Open Innovation

13Operation Principles

In this chapter, I will set out the guiding principles for the operation of a corporate open innovation system. Contrary to the macro description I made of it in my previous book, I will rather focus on a micro view of the structural, social and business principles between the actors.

There are business unit actors, start-up actors and corporate open innovation actors. The latter brings them together to generate value for the benefit of both the large organization and the start-up. The actors in the corporate open innovation system become de facto conductors who will have to manage the coming together of two mindsets, two ecosystems, and ensure their “integration” (technological or not). To do so, they rely on the large group’s internal ecosystem and the start-ups’ external ecosystem. In order to do so, they also implement a set of specific skills. To do so, they need, as I shared with you earlier, to have useful resources that are commensurate with the extent of their mission.

If I have to put it another way, I can tell you that if you take a business unit actor, an entrepreneurial actor, even if their objective of marriage is apparently sincere, they may come up against a real difference in what they perceive of the reality of their interactions and endanger an objective that is nevertheless declared as common. The actors of a corporate open innovation system, if they do not wish to limit themselves to being intermediaries without concrete added value, ...