Implementing Open Innovation

OVERVIEW:In “Connect & Develop Complements Research & Develop at P&G” (RTM, March–April 2002), Nabil Sakkab described the company's then new strategy of using corporate intranet and “smart” reporting systems to create what was essentially “a global lunchroom.” Since then, P&G has advanced its “connect and develop” strategy for open innovation to a point where a little over 50 percent of its pipeline and products in the market have an external technology or an external C&D connection. This has not been achieved by outsourcing R&D but, its developers say, by “insourcing creativity” and byfostering co-invention-based interaction with outside resources, as opposed to the conventional transaction-based orientation. Moreover, they see no reason why smaller companies cannot emulate P&G's experience in developing an R&D-building innovation capability based upon this new connections model.