Here, I would like to further develop an analysis from a friend, and as he likes to call himself, an innovation observer: Eugene Ivanov. In his blog, he writes about open innovation tools that could be used for business model innovation. His scheme gives an immediate and clear understanding on how a company can use open innovation tools in the three main phases of the business model, and I would like to start from here to further build on his analysis.

First of all, Eugene talks about the three main models (as described by Christensen and co-authors): Market-creating innovation (MCI), Sustaining Innovation(SI), and Efficiency Innovation (EI). Innovation created from a market need is indeed the one that looks at generating new business models to fill a gap in the market, or to create new businesses. Sustaining Innovation happens when the business model is mature enough and needs to be sustained, by introducing new products, or new services. Last but not least, the Efficiency Innovation is for those businesses that have a consolidated model and need to innovate to make it more efficient, for instance, with cost reduction actions, or by making their process leaner. Once the models are defined, Eugene explains how open innovation tools could be used in their creation, development and validation. At this point I would like to build on the analysis, by considering the number of tools, and by introducing a new one, as well as reinterpreting the trends lines.

When you use the crowdsourcing tool, you usually use something that has several different sub-tools: consumer co-creation is one, of course, but then we have co-creation with specialists (professionals and experts), or with lead users. The use of those different types of resources is also developing in a different way across the business models. In my opinion, the trends are slightly different as shown in the picture.

Using consumer co-creation is definitely important and useful in the MCI model, but it decreases in the SI and even drops to zero in EI (orange line). Differently, the use of professionals and experts, such as researchers or scientists, or of lead users, has a different trend (red lines). Indeed, I believe that in EI the trend should be more asymptotic, because even in consolidated businesses there will always be the need to use these two categories of crowds to keep innovating, in a more moderate way, but still useful.

Asymptotic as well will be the trend in using web scouting, as defined from Eugene (green line). Indeed, in EI the web searches and scouting never end. Innovating, as we all know, is to bring new ideas to the market, and often, even if the business is solid (EI) it is necessary to run scouting campaigns for benchmarking, for finding new solutions, new suppliers, or even for optimizing internal processes.

To all these trend lines, I add a new one, which refers to an additional tool, and that is often neglected when talking about open innovation: the supplier crowdsourcing(blue line). Suppliers are also very important actors in the innovation ecosystem and can definitely contribute to the innovative process. Indeed, here the trend is quite different from others. They are less used in the MCI, but more and more when you move into SI and EI models. This is why the trend line is the opposite of the other ones. In those ecosystems, where the B2B is very important and integral part of the macro-economic system, it is good to stress that suppliers should also be leveraged for innovation, and in many cases I spoke about them as “the real engine of innovation”. Therefore, it is clear why I include this “tool” in the trends, as well, because it is very important to consider the crowdsourcing from your existing and new suppliers, too, to strengthen the ecosystem and to improve your business model.

I hope this quick analysis is triggering your minds and will help all innovative companies allocate more room to crowdsource innovation from their own suppliers, too.