The Open Execution Model: Innovation across Boundaries

In a recent first-of-its-kind development for the automobile industry, five million social media users crowd-sourced and customized the design of a Porsche. Can you envision the impact that this approach, of depending on people who don’t work for you, could have on how organizations get work done? For instance, imagine if an organization working to deliver complex technology solutions could source niche skills from anywhere in the world, outside the boundaries of the organization. How would this enable organizations to innovate more rapidly and effectively?

Clearly, in the information economy, an organization is only as good as the innovative ideas it can nurture and execute at speed. If organizations were able to tap into the knowledge, skills, experience, and ‘innovativeness’ inside and outside the organization—dissolve all boundaries and become a borderless incubator of innovation—they would become supremely capable of continuously delivering better solutions to their customers.
Open innovation principles have come to be rapidly adopted to source ideas both internally and externally, and to quickly experiment, prototype, test, and create innovative products and solutions. The Open Execution Model on the other hand, enables an organization to scale up and tap into the best resources to solve complex business and technical problems, whether they are within or outside the organization. Adopting an Open Execution Model will help organizations to deliver customer delight, improve resource utilization, enhance competency building and productivity, collaborate and be cost efficient.

In spite of these many benefits, not all organizations may be ready to adopt the Open Execution Model as yet. Organizations may also need to consider and meet the challenges of adopting this approach to innovation that stem from the inherent complexities that are created in managing a loosely coupled workforce, such as contracts, compliance, project and risk management, integration of work, QA, intellectual property ownership and assignation as well as overall change management issues.

In light of these barriers, a question that comes up is - how can organizations incentivize innovation through open execution? Most technologists who participate in projects under the Open Execution Model are driven by a set of mixed motivations that combine elements of the open execution incentives’ 3Ps: “price, prize, and pride”. Clearly, open execution has the potential to transform the delivery of technology solutions for products and services. But the successful deployment of this model within organizations will be driven by efficient project management. Some of the best practices that organizations could adopt for the delivery of IT services and products through the Open Execution Model are as below:

1. Select the right service
2. Choose the right platform
3. Identify potential problems early
4. Adhere to quality assurance parameters
5. Clearly define pricing and intellectual property ownership

Open innovation has already begun to transform the approach to product and service creation across industries. Just as the Global Delivery Model opened up new avenues of service delivery, the Open Execution Model has the potential to foster a dynamic and result oriented culture of innovation in our 21st century organizations.

About the Author

G S Nathan is responsible for driving Innovation as a management discipline across all of Wipro. In this role he is responsible for internal and external (open) innovation programs and to drive Wipro IP creation and protection processes.

Nathan has worked for more than 20 years around enterprise application consulting engagements, helping customers select and implement the right enterprise applications for their businesses. He has extensive experience in consulting for and running innovation and IP creation programs, business process design and reengineering, application consolidation and business benefits realization and in creating and managing large technology practices.

Nathan has a B.Tech in engineering as also a PGDM from IIM Bangalore. He is based in Chennai, India, and is interested in pretty much anything to do in the intersection of technology, IP, economics, IT services, and innovation.

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