Companies are reinventing the ways in which technology innovates. Car manufacturers are leading innovation by developing vehicles that can be parked without being at the wheel or even in the car with just a smartphone using an App. This technological feat has been achieved in a short span of five years, by leading innovation and following new technologies, this partnership between technology and industry has accelerated.

However, all these investments towards digital innovation don't explain everything. The companies have also changed their methods, practices and accepted technological innovation. This involves opening the company to the outside world.

Open Innovation means speed to market. And that's why, taking advantage and really collaborating with external innovators, really speeds up the ability of a company to take its innovations to the market quickly. Open innovation radically changes the way companies innovate, this new practice is opening up to the outside world and really doesn't know any bounds.

A widely used method in marketing is now been put to work for innovation. The behaviour of consumers is changing faster than a type of product, by observing consumers and their uses of a product, companies can precisely and specifically create innovation to address the needs expressed. The process involves observing the marketing experience by carefully searching for information from the consumers, anticipating future needs and building new offers. By opening to this fairly radical transformation, there is a scope for action, and the innovation in everyday products and services is remarkable. 

Today a successful business is one that has its sensors focused on the outside world. This is just the start, aircraft manufacturers are now using Open Innovation to create aeroplanes defined by users making consumers increasingly important in the innovation process. Companies are using social media marketing services to understand what consumers want more of and less of as they innovate their products.

Open Innovation isn't the only new method to revolutionise the world of research. Another fashionable formula is Frugal Innovation, a formula that perfectly fits the context of crisis.



Money is no longer paramount in the innovation war. For almost a century a myth has been peddled in the West, according to which "Money can buy innovation". Its consequences have been pretty adverse: What I'd call a kind of arms race between western countries and companies in the West which invest a great deal of money in research and development.

All the statics and research clearly show that money is no longer the key facilitator in generating innovation. Other factors have come into play. Now, there is a trend towards a more market driven solution that is focused on the needs of the consumers. Money is no longer a precious commodity and at least a key factor - It is your capacity to detect needs! The idea is to do more with less and that is the essence of Frugal Innovation. 

To trace Frugal Innovation back to its source, I talk to Sunny Matharuabout a Kenyan Company that found scope for innovation with a simple observation - by inventing a bank that enabled the transfer of small sums of money, through mobile phones. 90% of Kenya's population uses a system called MPESA to make purchases and to transfer money, by giving a simple code received by SMS. In this climate of innovation, markets are there for the taking! Frugal Innovation involves utilising the bare necessities to transform a problem into a solution. 

Areas such as healthcare, public safety, and education are just the tip of the iceberg, Frugal Innovation is a revolution which goes far beyond the frontiers of traditional industry. It is a global playground that you never predicted!

Worry about what the market needs ... Innovation knows no boundaries! We're entering the era of Participatory Innovation so that we can go faster, and spend less! Ideas are everywhere, provided the companies know how to capture them.



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