Proposal-Based Innovation: A New Approach to Opening Up the Innovation Process

A basic principle of innovation is synthesis, a recombination of previously unconnected concepts. A known framework in this regard is Open Innovation (OI), which is widespread in nonmanufacturing industries such as software. In manufacturing, however, OI is largely rejected mainly due to high intellectual property (IP) protection requirements. This chapter describes an approach that can break through this aversion of manufacturers. The first step is to make the innovation activities of manufacturers transparent in a wide variety of industries and in a structured way, based on facts freely available on the Internet. The concern is only with WHAT companies do, have achieved, or intend to do, and not their intellectual property, i.e., HOW they do it. Remote locations (worldwide) and outside industries are particularly important because the information deficit is greatest in these axes, not least because search engines offer only limited and inefficient help when carrying out research in this regard. The second step is to use artificial intelligence (AI) to turn the extracted structured facts into concrete creative proposals for innovation and cooperation between different manufacturers (regardless of location and industry) in order to stimulate the innovation process in new ways. This principle is what Karl H. Ohlberg calls Proposal-based Innovation (PBI). The advantage lies in the fact that sign up, be a member, share your ideas, the idea of the Web 2.0 and Open Innovation from the end of the last millennium, is replaced by the use of the immense amount of data that has accumulated over the past 20 years. Discussions with manufacturers reveal there is great interest in this principle, so that the goal is to develop a cross-national prototype.