The concept of open innovation was extracted from case studies of high-tech industries, but many traditional industries have also begun to apply open innovation. Let us give an example of each.
◎ Intel. Intel isn't as technologically advanced as we might think; it does little basic research and rarely has the fastest or cheapest processors. However, its processors have been able to outsell its largest competitor by four times, and have done so for years. The reason is that Intel has technical support from more people in more companies than any other processor company. It maintains its technological status mainly by focusing on academic research activities outside the company and making venture capital investments in other new companies (that is, setting up "venture capital funds"). Intel has established "Lablet" research institutes in many universities to obtain original technologies, and spends more than 100 million US dollars each year to fund academic research at universities, seeking ideas that "may be useful." Intel is also actively trying to cooperate in innovation. For example, in November 2006, it announced the establishment of the "Intel Platform Application Innovation Alliance" to cooperate with many software and hardware companies. Intel actively encourages employees to innovate. Only those employees who are good at using their brains, summarizing experience and having an innovative spirit can gain a foothold and be promoted. Internal technological innovation activities should be carried out around externally available technological resources, rather than competing with them or ignoring them. Intel strives to be a "fast follower" of the latest technology and adopts a "borrowing" strategy of "internalizing external technology" as long as it is beneficial to its own products.
◎ Procter & Gamble. In order to use the best talents from around the world, P&G has set up the position of "External Innovation Director" and created a team of "Innovation Scouts" distributed in every corner of the world. The daily work of this team of up to 70 people is to use complex searches The tool searches hundreds of millions of web pages, global patent databases and scientific literature to find major technological breakthroughs and experts and scholars that are beneficial to the company in a "needle in a haystack" manner. P&G also launched the "Technology Entrepreneur" program, enabling more than 500,000 independent inventors around the world to become P&G's innovation service providers. When P&G raises a technical problem, it gets constructive solutions from around the world. When these inventors have some major innovations, they will be given priority to sell to P&G. P&G's criteria for evaluating innovation have also changed from focusing on product performance, number of patents, etc. to focusing on perceived customer value, that is, they must answer: "Does your creativity change people's lives? Can consumers do it now?" Something that is truly meaningful that they have not been able to do before?” P&G also established a standard: If a certain patented technology is not adopted by any department within the company within three years, it will be Sell ??to others, even competitors. Since the implementation of open innovation, P&G's R&D productivity has increased by nearly 60%, its innovation success rate has more than doubled, and its innovation costs have dropped by 20%. Procter & Gamble, which was once in decline, ranked sixth among the world's most innovative companies in 2007 (see Table 1).
Table 1 Ranking of the world's most innovative companies in 2007 (data source: compiled based on relevant information from "Business Week")
Ranking
Nationality
Enterprise
1
United States
Apple Computer
2
United States
p>3
Japan
Toyota Motors
4
United States
General Electric
5
United States
Microsoft
6
United States
Procter & Gamble
7
United States
3M
8
United States
Disney
9
United States
IBM
10
Japan
Sony
Out of the top 50
China
?
Some companies in our country are also actively applying open innovation. Rumidei Company has created an open model of "creativity and innovation take the mass route", that is, consulting consumers for new product ideas and inviting consumers to participate in early product research and development activities, allowing R&D personnel to accurately grasp consumer needs. , perfect new products through timely interaction. Chunlan Group not only has the largest global open innovation platform in the domestic business community, but also took the lead in building a corporate postdoctoral open innovation base to catch up with the world's latest technologies in 2004 to attract first-class scientific research talents from global "think tanks" and integrate the world's latest technologies. Scientific and technological innovation achievements, thereby achieving breakthroughs that can support the creation of new industries in Chunlan or the upgrading of existing industries. Chunlan’s research on high-energy power batteries has reached the highest level in the world. However, a large number of domestic enterprises are still carrying out closed innovation and making large amounts of repeated R&D investment, which not only leads to vicious competition, but also causes a lot of waste. Open innovation is a concept and application practice that the domestic business community urgently needs to learn from.