Open Marketing Innovation

In addition to my role at Demand Metric, I serve as an adjunct faculty member in the Spears School of Business at Oklahoma State University, where I teach in the Marketing Department. This connection to the academic world gives me exposure to ideas, people and presentations not normally available to a corporate marketer.

Recently, I had the opportunity to attend a presentation given by a new Ph.D. who was under consideration for a position on the Marketing Department faculty. She talked about open vs. closed innovation, and it got the wheels in my head to turning. Henry Chesbrough, professor at UCal Berkeley and author of Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating And Profiting from Technology, explains the concept:

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology.”

I can appreciate theory, but I value application, so here are some examples of open innovation at work:

• Proctor & Gamble switched to open innovation and saw its rate of new product development that moved from R&D to commercialization from 15% to 50%.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer – created with a closed innovation model.
• Mozilla FireFox – created with an open innovation model.
• Apple’s iOS – closed (what are the long term implications of this?)
• Android – open

The essence of this paradigm is developing a resistance to the “not invented here” syndrome, and I believe it has a lot to do with marketing and marketers, not just R&D labs spinning out the latest hi-tech gizmo. To bring this concept close to home, the Demand Metric community – with over 10,000 members – provides a wonderful network for open marketing innovation. This community provides our members with the key ingredients to practice open marketing innovation:

• Network breadth: members in over 75 countries ranging from start-ups to consulting firms to members of the Global 1000
• Network depth: we’re over 10,000 strong and growing
• Network density: the frequency with which network relationships are accessed

There certainly is value to Demand Metric’s library of tools and templates. This content resource is the reason why we have over 10,000 members. But I believe the greater value is the collective expertise in the network. This is why we put sharing mechanisms in our new website, are encouraging our members to join our LinkedIn group, follow us on Twitter or Facebook and read this blog. It’s not because we want the attention. Instead, we understand the power of the community. It is a tremendous resource for you, and it is free. Take advantage of it.