Whilst open innovation has seen a fantastic array of projects emerge to tap into the knowledge and ideas of people outside of the organization, most of these have been fairly isolated affairs.

The projects have often focused on either generating new ideas or producing stand alone/modular products that didn’t require a great deal of integration with the core of the business.

Whilst that approach is undoubtedly valuable, if open innovation is to become the standard for innovation, it’s likely that more work will be required to integrate external and internal sources of knowledge.

It’s this topic that Culturevate’s Anthony Ferrier and I have been discussing in a new whitepaper that was published this week.

The paper looks at how organizations can network up external ideas and insights with employees within the organization to ensure the maximum level of business impact.

Anthony and I look at some of the best ways this can be achieved, and provide some examples of how such networks are being forged in the field.

We believe that by deploying this joined up approach to innovation, you not only get better access to new thinking and ideas, but there is a much better chance of those ideas being implemented, which is what we’re all striving for here.

The thinking behind the paper will be familiar to many of the more regular readers of this blog, but this is a nice opportunity to put much of it together into a longer form narrative.

You can access the whitepaper in full for free via the Innovation Management website.