Only 25% of today’s Fortune 500 companies are safe from disruption. The remaining 375 organizations (and most of those that aren’t on that list) must seriously consider their ability to withstand disruptors entering their field. However, rather than fearing the digital technologies and startups that might shake up their market, enterprise companies could engage and leverage them instead. Open innovation competitions are a popular method amongst industry leaders that want to gain new insights, forge new partnerships and accelerate their transformation to keep up.
Agorize launched more than 1,000 competitions with groups like Bayer, L’Oréal, Huawei and Hitachi. Based on these experiences, we’ve accumulated 5 best practices for enterprise open innovation competitions.
1. Objectives of your open innovation competition
While used for various purposes, these are some key objectives to organize an innovation challenge:
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- Improving your innovation approach: with the development of new products, services, or uses, by building partnerships with innovative startups, or even by sourcing new technologies. The main drivers of an innovation challenge are to build your innovation roadmap, to quickly find operational startups, and, finally, to innovate to open new markets.
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- Boosting your digital transformation: with the stimulation of your teams’ creativity, their acculturation to innovation through a learning by doing approach, and their role as an active contributor to the ecosystem. An open innovation challenge is a project itself. It can promote adhesion to your issue as well as a cross-functional, digital, and agile working environment.
- Launching more captivating marketing and communication campaigns: by switching from a one to many communication to a participative and collaborative one. Innovation competition allows you to have more impact with digital natives, collect ingenious ideas on behalf of the participants and also build marketing campaigns with them. This is what Tinder did by calling the student community on its “Keep it fun contest”.
- Innovative recruitment: test hard and soft skills of hundreds of candidates in real conditions. You can attract entrepreneur profiles who like to face new challenges and develop your employer brand under an innovation’s spectrum (implementation of new ways of collaborative and transversal working).
2. Foster team collaboration through the innovation challenge
Today, 80% of our time at work is spent on collaboration. That’s an increase of 50% over the last ten years (Innov8rs). Given the importance of collaboration in innovation, it’s a must to foster it efficiently during an open innovation competition. Most competitions will consist of a submission, assessment and selection/implementation phase. In each, the engagement and feedback of colleagues determines a significant part of its success. These are some roles that might be assigned to employees that require collaboration throughout the program:
- Voters: people within the organization evaluate and score ideas of their peers or external innovators like startups.
- Expert judges: topic-experts within your organizations judge the feasibility of an idea entry within their knowledge field (technological integration, scientific scope, financial).
- Mentors: those with entrepreneurial experience help innovators develop and strengthen their solutions to improve chances of success and adoption rate.
- Final pitch judges: C-level managers in the organization are the final judges, deciding which ideas are fit to move to the next phase, whether it’s a PoC, running pilots or launching it on the market.
3. Engage your innovator ecosystem (startups, employees, students)
The time has come to decide which topics your innovation challenge will tackle. In other words, the themes on which your participants will work. Attract as many participants as you can by challenging them on interesting topics. As such, this is a crucial stage for your project. A well-defined topic will have a positive impact on the quality of the propositions received.
Although each company has its own topic according to its needs and issues, we can find several recurring themes mainly focused on innovative use, products or services, marketing and communication, sustainable development, social issues or even operating performance.
It is important that the suggested theme is clear, simple and unambiguous to motivate the team members. A specific topic will be easily understood by the participants than an unclear theme. The emphasis should be on “How can you re-invent the customer’s services experience in the banking sector” rather than “How to increase the net banking incomes in the banking sector”.
To ensure high-quality submissions, it’s useful to exhaust all communication and engagement opportunities within a program. For example:
- Organize webinars or video conferences with Q&As
- Make mentors available to develop ideas and better align pitches with the problem statement
- Create multiple touch points through in-app notifications, emails and program publications to deepen participants’ understanding of your objectives
4. Step-by-step from ideation to evaluation and solution
These are the next steps to go from ideation to solution. Throughout this process, communication and collaboration should be promoted to ensure better outcomes.
Step 1: Select an innovation management platform
Step 2: define the project’s rules and timetable
By launching your innovation competition, you join an open innovation approach. In this context, transparency is a key factor of success. You must be clear and honest regarding the rules of the game: who can participate? What about the issues, the organization? What about intellectual property?…
- Mentoring: the participants benefit from personalized training: pitch, video, presentation, etc
- Prizes: the reward for participating is a big motivator for participants. In the case of individuals (employees, students), things like training, networking, job opportunities and material prizes are great. Startups usually look for funding, testing opportunities and things like office space.
5. Open innovation challenges as part of continuous innovation
To attract participants and maximize your outcomes, it is necessary to communicate. You must share during the launch but also throughout your open innovation challenge. Even large brand names can have difficulty accessing the right communities of innovators to submit ideas. Especially when the you have crafted niche problem statements. Because a well-targeted and relevant communication plan is not an easy task, these are some levers to activate in order to attract your community’s attention:
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- Press release: inform the media of the launch of your hackathon. You can use your brief to draft a short and impacting press release.
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- Social networks: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are your playground. Think of defining a hashtag dedicated to your innovation competition to be able to follow online news regarding your event.
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- Sponsor your social network content: the scope of your communication actions should be extended on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in order to reach people outside your networks.
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- Communicate with interesting relays: universities, incubators… You must adapt your actions according to the target community: incubators, accelerators, and even co-working spaces can be part of your communication strategy. Do not neglect fab labs to reach developers. You can present your challenge to schools and universities to reach students.
The value of your open innovation competition can reach far beyond the implemented solutions when you strategically communicate about it. This is where you can position yourself as an innovative employer and demonstrate company’s values.
Conclusion
Competitions are a valuable method to access the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in 2023. When you execute it well, it creates the opportunity to connect to solutions that can give you a strategic advantage over any competitor. If you are just getting started or are looking to scale your innovation and transformational ability, open innovation platforms are the way to go. They reduce time and resources needed to run programs and help break silos and departments that often hinder the innovation process.
Make it easy for yourself and book a demo to learn how Agorize can help you.
What is Agorize?
Agorize is the most comprehensive innovation management platform, supported by a team of experts and community of innovators. For over a decade, we’ve been providing technology powered by a community of 5 million innovators to foster change and accelerate innovation. Our clients and partners worldwide crowdsource, evaluate and develop solutions from startups, employees, developers and students using Agorize.
We’ve helped over 300 global enterprise companies in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, including Enterprise Singapore, Huawei, Microsoft, LVMH, PepsiCo, Bayer, Schneider Electric, Hitachi, L’Oréal and many more by running their innovation programs.
What is an innovation challenge?
An innovation challenge, or innovation competition, is a competition organized by a company to bring forward innovative solutions. The organizer defines clear objectives and problem statements, after which innovators are invited to submit their ideas and solutions. Proposals can come from startups, employees, students or other talent that is relevant to the topic at hand. Through a process of crowdsourcing and assessing ideas, mentoring participants and developing solutions, the organization will identify the winning proposals that will be implemented. More than 300 enterprise companies have organized innovation challenges with Agorize.
Their results speak for themselves. They’ve reduced go-to-market time with internal teams, fast-tracked the development of niche solutions with the products and services of startups, created long-term strategic partnerships and brainstormed future-proof ideas with students from top universities. Overall, it accelerated their own transformation and made themselves more future-proof.
What is an idea box?
Agorize IDEA BOX is an ideation management platform that helps organizations collect, assess and develop ideas from their employees or external communities. It’s an all-in-one solution with features to simplify the process of crowdsourcing ideas, so ideation can be accelerated and improved. Individuals or teams can submit ideas, which can then be evaluated by peers or experts on the platform through grades or virtual investments.
Then, the best ideas can be further developed with the input of others through feedback and comments. Our IDEA BOX solution is popular amongst HR and innovation leaders at enterprise companies. IDEA BOX allows HR leaders to engage employees across teams and countries to contribute valuable ideas and collaborate. As such, positively contributing to the company culture, employee satisfaction and retention and overall ROI. On the other hand, IDEA BOX supports innovation leaders in solving problem statements by opening up to the relevant communities they want to engage, such as customers, employees or other innovators.
The open innovation competition highlights should be determined. These are the main steps:
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- The kick-off: the launch of the innovation competition
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- The ideation: submission of the projects by the participants
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- The pre-selection process: the selection of the most promising projects
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- Prototyping: successful teams are going to develop their project and put forward their solution by making a prototype.
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- The selection process: the selection of the most promising projects by a second jury for the final (between 3 and 10 projects)
- Mentoring: the participants benefit from personalized training: pitch, video, presentation, etc
- Prizes: the reward for participating is a big motivator for participants. In the case of individuals (employees, students), things like training, networking, job opportunities and material prizes are great. Startups usually look for funding, testing opportunities and things like office space.
5. Open innovation challenges as part of continuous innovation
To attract participants and maximize your outcomes, it is necessary to communicate. You must share during the launch but also throughout your open innovation challenge. Even large brand names can have difficulty accessing the right communities of innovators to submit ideas. Especially when the you have crafted niche problem statements. Because a well-targeted and relevant communication plan is not an easy task, these are some levers to activate in order to attract your community’s attention:
-
- Press release: inform the media of the launch of your hackathon. You can use your brief to draft a short and impacting press release.
-
- Social networks: Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn are your playground. Think of defining a hashtag dedicated to your innovation competition to be able to follow online news regarding your event.
-
- Sponsor your social network content: the scope of your communication actions should be extended on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in order to reach people outside your networks.
-
- Communicate with interesting relays: universities, incubators… You must adapt your actions according to the target community: incubators, accelerators, and even co-working spaces can be part of your communication strategy. Do not neglect fab labs to reach developers. You can present your challenge to schools and universities to reach students.
The value of your open innovation competition can reach far beyond the implemented solutions when you strategically communicate about it. This is where you can position yourself as an innovative employer and demonstrate company’s values.
Conclusion
Competitions are a valuable method to access the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem in 2023. When you execute it well, it creates the opportunity to connect to solutions that can give you a strategic advantage over any competitor. If you are just getting started or are looking to scale your innovation and transformational ability, open innovation platforms are the way to go. They reduce time and resources needed to run programs and help break silos and departments that often hinder the innovation process.
Make it easy for yourself and book a demo to learn how Agorize can help you.
What is Agorize?
Agorize is the most comprehensive innovation management platform, supported by a team of experts and community of innovators. For over a decade, we’ve been providing technology powered by a community of 5 million innovators to foster change and accelerate innovation. Our clients and partners worldwide crowdsource, evaluate and develop solutions from startups, employees, developers and students using Agorize.
We’ve helped over 300 global enterprise companies in Europe, North America, and Asia Pacific, including Enterprise Singapore, Huawei, Microsoft, LVMH, PepsiCo, Bayer, Schneider Electric, Hitachi, L’Oréal and many more by running their innovation programs.
What is an innovation challenge?
An innovation challenge, or innovation competition, is a competition organized by a company to bring forward innovative solutions. The organizer defines clear objectives and problem statements, after which innovators are invited to submit their ideas and solutions. Proposals can come from startups, employees, students or other talent that is relevant to the topic at hand. Through a process of crowdsourcing and assessing ideas, mentoring participants and developing solutions, the organization will identify the winning proposals that will be implemented. More than 300 enterprise companies have organized innovation challenges with Agorize.
Their results speak for themselves. They’ve reduced go-to-market time with internal teams, fast-tracked the development of niche solutions with the products and services of startups, created long-term strategic partnerships and brainstormed future-proof ideas with students from top universities. Overall, it accelerated their own transformation and made themselves more future-proof.
What is an idea box?
Agorize IDEA BOX is an ideation management platform that helps organizations collect, assess and develop ideas from their employees or external communities. It’s an all-in-one solution with features to simplify the process of crowdsourcing ideas, so ideation can be accelerated and improved. Individuals or teams can submit ideas, which can then be evaluated by peers or experts on the platform through grades or virtual investments.
Then, the best ideas can be further developed with the input of others through feedback and comments. Our IDEA BOX solution is popular amongst HR and innovation leaders at enterprise companies. IDEA BOX allows HR leaders to engage employees across teams and countries to contribute valuable ideas and collaborate. As such, positively contributing to the company culture, employee satisfaction and retention and overall ROI. On the other hand, IDEA BOX supports innovation leaders in solving problem statements by opening up to the relevant communities they want to engage, such as customers, employees or other innovators.
