Innovation Without Borders

Abstract

the pack and “thinks different.” Quite surely, that famous advertising byline helped win the computer maker, Apple, ultimate iconic status of innovator as the ultimate iconoclast. Equally famously, Apple Computer made its system incompatible with the prevailing standard: you were either with the nearly 90% of users whose PCs ran on Microsoft Windows or aligned with Apple’s unique system. Apple’s chief, Steve Jobs, had declared his objective to “put a ding in the universe”; he certainly did so by banging into the sides of much bigger competitors: Microsoft, IBM, HP, Dell, among many others. The Us vs. Them image of the innovator is not limited to Apple alone. The popular idea of the innovator as the “disruptor”—and the many examples of companies on the Web or from emerging markets that have, indeed, disrupted long standing incumbents—has reinforced the competitive facet of innovation. And the metaphors keep coming: making the competiton irrelevant; innovate—or die. In fact, it is often remarked that some of the best-known innovative companies hire attorneys with as much zest as in their hiring of scientists and engineers. In the midst of all of these images of zero-sum innovation, the critical role of consensus, cooperation and coordination in most successful innovations may have been overlooked. Last year, the percentage of successful innovative products that were developed or commercialized with others was as high as 79%. The total return to shareholders for companies that adopted a collaborative approach to innovation was on average 1.6 times that of more insular innovators. Collaboration also led to better outcomes for users of the innovative products: the clinical survival rates of patients who use products from externally sourced programs in pharmaceuticals are twice the survival rates of patients served by products of internally sourced programs. The importance of outsiders in the innovation process often begins with the very idea that ultimately becomes a winning innovation. The office supplies retailing giant, Staples, had aspirations to boost its sales from highly appealing private label merchandise. One of its hottest recent products is the Wordlock, predicated on the simplest of ideas: people remember combinations of letters that spell familBhaskar Chakravorti