Open Innovation: What Companies Can Learn from Open Source Communities

You may know that the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas. You cant expect to have the right idea on your own, so having different points of view on your project becomes essenti …

You may know that “the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas”. You can’t expect to have the right idea on your own, so having different points of view on your project becomes essential in order to drive innovation. That’s why open innovation can be summarized as the idea of a company sharing information while also listening to the feedback and suggestions from outside the company. At Nethesis we don’t just look to a crowd for ideas. We innovate in, with, and through communities. By embracing participation from contributors, users and customers within and outside the walls of the organization. This has a ton of benefits. If the people, who use your product, are really involved in the project, they will provide feedback and use cases, write documentation, catch bugs, compare with other products, suggest features and contribute to the development. All of this generates innovations, attracts contributors and customers, as well as expanding the user base. With my talk, I’d like to explain what we learned building an open source project, strengths and drawbacks. Why this is an example of how successful product development is done and what it means for a company working out in the open. Ready-to-use, concrete advice on what works and what doesn’t.