What can Collaborative Innovation Bring to your Business

Innovation has always been what allows us to imagine what the future will look like. But be careful, we are not talking about science fiction here, but about products that will be essential tomorrow, even if they do not yet exist today. 

If companies do not all have the necessary budget to set up a research and development department, there are other solutions today to allow them to innovate. This is particularly the case with collaborative innovation.

What is collaborative innovation?

Before understanding how collaborative innovation can work in your company's favor, it is necessary to understand what it is about. In reality, innovation is the ability of a company to reinvent itself and conquer new markets. 

Since budgetary constraints are real, it is now necessary to get around them. This is where collaborative innovation, or participatory innovation, comes into play. If you want to know more, the rest of this article should interest you.

Concretely, collaborative innovation can be both internal and external. In the first case, it is important to know that it is based on the ideas of employees. Thus, the departments begin to communicate with each other. Participative innovation can also be external, and in this case, it involves calling on partners.

What are the benefits of participatory innovation?

It is a fact that participatory innovation has several advantages that are not insignificant. Whether internal or external, the various stakeholders thus have the opportunity to develop creative synergies. Everyone is thus involved.

When carried out internally, collaborative innovation also allows employees to enhance their creativity. In this way, they have the opportunity to discover to what extent their ideas can have a considerable impact on the life of their company. This process is thus rewarding both for employees and for the company itself, as well as for contributors to an online collaborative encyclopedia.

This can also be an opportunity to discover new talent within a company's own teams. The stimulating nature of this type of project is no longer in doubt, and it helps to shed light on previously unsuspected skills.

Furthermore, collaboration also allows the meeting of different skills and personalities, which thus work in alchemy to be able to bring out innovative ideas.

What is the role of new technologies?

We live in an undoubtedly digital era. In this, it seems logical that new technologies are put at the service of collaborative innovation. And this involves many tools, in particular those dedicated to visual collaboration. Thanks to this type of tool, it is possible to share ideas instantly using a simple smartphone or tablet.

There are also more and more shared task management tools, which can greatly improve collaborative work, but also facilitate it. Some are presented here.

Innovation can also be facilitated… By innovation itself. Some new technologies, such as machine learning, for example, make it possible to link certain users to specific contributions adapted to their profiles.

How does it work? The machine identifies the interests of the collaborators, it also indexes the content of the platform and connects everything. This allows for a growing emergence of ideas.

It is very important to mention artificial intelligence, or AI, which also has a role to play in participatory innovation. While it has long been seen as a threat, the situation is slowly changing. The upheaval in the world of work is undeniable, but the ability to adapt is good, since society can be reinvented, and the creativity of the individual can then be increased tenfold.

When the budget is lacking to set up a real R&D department within your company, participatory collaboration is a good thing. It allows you to generate ideas that will make the company's future great.