Under the expression “collaborative innovation” we usually summarize a series of practices implemented by big companies, corporates and multinationals, in order to create an environment in which it’s possible to develop innovative projects. Typically, this environment is obtained by a series of partnerships with young, fresh, proactive and innovativeness-oriented companies or freelancers. This practice has become quite common within the entrepreneurship world, to the point that some firms have specialized exactly in supporting this practice with their operative tools. It is the case, for example, of Dassault Systèmes, with its 3dexperience platform.
Many big companies – including the richest, the most important and the most technologically evolved ones in the world – are currently pursuing a collaborative innovation program, giving thousand of small companies the opportunity of developing their ideas in a highly open and receptive environment. The most glaring example is probably the one that comes from NASA: the American civil space program federal agency has created a real network of small innovative companies and research centres, with the aim of exploiting the best results that will possibly come out from, at least, some of them. This means that sometimes a collaborative innovation program, especially if established on a very large scale, could lead to a series of dead ends; but all it takes is that one time in one thousand when the job done proves to be actually innovative and profitable to justify such an investment. Other famous international brands involved in collaborative innovation programs are: Apple, Microsoft, Intel and many other giants of the so-called digital economy.
Clearly, there are so many different ways to organize and manage a collaborative innovation program. But, besides the operative protocols and the specific practices adopted in every single company (which may vary a lot from each other), what really matters is the nature of the partners involved in every single project. Let’s examine in detail the three most recurrent examples.
- A big company creates and manages a network of smaller ones. It is probably the most common strategy and, at the same time, the one that ensures the most immediate results. Independent companies, small as they may be, maintain a certain amount of autonomy from the headquarters, so that they can work on their projects autonomously and show to the big company only the final version. The autonomy ensured to the big company’s partner is a warrant of the independence and the spontaneity of every project carried on, and this is generally considered (especially in the scientific environment) an added value.
- A big company relies in many freelancers’ independent work. This is the most common configuration in the cultural sector. Museums, art galleries, publishing houses, literary agencies, event management companies: these are just the most familiar typologies of companies that could work according to this protocol. Sometimes, their job resembles of enough close with a scouting operation, but it obviously has its specificities, according to the main company’s policy and purpose.
- A big company relies in many different research centres at the same time. Working with research centres means having a direct line with many scientists, scholars and academics of a specific subject. It’s the perfect configuration for those companies that deal with chemistry and biology, which means that it’s the kind of partnership that explores more in depth the way the world itself works, in particular in connection with human beings’ life.
Clearly, these configurations can be declined in many different ways. They can even be hybridized with each other, or they can just co-exist in the same environment. Like many academics say, the research is potentially endless, and in most cases being a “heretic” compared to the common rule has meant making discoveries that have changed the human history forever.
