Open innovation: it sounds like a good idea, but in reality…
Experience has led me to be increasingly skeptical about open innovation programs in large companies: in most cases I know, the mindset is all wrong and has little to do with the principles outlined by Henry Chesbrough, whose approach is focused on the modification of the form and procedures large companies adopt, rather than symbiosis.
Symbiosis, understood as the development of mutual benefits between a large company and a startup working in collaboration is usually quite limited: the startup gets funding in several ways, but it tends to have problems adapting, suffers culture shock and struggles with an agenda imposed on its plans that is not always compatible with its interests; while the large company very rarely obtains any kind of tangible benefit beyond some product or development that is often under-resourced. The real benefit, which would come from hacking the procedures, the way of working or even the mentality of the people working in the big company, does not usually happen in a meaningful sense, and what we end up with on many occasions are startups that spend some time hosted by a big company, only to leave it with a sense of relief after leaving little tangible benefit in its wake.
Sorry to be seem so cynical, but in most of the programs of this type that I have had the opportunity to see, the…
