Innovation Beyond the Four Walls: Breaking Down Innovation Barriers

As companies face relentless pressure to innovate in their development of products and services, they are seeking new strategies and techniques to gain and retain a leading edge.

With the proliferation of social media platforms and virtual communication, forward-looking companies are increasingly looking outside the four walls of their organizations and tapping into customers and partners to find inspiration and the innovation to compete and excel in the ever-changing business environment.

The objective: to take innovation beyond game-changing products and services and create more effective and efficient operational processes, as well as more profitable and productive ways of promoting and creating market opportunities. The obstacles are numerous and often deep and wide. As a result, implementing and sustaining innovation across these dimensions is exceedingly difficult and not for the faint of heart.

This report explores the collaboration efforts and tools embraced to foster and expand innovation outside the traditional organization’s four walls. It finds that organizations strongly believe in open environments for innovation and a vast majority of them are using virtual tools for internal and external collaboration.

Yet, having embraced the new tactics and tools, companies now face the challenge of integrating them into an organizational structure that will unlock the value of open innovation, drive superior business performance and build competitive advantage vis-à-vis key rivals, near and far.