Leveraging Technical Innovation through a Diversity of Channels

Abstract

Part of the evolution described in the previous chapter is that innovation projects increasingly draw on external participants. It is often said that there is no way any given firm can be good at everything and there is much more going on outside the firm than within it. Tapping into external knowledge is therefore a must. The first part of the statement is nothing new; the second part has now become more necessary. Companies, however, are not going far enough in the direction of practising ‘distributed innovation’, which will be discussed in Chapters 5 and 6.