Companies are increasingly looking outside their borders for help innovation, working with customers, research companies, business partners, and universities - and even competitors. They are also expanding the purposes for which they consider appropriate external sources. Companies today are using external sources at all stages of innovation, from discovery and development to commercialization, and even maintenance of the product. While these changes sound good and are a lot of companies, they add a new level of complexity of the manager. And, unfortunately, despite the growing recognition of external innovation, we have found that many companies lack the search strategy to guide them in control. They often take a special approach that gives different results - very problems they are trying to avoid. Rather than deal with external sources for one and one at a time, companies need to systematically explore and harness all the more important of the innovative sources. The authors explain how companies can organize their outsourcing complex, using innovative channels in the same way as they manage specific channels to reach consumers. "Hide
by Sirkka Jarvenpaa, Jane Linder, Thomas H. Davenport, Juyne Linger Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 9 pages. Publication Date: July 1, 2003. Prod. #: SMR105-PDF-ENG