Why the future belongs to those who look beyond their walls.
Why open innovation matters more than ever
In today’s fast-changing business environment, no company (no matter how large or well-resourced) can afford to innovate alone. Technologies evolve faster than internal teams can keep up. Customers expect more. And value chains are increasingly interconnected.
Open innovation has emerged as a strategic response to this complexity. It enables organizations to tap into external knowledge, technologies and talent beyond their traditional boundaries. By doing so, they can accelerate time-to-market, reduce innovation risk, and build more resilient, future-ready businesses.
For innovation leaders the question is no longer if open innovation matters, but how to make it work.
What is open innovation? A strategic definition
Coined by Henry Chesbrough in the early 2000s, open innovation is the practice of leveraging both internal and external ideas, capabilities and paths to market to advance innovation outcomes. It’s about turning innovation into a collaborative, cross-boundary effort, not a siloed activity confined to corporate R&D.
At Bluemorrow, we see open innovation as a strategic mindset that helps companies de-risk innovation and stay ahead of market shifts. It involves:
- Collaborating with startups, universities, research labs and even competitors
- Crowdsourcing ideas or solutions
- Licensing external technologies or spinning out internal IP
- Building platforms or ecosystems that enable co-creation
Importantly, open innovation is not about outsourcing innovation. It’s about amplifying internal strengths by connecting to external opportunities, as discussed in this interview on leadership and culture in open innovation.
What open innovation is not (and why it matters)
To get it right, it’s crucial to separate open innovation from related (but narrower) concepts:
- It’s not just crowdsourcing: That is a tool; open innovation is a strategy.
- It’s not only about co-creation. User involvement is great, but open innovation goes beyond that to include technology scouting, joint ventures and more.
- It’s not about giving away IP. Successful open innovation requires robust legal frameworks to protect what matters while enabling collaboration.
The business case for open innovation
Companies that embrace open innovation outperform those that don’t. They innovate faster, respond better to change, and unlock new revenue streams.
Why it works:
- Speed to market: Collaborations can reduce development timelines significantly.
- Cost efficiency: Sharing resources and risks lowers the financial burden of R&D.
- Strategic relevance: Partnering with the right players ensures innovations meet real-world needs.
- Talent access: With most AI and deep tech talent now outside corporate walls, partnerships unlock critical capabilities.
- Ecosystem resilience: Building networks of innovation partners increases adaptability in uncertain times.
Open innovation formats: Common models and approaches
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach. Open innovation can take many forms, depending on your goals and maturity level. Common formats include:
Startup co-development & accelerators
Co-develop or pilot new solutions with early-stage ventures to accelerate learning and build future capabilities.
Venture clienting
Act as an early adopter by buying and scaling startup solutions as a real customer, helping ventures mature while solving internal needs.
Innovation challenges & hackathons
Tap into external creativity by crowding in fresh thinking and novel solutions through open calls or structured competitions.
Licensing & tech scouting
Bring in external IP or inventions that complement your internal pipeline through targeted scouting and licensing agreements.
Joint ventures & strategic alliances
Form shared-risk, shared-reward partnerships with other organizations to co-invest in innovation and scale impact.
Open APIs & platforms
Build platforms or open APIs to create ecosystems around your services or data, enabling others to innovate on top of your infrastructure.
Crowdsourcing
Leverage large external communities for ideas, content, or problem-solving—ideal for exploring early-stage concepts at scale.
Each format serves a different purpose, from scaling proven innovations to exploring uncharted territory and can be adapted to fit specific business contexts.
Overcoming the challenges of open innovation
While open innovation holds huge potential, it’s not without hurdles. Many organizations encounter common roadblocks that can stall or derail initiatives. Understanding these challenges and the enablers that address them, is critical to success:
Cultural resistance
Many teams fall into a “not-invented-here” mindset, resisting external input.
Enabler: Build a culture of openness, supported by senior leaders who role-model collaborative behaviors.
IP and legal complexity
Navigating intellectual property rights and partnership agreements can be slow and risk-prone.
Enabler: Establish clear legal frameworks and IP protection protocols early in the process.
Internal silos & lack of ownership
Without clear ownership, initiatives can flounder between teams.
Enabler: Implement cross-functional governance and assign clear pilot ownership to drive accountability.
Difficulty integrating external solutions
Even successful pilots can fail to scale due to technical or organisational barriers.
Enabler: Strengthen absorptive capacity and internal integration capabilities across relevant functions.
Measuring ROI or strategic fit
Without clarity on what success looks like, open innovation may be undervalued or deprioritized.
Enabler: Define transparent metrics aligned to strategic goals to evaluate outcomes and guide scaling decisions.
These challenges aren’t deal-breakers, but they require deliberate strategy, structure and mindset to overcome.
How Bluemorrow supports your open innovation journey
At Bluemorrow, we help you make i open innovation work, not just in theory, but in practice. Our experience spans strategy design, ecosystem activation and capability building.
We help you:
- Identify opportunity areas where open innovation creates the most value
- Select the right formats and build robust collaboration models
- Navigate legal and organizational barriers
- Build capabilities to integrate external innovation into your core business, supported by our capability building services and insights on how to upskill teams for external collaboration.
- Scale what works, while learning from every experiment
Whether you’re running your first startup collaboration or designing an enterprise-wide open innovation strategy, we’re here to help you move faster, de-risk smarter, and build new businesses beyond the core.
Ready to open up? Let's talk
Open innovation isn’t just a trend, it’s a smarter way to innovate in an interconnected world. And it works best when it’s done with intention, structure and the right partners.
If you’re ready to expand your innovation horizons, book a meeting with us. We’d love to explore what’s possible together.
References
- Chesbrough, H. (2003). Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology.
- OECD (2021). Science, Technology and Innovation Outlook 2021: Times of Crisis and Opportunity. Link
- Cohen, W. M., & Levinthal, D. A. (1990). Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation. Administrative Science Quarterly, 35(1), 128-152.
