In this project, we wanted to present our ideas about innovation as we see them.

We wanted to focus on the most important issues and to present our ideas as well as possible so you can understand what the innovation term really means.

The reason why open innovation is popular nowadays is because it empowers us to access new ideas and the social networks build around them, which was not possible before. Innovation hubs act as network nodes with open doors and work in the same way as innovation challenges. People from different disciplines and with different passions come together around a shared purpose. This is the best recipe to bring ideas to fruition. We are constantly witnessing the creation of idea networks, which allows to exchange success stories but also lessons learnt from failures. British author Charles Leadbeater in this context refers to systemic innovation and predicts that “systems innovation will become the most important focus for companies and governments, cities and entire societies.” In the last decade there has been a growing focus on product and services innovation as a source of competitive advantage.

Open innovation is a process to shift an organisation or company to a different mindset of exchanging. It is not a tool that can just be implemented over the same communication bedrock, on which a company normally works. Rather, it is a different way of communication, including people and valuing their ideas. It is believing in each participant having expertise or experience to be shared for innovation. It means changing hierarchical communication structures into horizontal ones and for the management to above all start listening and setting the right environment and incentives to let people exchange as much as possible and brainstorm in all directions. Empowering people does not make us weaker, on the contrary, it makes us richer as we benefit from what others build with that empowerment.

Open innovation is a process to shift an organisation or company to a different mindset of exchanging. It is not a tool that can just be implemented over the same communication bedrock, on which a company normally works. Rather, it is a different way of communication, including people and valuing their ideas. It is believing in each participant having expertise or experience to be shared for innovation. It means changing hierarchical communication structures into horizontal ones and for the management to above all start listening and setting the right environment and incentives to let people exchange as much as possible and brainstorm in all directions. Empowering people does not make us weaker, on the contrary, it makes us richer as we benefit from what others build with that empowerment.