Engaging with open innovation is a difficult process which requires time and an understanding of an orgnanisation´s own processes.

Challenges associated with engaging with open innovation across the lifecycle of a process and a product.

Everett M. Rogers was an American communication theorist and sociologist, who originated the diffussion of innovations theory and introduced the term early adopter. He was distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Communication and Journalism at the University of New Mexico. “Diffusion of Innovations” was published in 1962, it became the second most-cited book in the social sciences.

Rogers proposes that adoprters of any new innovation or idea can be categorized as:

• Innovators 2,5%
• Early adopters 13,5%
• Early mayority 34%
• Late maority 34%
• Laggards 16%

Based on the mathematically Bell curve.

Each adopter´s willingness and ability to adopt an innovation depends on their:

• Awareness
• Interest
• Evaluation
• Trial
• Adoption

People can fall into different categories for different innovations. The graph shows acumulative percentage of adopters over time-slow at the start, more rapid as adoption increases, then leveling off until only a small percentage of laggards have not adopted.

Are two types of innovative strategies for a large company:

Sustaining innovation: evolutionary changes in their markets, products, etc. valued by their existing customers, fairly well.

Disruptive innovation: radical shifts in technology, customers, regulatory changes, etc, that create new markets. It is innovation that go after new markets, new customers, new technologies, etc. are best built outside a large company´s existing organization. In a large company is attempting to solve two simultaneous unknowns: the customer/market is unknown, and the product feature set is unknown.

Mastering disruptive innovation in a large company requires:

• Different people
• Different processes

 

Bibliography:

• Everett Roggers, “ Diffusion of Innovations”, 5th Edition, Ed. Simon and Schuster, 2003

• Wikipedia

 

Links relationed:

• Innovation Management

http://www.innovationmanagement.se/tag/innovation-life-cycle-processes/

• Oracle

  tp://www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/consumer/innovation- management/overview/index.html