Intermediaries - 5 Challenges

"Being an innovation intermediary is not an easy business", writes Henry Chesbrough.

His Open Business Models book introduces 5 tough challenges:

1. How can the intermediary help its clients define the problem that needs to be solved. This definition must be sufficiently clear to outsiders that they can recognise whether they know enough to answer the problem, without being so clear as to reveal sensitive client information.
      
2. How to manage the problem of identity: whether  and when to disclose the identity of  one party to the other party.
   
   
3. How to demonstrate the value of their service to their clients. Other processes, beyond the control of the intermediary, must occur in order for an idea or technology to become valuable, so how can one measure the contribution for the intermediary to whatever value was subsequently created?
   
   
4. How to create or access a two-sided market, with lots of buyers and lots of sellers.
   
   
5. How to establish a strong, positive reputation early on in the company’s operation

                                                                        Chesbrough (2006, 139-140)

The best part of this book is when Chesbrough concretely illustrates these challenges in InnoCentive, NineSigma, Big Idea Group, InnovationXchange, Shanghai Silicon Intellectual Property Exchange and Ocean Tomo.

Would you like to add an extra challenge element to the list above?