Next Steps in Open Innovation

An interesting report is out: 

Bughin, J., Chui, M. & Johnson, B. (2008) The next step in open innovation, The McKinsey Quarterly, June 2008.

Yes, we all know that it would be nice to have our customers doing voluntary work for us.
But, it is not that easy:

"Cocreating products and services with customers, however, is uncertain territory, fraught with challenges and question - for instance, who owns the resulting intellectual property? Nonetheless, smart companies are now beginning to encourage their customers to help them develop the products and services consumers really want."

So, what are the challenges according to this report?

Bughin, Chui and Johnson list:

• Attracting and motivating cocreators

• Structuring problems for participation

• Governance mechanisms to facilitate cocreation

• Maintaining quality

Not easy challenges to solve. The McKinsey paper provides nice examples, how these challenges are solved / could be solved. 

Good to know: With Maria Antikainen and Marko Mäkipää we wrote about the collective creativity and motivational factors. In our paper we had many similar topics as in this McKinsey paper.  Let's hope that our paper will be published soon in the International Journal of Technology Management and its Open Innovation special issue.

(Special thanks to Mikko Ruohonen and Pekka Ketola for informing me about this McKinsey report)