A Key to Collaborative Innovation: Defining the Problem Generically

Collaborative innovation across companies is happening! Manufacturing Business Technology wrote about a company, NineSigma, that facilitates this. What is very interesting about the innovation process is that NineSigma initially states the problem to be solved in GENERAL scientific terms. That way solutions outside the industry will be considered. In the Procter & Gamble consumer products example in my last post, they found an agricultural company who solved the same problem:

“The first step is working with the client to define their need as a general scientific problem. Stiros [NineSigma CEO] says this allows for developing RFPs that can be understood and responded to by people in a number of industries. Thus you get an agricultural products manufacturer solving a consumer goods problem.”

The idea of looking outside your company, your industry, and even your country for innovation has proven to drive new ideas and processes. One key is to do enough research to find these innovations. In the case of P&G it was finding a start-up to facilitate that research process when they reached a point of desperation.

Why not put these processes in ahead of time? Outsourcing research for innovations, product or process based, can be done as NineSigma has demonstrated. Has your company tried outsourcing the research required to find innovations?

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