Creating a Co-Innovation Network

Introduction

It has been quite a long time since the established ways of conducting business have changed and paved way for the technological innovations to seep into the organization fabric and become a part & parcel of the daily life. Business to business communication has never been richer before, largely attributed to the advent of internet and World Wide Web. The result is an increased focus on coordinating business activity and team within and across organizations.

Looking at the main drivers for the changes, we come across three large scale socio-economic factors:

1. Globalization: No doubt, the global customer bases, network of partners, supplier base and competition are forcing the companies to become leaner, flexible, focusing on internal strengths to keep them differentiated. What makes it more prominent is the shifting of priorities from within the traditional organization boundaries to the outside world.

2. Business Transparency: Notwithstanding the regulations forced by governments across countries, the customers & investors have become more demanding in terms of ensuring transparency about the business viz. processes, resources used, interaction modes with their immediate environment etc.

3. Shifting Trends: The mass availability of high speed communication networks is fast changing the ways in which consumers, suppliers, governments and markets interact. The manifestation of the consumer behaviour in this new environment is of particular interest to companies and they need to connect to these evolved markets in the right ways.

In response to these pressures, organizational business models have changed dramatically to accommodate the following changes:

1. Driven by demand, not supply: "Push" models can succeed in those environments where customer demands are predictable. Marketers these days are more interested in driving the business activity through actual customer demand. Rather than trying to tame demand patterns through sophisticated forecasting tools, a "Pull" model is one which accepts unpredictability.

2. Innovation, the buzz word: The importance of innovation has never been undermined by organizations. In fact, innovations are what which can make the business or disrupt them completely. Moving apart from traditional innovation sources, companies are now looking towards their supplier, partner networks, academia and customers