The SAP Open Innovation Experience

Companies are beginning to look beyond innovation within its own R&D sectors and are starting to create open collaboration networks of external partners. This latest post on innovation.net shows us that this is not just a trend by discussing how SAP's open innovation efforts have spawned much success. SAP had previously launched Co-Innovation Lab in 2007 to experiment with the idea of open innovation. It was a open collaboration network for partners to solve industry specific challenges and problems via the SAP platform. What was different about this platform was that SAP's approach was much more focused. It was sponsored and initiated by HP, Cisco, Intel, and NetApp. By creating a much more private, invitation-only style network it takes away the ability of just anyone contributing. How does your company measure up against SAP's open innovation efforts? Does your company foster a more 'private' approach to open innovation?