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In recent months, I have been discussing with corporate open innovation managers the barriers to OI success they've identified within their businesses. What can be done to address these challenges?

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Prospective innovators can become prematurely occupied with pursuing product execution options before they have even confirmed that their value proposition is sound. This approach virtually assures wasted time, energy and resources.

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No tech scouting brief ever directs a scout to only identify technologies that can support specific marketing claims as that would be overly restrictive. However, it can be valuable for R&D (and OI teams, in particular) to be aligned with their Marketing customers on desired marketing claims prior to seeking to identify potential technology options, particularly in highly regulated product categories.

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I define innovation as the intersection of: opportunity (should do this), feasibility (can do this) and capability (will do this). Many companies struggle with feasibility more than they should, especially when open innovation is a key consideration.

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Given the considerable resource investments that companies are making in externally enabled innovation, teams can and should do more to increase productivity and get more big hits. A good way to achieve this end is to ask more questions.

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Companies can realize substantial benefit by leveraging open innovation team input (including tech scouts) during the new product concept development process...instead of waiting until concepts are fully formed.

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One of the more inspiring aspects of innovator success stories is the innovator's own tremendous persistence against adversity. While tenacity is often necessary to achieve any worthy end, at some point some prospective innovators may need to decide it's time to pursue a different venture.

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By adopting specific external technologies to technical challenges, companies develop a series of ad hoc solutions. However, if they were to also encourage internal collaboration, they could generate substantial additional value by developing multiple usage applications.

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We've all heard the expression, "ahead of its time" used to described an idea that didn't catch on because the moment wasn't yet right for its broad acceptance. This prompts a question: can one accurately predict when to introduce a (disruptive) innovation?

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Many R&D professionals lament their ongoing inability to earn their Marketing colleague's interest in new initiatives they try to bring forward. As a former R&D manager myself, I've been there. But, I've also worked in corporate new product Marketing. So, R&D shouldn't just give up. To improve their success prospects, they should tackle this challenge differently than their current approach.

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