strategy, entrepreneurship and Open
Innovation are all linked together.
ThebigchallengeistoconvinceanSMEmanagertotaketherisk,moveawayfromcommodities
and start to develop new products. This must be done together with partners. However, open
innovation practices in low-tech SMEs are different from those applied in big companies. The
lessons we learned about open innovation in large companies are not a good guideline for open
innovation in small companies.
Therefore, SME Managers have to learn new guidelines to make their partnerships and Open
Innovation strategy successful.
In a small company everything is
linked to one entrepreneur who takes
the strategic lead, who takes the
risks, who is doing the work and
is managing the ecosystem of each
innovation project in order to make
it successful.
CAN YOU GIVE SOME ADVICE FOR AN SME
LAUNCHING AN OPEN INNOVATION PROJECT?

Expert Testimony
Wim Vanhaverbeke is Professor of Strategy & Innovation at The University of Hasselt and
also visiting professorat ESADE Business School and the National university of Singapore.
He published in several international journals such as Organization Science, Research Policy,
California Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Small Business Economics,
Journal of Business Venturing, Technovation. He was co-editor with Henry Chesbrough and
Joel West of the book “Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm” (OUP, 2006) and
«New Frontiers in Open Innovation» (OUP, 2014).
Mr. Vanhaverbeke is a dedicated open innovation researcher collaborating with different
partners in universities and companies around the globe. His current research is focusing
on open innovation in SMEs, innovation ecosystems and on the implementation of open
innovation practices. He established the European Innovation Forum with Henry Chesbrough
in 2012. Mr. Vanhaverbeke is a frequently asked speaker at leading international conferences
and an adviser for several globally operating companies. He has consulted and organized
workshops for multinationals and technology companies.
He was recently recognized by the International Association of Management of Technology
(IAMOT) as one of the top 50 authors of technology and innovation management over the
last 5 years (2008-2012).
New book in the pipeline: «Open innovation in SMEs» (CUP).
PROFILE DESCRIPTION

PART III
EXPERT
TESTIMONY

Expert Testimony
Dr Steve Bone started his wor-
king life as an industrial chemist
and materials scientist before
becoming a business director
for sensor division of Thorn
EMI. For the last 25 years he has
occupied leadership positions in
leading technology, innovation
and strategy consulting firms.
He is also a recognized thought
leader having written papers
on trends towards virtual R&D
(before ‘Open Innovation’),
technology strategy and applying
competency thinking to R&D. He
formed nu Angle with Dr Peter
Allen over 10 years ago to apply
experienced practitioner thinking
to real R&D management issues.
ENGLAND
Some Chief Technology Officers jump to make structural changes to an
organization without thinking about the what, i.e. the strategy. It’s human
nature because they want to get things done, move things around and
replace people – it’s a visible sign of things happening.
R&D Management is a discipline. There are 2 ways of developing an R&D
strategy: you can either go on the gut instinct and feeling you have already,
or go through a transparent logical data driven process to get there.
The Management may come from higher up in the organization. You
see excellent scientists working on projects where the prioritization of the
project is completely out their control. So they work less well and are not
innovative...
Management can be difficult because scientists – the experts- often think
“who else is going to know about my research?” But you don’t need to
understand all the scientific detail involved to understand how to set-up an
R&D project and manage the overall R&D strategy.
It’s important to involve all relevant parties in the development process
to work together towards establishing an R&D strategy. This means getting
Marketing, Business Development, Finance and R&D together. There needs
to be complete alignment.
WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO ACHIEVE
AND WHY?
You need to Frame
The Need first!
If the R&D Manager
is not performing his
function well, you
need to find someone
in the company who
can
FRAMING THE
NEED
STRATEGY
R&D MANAGEMENT
MAP
STRUCTURING
R&D DESIGN
MIND
CHOICE

Expert Testimony
IN YOUR WORK AT NU ANGLE HELPING COMPANIES TO DEFINE THE MANAGEMENT
PROCESS FOR AN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPING NEW TECHNOLOGIES, CAN YOU GIVE
US SOME EXAMPLES OF THE PROCESSES YOU GO THROUGH, I.E. HOW YOU GENERATE
A TECHNOLOGY ROAD MAP?
WE USE MIND-MAPPING TO HELP US TO DO THAT
So the first branch of the mind map tends to
be what you are trying to achieve? What’s the
marketing strategy? Or it might be what is the
consumer need?
Thenthesecondbranchwouldbewhatfunctions
are you trying to deliver to that need?
So you start with what you want to achieve and
then you work backward to understand what
is necessary in order to achieve it, i.e. how you
would get to there and then what you would
need along the way? We then say to the client:
we’ll now work with a set of 20 experts, some of
them from outside your industry sector, in order
to identify technologies and innovations that will
deliverthatfunction.Wesendthemthemindmap
and ask them to fill it in, and you end up with a big
mind map with lot of ideas/external technologies
with many white spaces filled in. Then we use a 1
to 5 “liker” scale to get the company and experts
to score against certain criteria.
We then export the mindmap into our bespoke
software to help us build several different 2 by
2 metrics to compare the ranked ideas against
different criteria such as cost, fit and risk. We
then create a new priority list taking into account
these 2 x 2s and all the different criteria added
together. Some attractive ideas, with regards to
the client need or a solution to the problem at
hand, may drop down the list as they do not fit in
with other criteria such as cost.
We then discuss whether we can make them fit
in order to bring it back into the priority order.
And in actual fact, it is just a case of finding the
ideas that will work against all criteria (probably
only 10% of all the ideas generated) and putting
them into place.
We use techniques such as “choice structuring”
inspired by a number of strategy gurus in order
to help the client develop choices and pick
the right one based on the analysis process
previously explained. Once you have got to
the stage where you are in agreement, you can
organize the ideas into an R&D strategy.
Tools work well in R&D strategy formulation
and planning but there is never just one. For
certain cases but we are still learning.
The problem with using a tool is that when you
find one you like, it’s very easy to apply it to
everything. After the project you may realize that
it was not the best one to use. So you have to
stay open to new techniques and different tools
available for different situations. It’s not the
tool that’s important, it’s aligning people to an
implementation route that’s important.
Academics have the time to think big things where
practitioners tend to not have time.
As a Trustee at the Research and Development Management Association (RAMDA),
what I find interesting is to connect practitioners with academics. Sometimes that
facilitatesfindingsolutionsusingnewideas,andallowsacademicstobetterunderstand
the practicality of applying new thinking to real on-site issues.
We always start with the business
objective or the consumer need then
we look backward to understand what
is necessary in order to achieve it.
Steve Bone - Nu Angle

Expert Testimony
WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO COMPANIES WHO ARE
LOOKING FOR EXTERNAL R&D PARTNERS?
You need people in your organization to be multifaceted rather
than just specialist.
Peoplearegoodtalkingabouttheirownexpertise,
but when it comes to a technology they are not
familiar with or talking to an expert outside their
industry sector, it becomes more difficult for
them. It’s a matter of finding the right people in
the right place within the R&D organization who
have the personality and skill to approach external
experts. If necessary, you may have to recruit
some people externally who can both provide
this skill and introduce the culture of looking to
the outside. At nu Angle we often use coaching
with simulation processes to help.
You have to be very similar
culturally or be able to adapt.
Companies work at different paces; I call it “clock
speed”. If you are trying to link somebody from a
sector with a fast clock speed to a sector with one
much slower, they won’t understand what the other
is talking about. This also goes for trying to integrate
an external innovation from a fast moving sector to
a slower sector – the innovation will not stick.
HOW DO YOU BRIDGE THE GAP
BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT FUNCTIONS
AND TRADITIONAL WORKING METHODS
WITHIN A TEAM?
It’s classic change management trying to
motivate all of the people in one organization
to do the same thing together. For example, the
Marketing department has different people than
in R&D. Marketing think they will not understand
when R&D starts talking about its technology.
But understanding is not difficult and it’s often
about the different language styles of the two
groups. One of the solutions we have found
that works is to ask the scientists to convert the
technological ideas into representative pictures
of the technology that the marketing department
will understand. It’s a way of projecting the image
of technology so that the Marketing department
can appreciate how it looks in an embodiment
of a real product. In this way no one is thinking
conceptually about a technical idea that’s difficult
to picture.
WHEN YOU LEAVE THE COMPANY TO
CARRY OUT THE PROJECT, HOW DO YOU
GET THE INTERNAL MANAGEMENT TO
ADAPT TO THE NEW STRATEGY?
You can structure the action plan for the project
around the disciplines, techniques, products
and categories involved. It really depends on
the priority list that is generated to develop the
strategy and divide it up into individual R&D
programs or parts of the project.
At the end of the project we also give the software
used in the strategy development process to the
client because we say that the R&D strategy is
only as good as the day that it it was developed.
The world advances at a certain pace and the
R&D strategy has to be refined to take account of
this. Also you must take into account the fact that
when you start to implement an R&D strategy
you actually affect the future and competitors will
respond in different ways.

Expert Testimony
1. R&D strategy - helps the company to position
its innovation efforts internally and externally
by defining where to place emphasis and the
direction for R&D
2. R&D process - ensures that the right inputs
and outputs are available to support functions
such as product development, research, technical
service, marketing and manufacture. There is
also a balance to be struck between process
bureaucracy and responsiveness
3. Resources - developing the capabilities to
encourage innovation; includes tools, people,
techniques and facilities.
4. Organization - selecting the right structure for
R&D allows processes and resources to work as
efficiently as possible. Structures can be based on
competencies, products, services or disciplines.
5. R&D culture - the values and behaviours that
contribute to the unique social and psychological
environment of an organization. inevitably R&D
redesign will require change and the most fruitful
approach is to begin with leadership tools that
include a vision of the future based on a sound
R&D strategy. Change can be consilidated with
management tools, such as role definitons,
measurement and control systems.
6. Information systems - ensuring that the right
information is collected, sifted, analyzed and
communicated. R&D teams need to communicate
inteamsthataredispersedacrosstheorganization
and may include partners, universities and
technology consultants.
7. R&D metrics (or Key Perfomance Indicators)
- KPIs are part of the Research & Development
Dashboard or Balanced Scorecard. There are two
main types of indicators:
Lagging indicators - these are easy to measure,
but hard to do anything about. Examples include
patents granted, expenses, revenue, R&D spend
and inventory turnover.
Leading indicators - these are difficult to measure
but more important to R&D performance as
they signal future events and show where you
are heading. Examples include patents filed,
ideas created, new technologies identified and
development time spent.
Leading indicators often change prior to large
market or technology adjustments and, as such,
can be used to predict future trends. But lagging
indicators give you the benefit of a rear-view
mirror of R&D observations to confirm that a
pattern is occuring or about to occur.
«Should we dedicate more time
to research or to development activities?»
«Which markets should be a priority for
R&D?»
At nu Angle we have defined seven elements
within the architecture
A SEVEN AREA FRAMEWORK FOR SUCCESSFUL R&D DESIGN
The Technology Management Architecture
defines a strategic intent for R&D- it
establishes a clear and common view for the
R&D strategy and its scope action.

Expert Testimony
FOCUS ON QUESTIONS, NOT IDEAS
UNITED STATES
Stephen Shapiro has dedicated
the last 20 years of his life to
innovation. After a 15-year
tenure leading an innovation
practice of 20,000 people at
Accenture, in 2001 he launched
his professional speaking
career. He has presented his
counterintuitive perspectives
on innovation to audiences in
50 countries. His latest book,
“Best Practices Are Stupid,”
was named the best innovation
book of 2011. In 2015 he was
inducted into the Speaker Hall
of Fame.
My philosophy: « you can only do what you need to be best at - you
can’t do everything well».
It’s nice in the beginning stages when a company tries to do everything
themselves because they want to save some money, but the problem is you
dissipate your energy.
So what I would do is to figure out what matters most to you: “Innovate
where you differentiate”. Put all your effort and expertise into the one area
in order to do exceptionally well at that. Then you can find partners for
everything else. Whether it’s distribution of your product, development of
your product, some of the backing systems that you need… you need to
create a good ecosystem around you. The biggest challenge with all that
is setting up and managing relationships. In my own experience of having
a small business, you can have great partners but if it’s not well laid out in
terms of expectations, what’s to be delivered, who owns the IP, and how it
is all going to work, in the long run you will face more problems.
So I think having a clear understanding upfront is essential.
“If I had an hour to
save the world, I’d
spend 15 minutes
defining the problem
and 1 minute finding
solutions…”
Albert Einstein
DEFINE THE RIGHT CHALLENGES
YOU DIFFERENTIATE
INNOVATIVE WHEREMANAGE
CONTRACT
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTIES

Expert Testimony
COMPANIES DON’T ALWAYS HAVE THE BEST WAYS OF CREATING
VALUE AND MEASURING INNOVATION. CAN YOU PLEASE
DEVELOP AND EXPLAIN THE MEANING BEHIND THE PHRASE:
’ IT’S TIME TO INNOVATE THE WAY YOU INNOVATE? ’
The key thing is:
replication is not
innovation!
What works for
one company won’t
necessarily work for you!
Each company has a different strategy and differentiator. You need
toonlyinnovatearoundyourdifferentiators,notaroundeverything.
We need to think differently because what may have worked in the
past will not necessarily work today. For example, we are often so
enamored with opinion, suggestions, and ideas. But seeking these
out these is a faulty strategy as it creates a lot of noise and wasted
energy.
People want to study what companies are doing, believing that this
will help them be successful. But the problem is that when you
copy someone else’s best practice, by the time you implement it,
they are onto the next practice. You are always playing a game of
catch-up.
You are never really able to innovate using a replication of strategy.
Does that mean speeding-up the pace at which I staple papers? It
could mean anything. As a result, people have no idea where to
put their time. Although everyone should be innovating, you don’t
want everybody innovating everywhere. You are simply wasting
time and energy if you are innovating payroll, time management, or
activities that don’t really create massive value in the marketplace.
You need to work out what your differentiation strategy is, because
this drives your to innovation strategy.
The problem that a lot
of companies have is that
they simply tell people
to innovate but nobody
knows what that means.
DO YOU THINK THAT OPEN INNOVATION IS A SOLUTION TO OUT-INNOVATE THE
COMPETITION?
To me Open Innovation is one strategy; it’s not
the only strategy.
I am a big believer that expertise is the
enemy of the innovation.
To become an expert in your industry, you
spend a lot of time studying your competition
– in particular your current competitors. Your
professional development focuses on your
area of discipline. If you are in the hospitality
industry, you go to hospitality conferences. If
you are in customer service, you read books on
that topic. Individuals dedicate their life to their
area of expertise. Unfortunately, the more we
know about a topic, the more difficult it is for
us to think differently about it. Our solutions are
usually extrapolations of past solutions leading to
incremental innovation.
Given that expertise is the enemy of innovation,
we need to find solutions from others; from other
domains of expertise. This is one reason why I’m
a big believer in Open Innovation. It allows you
to potentially find solutions from anywhere, from
anyone, even people from different areas of
expertise.
The objective here is to increase the number of
people and the diversity of the people who are
working on your problems.
Stephen Shapiro - www.stephenshapiro.com

Expert Testimony
First, it is important to note that Open innovation doesn’t necessarily mean opening up to
people outside the organization.
Open innovation can also be internal openness. If you think about how we typically develop
anything, you usually get a group of people together to try to solve a problem - usually
experts. The concept of open innovation is simple: How do we open up to a larger group
of people? Internally - to other departments; externally - to our customers, suppliers,
partners, or even to the world. Therefore open innovation and external innovation are not
synonymous in my mind.
To get started, a company needs to first open up internally before it can effectively become
open externally. To collaborate internally, you ideally collaborate around challenges.
The traditional approach for developing a product (for example) is to have the company’s
product developers do the work. This is level 1. But many organizations realize that this
limits the amount of input they get from others within the organization.
Therefore they move to the second level: collect employee ideas via a suggestion box. In the
beginning suggestion boxes generate a lot of ideas. Some of these may have been thought of
long ago but there was no vehicle for sharing them. Or maybe they are simple, low-hanging
fruit ideas. Unfortunately, after about 6-9 months, the number of ideas and the quality of the
ideas drops massively.
CAN YOU GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OF AN OPEN INNOVATION PROJECT
THAT YOU’VE WORKED ON AND THE METHODS YOU USED TO
IMPLEMENT IT?
Therefore the next step after the suggestion
box, level 3, is to move to internal Open
innovation around challenges.
Essentially what that means is that instead
of asking employees for their opinions,
suggestions or ideas about anything, you ask
them for solutions to well-framed problems/
opportunities. You might post a challenge on
the company intranet such as: “How might
we improve productivity in a specific problem
area of the business?” inviting employees
to provide their solutions. The key is to
post challenges that are specific enough so
that they are not overly abstract, yet not so
specific that a particular solution or domain
of expertise is implied.
The success of an open innovation
effort from my prospective is largely
based on getting better questions
rather than looking for solutions or
for ideas.
A PROGRESSION THROUGH 5 LEVELS OF OPENNESS
After internal open innovation, we can go in a
number of different directions. The 4th level
is collaborating with trusted third parties:
Universities, consultants, partners, suppliers,
or a hand-selected group of customers. The
5th level is external crowd sourcing: asking
for solutions from potentially 7 billion
people.

Expert Testimony
WHAT ISSUES DO YOU COME ACROSS
WORKING WITH OUTSIDE PARTNERS OR
OTHER DEPARTMENTS? HOW DO YOU
SOLVE THE MAIN ISSUES THAT COME
ABOUT?
I will separate the different issues by level:
Level 1:
When experts from a department work on a
problem, it’s easier because people have deep
contextual knowledge, a good understanding
of the problem, and there are few intellectual
property concerns. In some respects this is the
easiest level, which is why most companies have
traditionally used this approach. The biggest
downside is that it can be quite limiting due to
a lack of diversity and quantity of the solvers
involved. The solution is to move towards open
innovation.
Level 2:
Suggestion boxes have a different set of
problems. Although intellectual property
issues are still not significant, you do run into
a sustainability problem. Given that a large
percentage of ideas submitted are typically not
implemented, people eventually get weary of
submitting solutions. Plus the amount of energy
involved in sifting through the “bad” ideas can
be time consuming. In the long run, asking for
ideas often proves to be a bad idea. The solution
is to move to challenge-centered innovation, and
away from idea-driven innovation.
Level 3:
When you move to the next level internal Open
Innovation around challenges, we don’t have a
lot of intellectual property issues because we
are still working within the company. Instead we
have motivations issues. How do you get people
motivated, to participate on an effort, when they
have other jobs to do? The topic of motivation is
toolargetoaddressinashortarticlelikethis.Alsoat
this level, people may have contextual knowledge
of the problem, but not as much as those working
directly with the problem. Therefore we need to
provide more information. Challenge briefs are
not just one sentence; they are usually a couple
of pages long with background information and
evaluation criteria. This is an effective level, but
you are still limiting the diversity and quantity of
solvers. Level 4 is when we start going outside.
Level 4:
With a closed network (e.g., universities
consultants, suppliers), you run into some
intellectual properties issues, because you
must decide who owns the IP that gets created
if you are working as a partnership. Or, if you
are sharing sensitive data with external partners,
how do you protect that information? There may
also be the issue of needing to provide some
more context, because the partner is external
to the company, hence they don’t understand
what the company is going through. This may
lead to a longer process in order to develop those
relationships. This level is also very useful also for
identifying challenges,not just solutions.
Level 5:
Open Crowdsourcing gives the greatest number
of solvers (potentially 7 billion) and the greatest
diversity, but there are intellectual properties
considerations, and your strategy must mitigate
any risks. For example, one common approach
is to use an intermediary who manages the IP
issues. Beyond IP, you need to make sure that
the problem you’re solving doesn’t require a
lot of contextual knowledge, because when
you open up to everyone, you don’t want to
give out a lot of sensitive information about the
company. Plus, people are not going to take the
time to understand the depths of the company
in terms of their strategies, unless you provide
a sufficiently large “prize.” Therefore you need
to frame the problem in a way that people can
get their heads around it quite easily. For certain
types of challenges, this level can be a great way
to find already existing solutions before spending
too much time internally working on the problem.

Expert Testimony
HOW DO YOU MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE OF AN OPEN INNOVATION
STRATEGY? IS LOOKING AT THE RETURN OF INVESTMENT (ROI) THE BEST
WAY TO MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE OF THE PROJECT OR ARE THERE
OTHER WAYS?
NASA wanted to find an algorithm for predicting
solar-flare activity.
They had very specific criteria for the solution.
After posting this challenge to an intermediary’s
website, they found a solution that was way
beyond their expectations, because somebody
had actually been studying that for a while and
had the mathematical formula. Fortunately
ROIisanicemeasurebutit’salaggingindicator.Theproblemis,especiallyforapharmaceutical
company let’s say, you don’t know for 20 years what your ROI is going to be. Therefore you
can’t only base success on ROI. I use different measures which are more leading indicators.
One of them I call the signal-to-noise ratio. This is a conceptual measure. It is the ratio
between what you want and what you don’t want. The signal is comprised of the solutions
that get implemented and ultimately create value. The noise is everything else: wasted
time on inefficient innovation processes, the bad ideas, the good solutions that don’t get
implemented, and the solutions that got implemented but didn’t create the desired value.
An idea system, for example, has a lot of noise. You can generate thousands of ideas but
potentially only implement a handful – and of those implemented they are typically of lower
value. The best way to optimize our signal-to-noise ratio is to eliminate unnecessary work by
asking better questions. I find that the wrong questions often lead to a poor signal-to-noise
ratio.
Externally the signal-to-noise ratio is less of a concern because you typically only pay for a
good solution, not the time invested. If we have ten thousand people working on a challenge
and only one of them is good it’s not, necessarily a bad thing. Of course the downside is that
we have to sift through all the solutions that people provide. This is once again a waste of
energy and reduces our signal to noise ratio. A well-framed challenge can reduce the noise.
The second measure is the “Solve Rate”. If I post a bunch of challenges, I want to know what
percentage of those challenges are adequately solved by meeting specific criteria. We can
look for trends over time because that is going to help us again better understand whether
we have well-framed challenges or not.
this challenge didn’t require a lot contextual
knowledge or sensitive information.
However, if you want to use open innovation to
redesign your company’s processes or solve a
highly sensitive issue, it might be problematic
because you don’t want to share the necessary
information. If a lot of context/sensitive
information is required to solve certain types of
problems, this level may be more challenging..
ONE EXAMPLE OF LEVEL 5

Expert Testimony
Finally we can also look at implementation rate – of all the solutions provided, how many of
them are actually implemented. And then finally we also look at what ROI we get.
The big advantage of challenge-centered innovation (over idea-driven innovation) is that:
• challenges focus on differentiators (you can get people solving the critical problems)
• you can take time to reframe the challenge until it has a high likelihood of being solved
• before you get started you:
- assign owners and sponsors
- allocate funding and resources
- identify evaluators and evaluation criteria
Using this approach I have seen companies improve their innovation ROI tenfold or more.

Expert Testimony
We invite our top customers (large multinationals) to explore a simple
concept… “What if?”.
Our global innovation program is based on listening to our customers first.
We have created an Innovation Workshop methodology that we leverage
around the world to change how we engage with the world’s largest
businesses. Our Innovation Workshops are about helping customers tackle
their biggest challenges.
We run roughly 100 Innovation Workshops a year and take the radical
approach of having an open conversation without agenda and ask «big
questions». The heart of the conversation is focused on business
transformation, not technology. This gives us the freedom to facilitate an
open conversation.
Our Vodafone Innovation Workshops focus on strengthening those trust
relationships. We start by listening deeply and actively to the customer.
Before the workshops we interview attendees to get them thinking about
the challenges and opportunities they are facing. We continue that
line of questioning during the workshop to ensure that we have a solid
understanding about where our customers want to take their business.
We combine the external and internal ideas, with a collaborative ideation
session.This trusted partnership allows powerful solutions to emerge.
At Vodafone
Global Enterprise,
we believe that
open innovation
starts with an open
conversation:
Where do you want
your business to be
in three years?
Trust is an essential
element to the
success of open
innovation.
EMBRACE BEING OPEN – TO NEW
PEOPLE, IDEAS, AND MODELS.
Shannon has over fifteen years
experience of cutting edge
technology. At Vodafone Global
Enterprise Shannon manages
the global Customer Innovation
Program, which allows Fortune
500 businesses worldwide to stay
agile, competitive and sustainable.
She is continually refining
customer engagement models,
tools, and processes to support
a culture of change. She is a
frequent speaker on the power of
mobility and its positive impact
on business and society as well
as the role of intrapreneurship in
large corporations.
UNITED STATES
WORKSHOP
PROTOTYPING
TRUST
CO-CREATIONCULTIVATE
CREATIVITY
OPEN CONVERSATION

Expert Testimony
Fun helps to
cultivate creativity.
Open innovation is
the foundation of our
innovation program. We
have a lot of experience
to draw from having
run so many workshops
in the last few years.
At the same time, we
recognize this is an
iterative process and
we are always looking
to learn from our own
experiences as well
as thought leaders
from across the global
innovation community.
Vodafone’s
approach to co-
creation is to
bring together
businesses, across
industries and
boarders, to share
ideas, concepts,
skills, and best
practices to
achieve a level
of success that
would not have
been possible
independently.
Innovation cannot happen without creativity. Fun helps to cultivate
creativity. To enable this we have dinner the night before a workshop,
host the event in creative spaces, like our Customer Experience
Centers situated around the world, and use gamification principles
throughout the workshop. This helps the open innovation process
by tearing down walls and preconceptions, shifting to out-of-
bounds thinking, and ultimately uncovering new approaches or
solutions. At the end of the workshop, we collectively ideate solutions,
refine, prioritize and then execute with a lean, agile approach.
In response to this growing need for
co-creation we launched the Enterprise
Studio, the execution arm of the
program.
Enterprises around the world can no longer
adapt in isolation, which is why the need
for open innovation is stronger than ever.
Increasingly we see disruptive ideas or
solutions emerge from our workshops that
cannot be tackled alone.
It’s both a physical space in Silicon Valley
and a global methodology. We pull from
a variety of innovation frameworks like
design thinking, lean, agile, etc., but as
each project is wildly unique, we have to be
willing to adapt our approach. The Studio
is not an “app-factory.” We tackle problems
from user-based, real-time car insurance in
the UK, to connecting smallholder farmers
and banks in Africa, to holistic analytics
platforms to manage supply chains
Our workshops are
structured to facilitate
inter- and intra-
company visibility.
We recognize the
importance of
bringing together
cross-functional
customer executives.
Combing the collective wisdom of the Chief Marketing Office, Head of
Supply Chain, VP of HR, Chief Strategy Officer, Director of Sustainability,
Chief Financial Officer, etc. helps to connect dots. This can help increase
efficiency by leveraging consistent platforms, reduce complexity and
streamlinethesometimesnaturaldividebetweeninternalandexternal
innovation that often occurs within large corporates.
Another key driver to open innovation is cross-pollination. By bringing
together two large businesses, a broader sampling of trends and
challenges can be identified and vetted. We can examine concepts like
breakthrough innovations that might help a specific vertical address, a
wider global audience, or how leveraging existing technologies might
transform a current industry in new and different ways.
Shannon Lucas - Vodafone Global Enterprise

Expert Testimony
One of the key performance indicators of the
Vodafone Innovation program is the relationship
we have with our 1,700 global enterprise
customers. Due to the intimate nature of the
workshops, we are able to develop strong
The challenges facing most organizations today
are so massive that they cannot be solved in
isolation. The only way to drive open innovation
is to embrace being open – to new people, ideas,
and models.
We host a variety of eco-system events, like the
recent Vodafone Customer Experience Center
opening in New York City, where we hosted over
150 customers. We are intentionally cultivating a
global network of innovators because we know
we cannot innovate in isolation.
During our Innovation Forums or Workshops, we
always leave space for conversation. You never
know where the next great idea will originate but
you need to be willing to listen.
Open innovation is often focused on the
intersection between two large organizations; but
it is equally important to recognize and be open
to the ideas and talent within a large organization
– the importance of the role of the intrapreneur.
At Vodafone we have a team of roughly 50
Innovation Champions around the globe. They
drive the success of the innovation program;
beingabletoleveragetheglobalperspectiveswith
feedbackaboutlocaloptimizationistremendously
valuable. This native innovation approach is
something we can leverage for our co-creation
engagements with our customers. Providing
a means for engaging the top entrepreneurial
minds within such a large organization helps
to both provide an outlet for their passion and
amplify creativity throughout the organization.
and personal relationships that translate into
improved business relationships.
Our sales executives that have participated
in these workshops have noted a dramatic
improvement in the overall relationship with the
customer and in many cases that has translated
into more business opportunity for Vodafone to
provide our total communications solutions.
Transforming a business does not require
reinventingthewheel.Thereisalotofopportunity
for business optimization, increasing efficiencies,
and even radically transforming business
models that does not require new technological
solutions. Enterprises need to demonstrate a
stronger willingness to explore pre-competitive
open innovation pre-competitively, when we are
looking at life or planet-saving solutions that will
also positively impact bottom-lines. For many of
the most pressing challenges today, some type of
solution probably already exists.
Finally, innovation is only impactful when
it’s ruthlessly executed. We believe in fast
prototyping to force an idea to it’s natural
conclusion…not all ideas make it to see the light
of day, so vetting an idea with the minimum time
and resources required, while still exploring the
validity and impact, are an essential part of an
open innovation process. We openly share our
co-creation methodology, so that our supporting
teams, internal sponsors and partners are clear on
the journey. We are transparent that the journey
includes potential exit points at every stage. That
way we focus on the winning ideas.
DO YOU HAVE ANY GENERAL ADVICE TO OFFER IN RELATION TO THE SEARCH FOR
POTENTIAL PARTNERS?
WHAT KIND OF INDICATORS DID YOU
USE TO EVALUATE THE PERFORMANCE
OF THIS OPEN INNOVATION PROJECT?
Finally, being open means being able
to see the truly big picture. We need to
shift business thinking to embrace open
innovation engagements.
Shannon Lucas - Vodafone Global Enterprise

Expert Testimony
THE POWER OF CREATIVITY
UNITED STATES
We interviewed Mr. Adam Radziszewski in August, during
his last days in his position as Director of Innovation and
New Technologies at L’Oréal Research & Innovation USA. He
accepted to share with us his methods for optimizing internal
processes and the generation and evaluation of ideas across
different departments within a company.
Within Research and Innovation (R&I) my scope was process optimization
and automation, which often translates to “everyday innovation” thus
making employees more effective, creative, and happier.
My role was more focused on listening, observing and analyzing how
we do things on a daily basis, and then making this better. This included
disruptive or breakthrough idea seeking; however, one cannot solely focus
on these methods as they do not always fit to the given time frame, and
there are already plenty of great ideas surrounding us that just simply need
some help to resurface. Within the company we formed a diverse group of
people to collaborate on new ideas. We put in place a state of the art idea
management system, a crowd-sourcing platform from Cognistreamer that
let us scale our innovation efforts more efficiently and globally. It was also
my job to bring this diverse group of energetic people to discover and test
the hunches and ideas. Ideas may be linked to lab activities, use of new
technology, new building design, change of policy, anything goes…the kind
of innovation that touches people on an everyday basis.
At the time of this interview,
Adam Radziszewski was working
at l’Oréal in charge of vision,
strategy, and implementation
of R&I USA Collaborative
Innovation and Digital Programs.
Today, Adam is working for GS1
as Senior Director of Digital
Innovation.
IDEA INNOVATION
PROCESS
DESIGN
THINKING
PROTOTYPING
CHALLENGE
CAMPAIGN
CREATIVITY

Expert Testimony
IDEA INNOVATION PROCESS
The idea management platform is an absolute
must these days for people to express
themselves; however this is not enough. We
also have a cross-functional team of moderators
that curate the ideas.
It’s a small portion of their work at L’Oreal, and
they are the “right” people with certain energy
and passion for change. They represent different
areas within the company e.g. HR, Hair, Makeup,
Skin, IT, Finance and many others. It’s a group of
around 20 – each person representing different
area in R&I.
We start with challenges and then take the most
popular ideas and assess them in closer detail.
Depending on the challenge, we set different
idea review criteria related to cost-benefit, time
and, difficulty of implementation, competitive
relevance, etc. The ideas are assessed by the
moderators focusing on these factors, and
sometimes other experts are brought in where
required, to assess the feasibility of an idea.
We then try to prototype the best idea to
confirm our assessments, and help us visualize
the potential. This is extremely valuable when
presenting to the departments these ideas
relateto. Similartoastartuplookingforinvestors,
we present the mature idea to a department that
decides whether to invest in the project or not.
We like time-bound challenge based
ideation because it results in more focused
ideas...
We look at challenges that are well defined and
attractivetotheemployees.Whencrowdsourcing
ideas for a specific department’s need, we seek
up-front commitment from the department in
terms of a sponsor and funding for delivering a
proof of concept. Such executive and financial up-
front commitment is necessary to move beyond
ideas, into concepts and prototypes.
We rely on “Design Thinking” to observe
and identify the best opportunities for change.
This allows us to see what is not working well
that the workers themselves can’t see, by asking
“silly / naïve” questions to help resurface insights
that can be later fed into a challenge. People
often have to work around inefficiencies, so it’s
our job to recognize these. In many cases, you
don’t always get the right input by just waiting for
requirements. We like to be more proactive.
CAN YOU DESCRIBE THE MAIN
ISSUES THAT REGULARLY OCCUR
WHEN ESTABLISHING INNOVATION
PROGRAMS?
The main difficulty comes about from the fact
that “it is difficult to sell Innovation in general”.
For me the initial problem was to get
people’s time.
It is necessary to build a small team of dedicated
people whose agenda is to innovate. The problem
is finding people that have this time with regards
to their other priorities, as their full time jobs
are focused on something else. This could be
very frustrating, but is mandatory when trying to
foster an innovative culture and processes.
In order to combat this problem:
● It is firstly necessary to put into place a
group of people that are measured based
on different criteria related to metrics of
learning, identifying possibilities, crafting the
right strategy for the future, and their level of
involvement and motivation. In the absence of
a dedicated Innovation team, it’s important for
these individuals to have some time dedicated
to focusing on innovation. I was able to negotiate
only 10-15% of their time.
● Secondly it is necessary to have a way to
prototype quickly, taking into account the
Adam Radziszewski - L’Oréal

Expert Testimony
budget and the environment available. The term
environment refers to the right timing, equipping
people with creativity techniques, and having a
physical facility to make it happen (a creativity lab
of some sort).
So the main essentials are the platform
and process for idea generation, the right
people to act on the ideas and a place, tools,
and techniques where prototyping can be
taken to the next level.
I use the word facility in loose terms as it could be
a room full of basic supplies, creative ambience,
having people trained in user experience so they
can prototype, or anything that helps to spike
energy and imagination. I’m still defining myself
what circumstances are required for people to be
better at prototyping.
The objective is to shorten the time
between selecting a good idea and producing
something tangible which paves the way to
setting up projects and making it real.
Ideas will be proportional to where you start and
how you think, so I like to encourage people to
develop their creativity skills - something I find
extremely useful yet often overlooked.
HOW DO YOU PROMOTE THIS
CREATIVITY FRAMEWORK AND
MOTIVATE PEOPLE TO THINK OUTSIDE
THE BOX?
People generally come in with ideas already in
their head so the first step is just to encourage
everyone to share all of their ideas. Then we
introduce the simplest creativity techniques, split
the people into teams and ask them to come up
with new ideas using these techniques – each
group will use different techniques.
This always produces some additional ideas which
allows them to recognize the progress and trust
this creative process. I call it ‘creative delta’. They
gain confidence in the fact that in a short amount
of time they can apply specific and methodical
techniques to alter their thinking processes and
produce something different and often better.
For me it is a case of convincing people to believe
that these things actually work. I love witnessing
people’s astonishment when they realize they are
creative and can come up with cool ideas.
What I am trying to put into place in the R&I
department is the “Innovation Backbone” to give
everyone a chance to participate (crowdsourcing)
in idea generation, collaboration, and being
able to identify others who may be able to offer
expertize and different point of views. Currently
we only know people from what their titles and
jobs are; we don’t know what their passions are
or what other talents they have. Opening up can
really evolve the innovation pipeline and allow the
right people to come to the foreground, allowing
us to promote the champions of innovation and
empower them.
In closing, the ‘People’ part innovation takes
precedence over the ‘Process’ and the ‘Platform’.
However a synthesis of all three is the holy grail
for establishing well-functioning innovation
practices.
DO YOU CREATE CHALLENGES FOCUSED
AROUND CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AND
COMMENTS?
● Yes we have challenges where we ask
customers to post their thoughts in general. That
gives us a broad stroke across what’s happening
in different areas, and if enough people vote on
a particular topic then we know we have a ‘hot’
challenge candidate – something that resonates
with people.
● The other method is using Design Thinking,
listening to customers, creating user journey
maps and then extracting some insights out of
that which could help us in building the right
campaign.
The key is to start with the right
challenge, which is not always as easy as it
seems.
Adam Radziszewski - L’Oréal

Expert Testimony
Taking as an example the development of a cryogenic solution to meet
the challenge of refrigerated transport in urban areas, Mr Youbi Idrissi
shares his R&D experiences at Air Liquide and describes the partnership
initiatives which have been undertaken as part of this breakthrough
innovation project.
DURING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THIS CRYOGENIC SYSTEM FOR
REFRIGERATED TRANSPORT, WHAT PARTICULAR OBSTACLES
DID YOU ENCOUNTER?
We were faced with problems which required external assistance. In the
industrialisation phase, for example, at a certain point we reached an
impasse in the business model.
The solution put forward was elegant and very appealing, and fulfilled many
criteria, but the problem was that it was a bit expensive. We therefore called
on skills in the ‘design to cost’ field: how to design a system at a given target
priceunderveryspecificbudgetaryconstraints.It’sanapproachwhichdiffers
a great deal from what researchers are used to doing: once the prototype is
functional, in order to commercialise it, in other words to industrialise it, the
price has to be set at an acceptable level. We didn’t have those skills, so we
looked externally to seek them out... and we managed to pull it off!
RICHNESS COMES FROM THE
DIVERSITY OF PROFILES AND FIELDS
Open innovation is
an approach which
is expanding at Air
Liquide, because
it’s one of the
recognised paths
to accelerating
innovation.
Before working in the world of
private research, Mohammed
Youbi Idrissi worked as a
researcher at IRSTEA and
CNAM. Today, he is in charge
of a research group of 12
experts whose role is to find
applications for the gases
produced by Air Liquide in ‘gas-
organic matter’ interactions in
the pharmaceutical and food-
processing sectors. He is also
an appointed expert at the
Court of Appeal in Versailles on
issues relating to energy and
construction.
FRANCE
INDUSTRIALISE
A PROTOTYPE
NETWORK
PARTNERING
INVESTMENT
STRATEGY
CROSS FERTILISATION

Expert Testimony
HOW DID YOU GO ABOUT THIS SEARCH
FOR EXTERNAL SKILLS? DID YOU TURN
TO PEOPLE OUTSIDE YOUR USUAL
NETWORKS?
No. In this case, we had a ‘word-of-mouth’
network - so-and-so met so-and-so who had
worked in that area and who was recommended
to us.
I also have another example relating to the same
project- not on the industrial side this time but
on the scientific side, involving the modelling of a
phenomenon.Wedrewonouracademicnetwork,
and within this network we found an academic
partner who helped us to do an air flow modelling
using a CFD approach which corresponded to our
requirements.
WHAT TYPE OF PARTNER WAS INVOLVED?
An academic laboratory at a research centre.
DO YOU MAKE A HABIT OF CALLING ON
THE SERVICES OF THIS TYPE OF PARTNER?
Yes, of course. We are connected up to global
ecosystem of innovation and we have over 100
partnerships with industrialists and nearly 120
academic partnerships.
On top of that, our ‘Academic and Industrial
Partnerships’ unit scouts out external skills in
order to propose partnerships. In France, the
R&D team at Air Liquide has signed a framework
collaboration contract with the CNRS, and we
have just signed another framework contract with
the CEA. We have already engaged in numerous
collaborations with these two strategic partners.
In addition to these framework contracts, each
research group develops specific partnerships
within its ecosystem- at Paris-Sarclay, where Air
Liquide has its main research centre, and also at
the national and international level, depending
on the projects.
Sometimes we also seek skills in Europe, the
United States, Japan and Korea, for example.
It depends on the skills being sought. Another
example: in a few days’ time, I’m travelling to
Brussels to visit a university laboratory which has
a high level of expertise in a type of measurement
which is of interest to us. The idea is to go and see
them and, why not, look into the possibility of a
collaboration.
SO YOU SEEK OUT PUBLIC AND PRIVATE
PARTNERSHIPS?
Yes, absolutely. On top of that, we also make a
habit of working with start-ups, small offices/
home offices and SMEs.
Our open innovation approach means
that we are proactive towards a range of
different partners, particularly in the world
of start-ups.
IN THESE CASES, HOW DO YOU OPERATE?
Attheendof2012,AirLiquidecreatedasubsidiary
dedicated to capital risk investment in technology
start-ups:
ALIAD targets companies for whom a partnership
with Air Liquide would simultaneously accelerate
innovation at Air Liquide and the development of
these young companies, which are often fragile.
The investment strategy of Air Liquide
focuses on a crucial juncture in the life of a
start-up, when the envisaged technology has
demonstrated its worth but still needs to be
industrialised and commercialised.
The partnerships concluded between Air Liquide
and other companies help to increase their
prospects of survival and long-term development.
At the end of 2013, Air Liquide also set up a
laboratory dedicated to new ideas called i-Lab.
The aim of this innovative structure is also
to accelerate innovation and to explore new
markets. This laboratory is both a think tank and
a corporate garage for producing ideas for Air
Liquide.Thei-Labundertakesnumerousinitiatives
involving start-ups at a global level.
Mohammed Youbi Idrissi - Air Liquide

Expert Testimony
FROM A MORE GENERAL PERSPECTIVE,
DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE TO GIVE TO
YOUR PEERS FOR THEIR PARTNERSHIP
INITIATIVES?
Yes, I do have advice to give, particularly thanks
to my experience of academic research prior to
joining Air Liquide 8 years ago to conduct private
research. Two things strike me:
Firstly, your starting point needs to be a very
clear definition of user habits.
What do we need? And not necessarily
‘us’, but what does the end client need?
And that’s not a precise or ‘hard’ science.
Sometimes we need ‘soft’ science - the social
sciences. I know it’s not systematic, but I think
that would be a good starting point. It enables
you to avoid a lot of wasted effort - we’ve seen
several projects which, once completed, did not
correspond to the needs of the end user. There
is a whole cycle of development and, at the very
end of it all, we end up with something which
doesn’t exactly correspond to the requirement
- sometimes, the client only uses the product at
20% of its capacity.
So it’s very important to start first with the user
habits, whether they’re expressed explicitly or
not. That means that an intelligent approach
needs to be taken to exploring the needs and
user habits of the people who we are aiming the
development of a product, machine or service at.
That’s the first thing.
But for me, the key thing is to shorten the
transfer time frame between the initial idea,
which is going to germinate in a laboratory or
in the head of a researcher, and it finally being
commercialised, so that this idea begins to
create value.
That’s a very important point. So how do
you shorten that time frame?
Naturally, nobody has the magic formula, but I
think that choosing the main stakeholders from
the outset and setting up good collaborations
from the start can help to accelerate the process.
SO IDENTIFYING IN ADVANCE
STAKEHOLDERS WHO PRECISELY MEET
THE REQUIREMENTS IDENTIFIED WHEN
DEFINING USER NEEDS?
Precisely. And above all: bringing them together
from the outset. It’s from that starting point that
you can encourage cross-fertilisation.
CROSS-FERTILISATION’?
Yes, bringing together people from different
fields with different points of view. From there,
things fertilise, they ‘take root’. It’s collective
intelligence. If you bring together people from
the same sector and the same field with the same
profile, you’ll get something out of it, but it won’t
be very ‘rich’.
Richness comes from the diversity of the profiles
and the fields. But, of course, those people also
have to have a reason to be together. If you
manage to define these stakeholders from the
outset, you’ll shorten the transfer time and the
development time.
ABOUT AIR LIQUIDE
A market leader in the production of gas,
renowned for its diversified innovation strategy
(from in-house R&D to open innovation and
problem-solving services for clients), Air Liquide
has a current turnover of over €15.3 billion and
50,000 employees spread over 80 countries.
www.airliquide.com
Mohammed Youbi Idrissi - Air Liquide

Expert Testimony
GUARENTEE THE ACCESS TO THE BEST RESOURCES WHEREVER
THEY ARE
Contemporary private or public organizations can no longer rely on their
sole internal means and resources to bring an innovative project from its
concept to its commercial success. Technologies, knowledge and know-how
are often too wide and complex to handle on its own.
The innovation race, currently faced by enterprises in order to take
competitive advantages on their core business, diversify their offers or open
to new markets, is translated into competition to technology and ensuring
the access to the best technological resources (human, technological or
material) wherever they may be.
This new way to perceive innovation defines the capacity of a given
enterprise to innovate, no longer alone, but also in interaction with its
technological ecosystem. This paradigm shift raises new problematics for
every organization eager to innovate:
1. How to guarantee access to the best technological resources and
expertise outside of its traditional ecosystem?
2. How to open to other ecosystems and how to reach their principal
actors?
RETHINK YOUR STRATEGY AND
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
FRANCE
AUDIT
STRATEGY
TECHNOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE
CONTROL
SENSITIVE
INFORMATION
TECHNOLOGY SCOUTING
Guillaume Lamarque has worked
for Alma CG for over 8 years.
He first joined the consulting
company as a Senior Consultant
on Innovation financing
and is now in charge of the
development of new products
for innovation. His expertise
in analysis, the creation of
business models, methodology
development, business
processes and tools, provide him
with a global vision and allow
him to offer comprehensive
solutions adapted to the client’s
core business.

Expert Testimony
But it is equally essential for enterprises to get
information about its competitor’s innovation
strategies on their current and future markets:
● What technologies do they control, which
skills,
● What are their technological partner
networks,
● What technological problems do they
face?
To answer these questions technological
intelligence, and more specifically technology
scouting, brings new and relevant information
that may complete financial analysis on a
project or company.
Thus business plans dedicated to innovative
activities, projects or businesses contain more
and more information coming from technological
intelligence to complete market studies and
reduce the risk inherent to R&D for future
investors (business angels, investment funds,
public funds…).
RETHINK YOUR STRATEGY AND
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY THANKS TO
TECHNOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE
The digital revolution gives the impression that
today it is much easier than a few years ago to
access informationthat couldhelpyou to findnew
technological partners, solve critical problems, or
research a technological competitor, by spending
only a few hours per week on the internet.
On the contrary, the abundance of information
related to the technological intelligence services,
makes the access to qualified and relevant
information more complicated, especially if the
technological signals produced by the future
partner are weak.
Even if one would identify a skill or a technology
of interest among the buzz produced on the
internet by poorly qualified and uninteresting
scientific and technical production, approaching
the expert or the organization that possesses the
knowledge and the know-how is still sensitive for
confidentiality reasons or because some networks
and ecosystem are hard to penetrate.
Whatever the needs that are to be met and to
have a chance to succeed, every search shall
be preceded by precisely defining the technical
problem to be solved.
The time spent on this crucial step is
underestimated by companies and is often
responsible for a lack of relevant results from
searches.
Furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to be
able to reformulate the industrial problem into
elementary, scientific or technical research
concepts before launching a search. This will
maximize chances of reaching relevant experts by
using the same key word vocabulary as published
in their scientific works, and getting access to the
truly scientific solution that is hidden behind the
industrial problem..
Mind mapping tools and technology readiness
levels are good ways to get better focus on the
future partner or technology profiles to scout.
Thus every study that Alma Consulting Group
produces for our clients requires a preliminary
in-depth audit of their industrial issues,
which aims to define different technological
complexity and precision levels in order to carry
out incremental searches.
The verification of search results is essential
in this type of activity; they must be analyzed
against strategic and financial criteria. For this, it
is necessary to dispose of the following:
1. EXHAUSTIVE, RELEVANT AND RELIABLE
DATA BASES
In order to cover all technological fields but also
all technological readiness levels on a global
scale. Today we can access around 60 million
Guillaume Lamarque - Alma CG

Expert Testimony
patent families worldwide, 50 million scientific
documents and around 10 million documents
from grey literature. Open source data bases
or Google scholar/patent search engines are
free but exhibit several critical drawbacks: low
impact factor literature, collection and origin of
documents unclear, search engine user friendly
but not precise…
Subscription-paying data bases contain far more
reliable literature sources, but the price must be
justified by regular use.
However, in order for technology scouting to be
really efficient, it should also be extended to
other technological and industrial networks.
If technology scouting is defined by the will
to prospect information beyond a traditional
ecosystem, it is often difficult for industries to
penetrate new networks that are sometimes far
from their competence fields.
Thus many organizations have decided
to outsource these activities to external
contractors, to profit from their data bases,
research engines, methodologies of research and
even their own partners networks.
2. EFFECTIVE SEARCHING TOOLS
Searching reliable and precise information from
databases containing millions of entries requires
specific tools and methodologies. The latest
developments of Data Mining technologies allow
us today to benefit from powerful and reliable
software in the form of multi-bases and multi-
form search engines, semantic analyzers, and
statistic tools.
These solutions allow faster analysis of millions
of documents, collection of their principal and
secondary concepts, grouping them together
and linking them to their relative experts and
organizations, and geographic location… in order
to map out in detail the entire technological
ecosystem surrounding a specific subject.
3. STRONG AND IN-DEPTH EXPERTISE
IN THE QUALIFICATION OF THE SEARCH
RESULTS
Results gained by technology scouting are difficult
to qualify for those who are not experts in the new
technological fields explored. Organizations that
have integrated technology scouting processes
over recent years have needed to form multi-
disciplinary scouting teams, which represent an
import investment, training and development
costs.
Moreover, master or senior technology scouts
must have a good knowledge and experience of
industrials issues, be good technicians to discuss
with experts about technologies of interest,
and have good relationship skills for networking
activities.
Thus, if technology intelligence is more
and more important in the innovation
strategy of several types of organization,
activities that are related to this subject
require a high level of expertise, methods
and investments (human and materials).
Organizations aiming to develop these
subjectsrelymoreandmoreonconsulting
firms for several reasons:
- resources, tools and database
subscription sharing,
- reliable methods of searching,
- multi-disciplinary teams of scouts,
network access…
But the principal reason pushing
industries to outsource part of these
activities is confidentiality: they keep
control of the sensitive information given
to the consulting firms (e.g. the strategy
hidden behind the research objectives)
and remain the owner of the results
delivered for further exploitation, while
staying completely invisible during the
information gathering and networking
stages.
Guillaume Lamarque - Alma CG

Expert Testimony
UNITED STATES
Andrea Mills is the Chief
Innovation Officer of SThealth
Ventures. He has been involved
in corporate venturing and
technology scouting since 2008.
Prior to that, for 10 years he
engaged extensively in knowledge
management consulting
and innovation strategy for
multinational clients in Europe
and the U.S. He conceived
organizational processes for Open
Innovation, designed software
tools for matching solutions
in search of problems across
industries and for sense-making
of crowd-sourced concepts.
He contributed to a multi-year
action research program for
promoting and accelerating
transatlantic technology and
knowledge transfer between the
U.S. and Europe.
As Chief Innovation Officer of SThealth Ventures – the corporate venture
arm of a transnational conglomerate with advanced technology-based
businesses in automotive, healthcare and telecommunications – Andrea
Mills orchestrates the internal and external innovation efforts of the group
by screening new technologies, licensing IP and sourcing acquisition targets,
building new capabilities through technological evolution, interdisciplinary
exploration and global acquisition of highly-specialized knowledge assets.
In this testimony he has accepted to share with us a case study
about a novel technological approach to Open Innovation.
ACASE STUDY -
HOW TO CREATE A SUCCESSFUL OPEN
INNOVATION STRATEGY?
STRATEGY
POTENTIAL FOR
BREAKTHROUGH INNOVATION
INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY
TECHNOLOGY
SEARCH
ENGINE

Expert Testimony
CASE STUDY - A NOVEL TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACH TO OPEN INNOVATION
HYPOTHESIS
A deliberate use of business and technological metaphors allows us to re-contextualize
domain-specific knowledge, IP and technologies across industry verticals, creating
the potential for breakthrough innovations. For example, using a Formula 1 pit crew
as a metaphor for doctors in an emergency room can help greatly improve medical
procedures.
OBJECTIVE
Recognizing intersections between different fields, applying a non-linear sense-making
process that could combine diverse IP assets and technologies from various sources, and
cluster them in a meaningful way, as pieces of a complex but cohesive mosaic.
CHALLENGE
Existing search engines are typically useful to access current knowledge, within the
boundaries of the domain of origin of the search itself. When we deal with “solutions in
search of problems” and vice versa, we need to be able to laterally explore the whole
spectrum of possible meanings, inside and outside the field of origin of the solution.
For example, imagine searching for something that can be functionally used to hold
and drink liquids, but it’s neither a glass, nor a bottle. Searching by functionality is key.
Another challenge is to search across domains, for solutions that can operate at certain
performance thresholds, within an acceptable interval of confidence that may vary
between challenges. We needed to keep options open for solutions that, if properly
optimized to reach a given level of desired performance, could be a viable match for the
identified unmet need.
SOLUTION: A METAPHORICAL SEARCH ENGINE FOR OPEN INNOVATION
A possible approach can be found in using statistical natural-language processing
techniques similar to those used by Google and other search engines, but applying
these methods to map out the relationships between words across different contexts
of meaning. While a regular search engine typically returns terms with a high degree of
«conceptual proximity» to the origin-term, a metaphorical search engine looks for words
that are further away but still share a linking conceptual structure.
ISSUES
The metaphorical search engine’s performance depends on identifying meaningful
connections.Theresultscanbefilledwithambiguityandneedtoallowmultiplemeanings
in different contexts. The metaphorical search engine needs to be able to correlate
contents and concepts contained in figures of speech, jokes and stretched concepts
taken out of context. The user needs to be free to create the metaphorical connection,
rather than been constrained by the software. The optimization of the lateral search
and matching algorithms is a delicate synthesis of literal results across a broad, multi-
disciplinary silos of expert knowledge and “conceptual leap triggers” that should provide
hints to the users for making uncorrelated connections between concepts that have
never (or rarely) been linked to each other in context.
Andrea Mills - SThealth Ventures

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