Focus on Needs Over Outcomes in Shaping Open Innovation

Organizations can struggle with balancing the expansive potential of an open innovation program with the need to target investments. Efforts should align with organizational strategy and more specifically product development strategy. But an important distinction from other organizational programs is to set open innovation guidelines that are needs-based, rather than outcomes-based. An excerpt from APQC’s report Open Innovation: Creating Flexible Collaboration, this article details how to bake in flexibility to an open innovation program’s strategic focus, with an example from Procter & Gamble.