Open Innovation goals and achievements

For those organisations out there considering the fit of Open Innovation with their overarching business objectives, it’s worth paying attention to the ambitions and achievements of OI leader, P&G.

P&G has set itself the mammoth task of getting 50% of it’s new ideas from external resources, be they partner organisations, consumers or specialist think-tanks. When they first embarked upon this program, estimated to be back in 2004, P&G employed around 7,500 in-house researchers, but estimated that there were around 1.5 million researchers with the right skills worldwide that they could tap into.

Come 2006, they reckoned they still had 7,500 researchers sitting inside the business, but that they also drew on 2,000 researchers externally. To support the flow of new ideas, P&G release all their patents five years after being lodged or three years after a product is released to the market.

What P&G is also doing to great effect is placing greater emphasis on the consumer experience by involving consumers at the heart of the innovation process. How are they doing this? The answer lies in consumer communities such as beinggirl.com, Capessa and their Tremor initiative. These vibrant communities consisting of brand advocates and those willing to share their experiences provide great flows of insight upon which new ideas can be focussed an tested.

At Dub we help build and support such communities using our proprietary software platform and our Research and Community Management skills. Businesses wishing to observe consumers interactions and conversations around specific products or categories can also benefit from new digital tools that can help firmly plant new consumer insights at the heart of every department. Your community doesn’t have to be the size of P&G’s, but by developing a community as small and easy-to-manage as between 300-500, you’ll witness some quick, cost effective results.

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