Congratulations! You have been tasked with implementing or re-implementing an open innovation program within your organization. What is your first thought? Google ‘open innovation’, read some books and papers, talk to people you know that are at companies that have active open innovation programs, hire a consultant or just wade in and try and make it happen? Actually, all of these are good things to do. Today, there is a rich body of knowledge about open innovation and how to create and implement a successful program.

For the last 15+ years, my work has consisted of consulting to companies that are engaged in large scale transformation programs such as re-engineering, SAP and most recently open innovation. If there is one lesson I learned from my consulting work that I would pass on to someone at the beginning of an open innovation program – it is to communicate, communicate and then communicate some more. Yes, you need a well articulated vision, clearly defined objectives and buy-in from leadership. You will need to make sure you know your innovation organization’s strengths and weaknesses. You will need to fully understand your innovation ecosystem (current network of partners/suppliers). At the foundation you will need to have some type of simple process to leverage your innovation ecosystem, and the people in the functional areas that interact with the open innovation process will need to understand their roles and responsibilities. All of this is necessary - and more.

Ultimately the long term adoption of open innovation will be a function of how well you communicate. You need to communicate that you are implementing open innovation, why you are implementing open innovation, and what you are learning along the way. Share the setbacks and successes and stories about the people on the front lines. This communication needs to happen in many forms, many places and not be limited to the open innovation group. And, when you think you have communicated enough, communicate some more. Think in terms of a constant drumbeat.

One of our clients talks about the three phases they are progressing through in their open innovation program. These are introducing, embedding and delivering. At each stage we have been communicating to the broad organization through multiple channels. They are seeing the benefits of this communication through new innovation as a result of both internal collaboration across business units and new external collaborations. They realize there is still much to be done, but they can see the change that is happening and a new mindset of open innovation emerging.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, before anyone had heard of “crowd sourcing”, (coined in 2006) NineSigma clients were fascinated by the opportunity to reach into every corner of the globe for answers to their biggest challenges.  The focus was on “how” and “where” to get the solution.  NineSigma solved the “how” by providing the answer to “where”.

Fast forward to 2010…companies have more information than they can process.  Chat rooms, company-sponsored websites, OI intermediaries like NineSigma…Open Innovation can feel like the suggestion box on steroids.  The real challenge today is how to manage and optimize Open Innovation.

The companies that will be the Open Innovation leaders tomorrow are those that are successful in creating their Open Innovation Office – the structure that broadcasts the right information outside to the best external resources, and then funnels the value back inside to act on it efficiently.

We believe that three pillars are essential to building a successful, sustainable Open Innovation Office. 

Framework –Vision, Process and Organizational Design, and underlying Software

Support – People and resources to:

• Develop OI best practices and build OI adoption
• Manage the Needs Funnel, relationships with external partners and integration of OI projects into the product development cycle

OI Toolbox –Partners and tools to engage internally and externally

Framed by executive commitment to your OI Strategy and program management and accountability, these three pillars build an integrated, managed and optimized Open Innovation program.

In my last blog post I described my checkered past, and how from graduate school to present what we now call Open Innovation has been a constant presence in my career.  I reached outside many times, and can document millions of annual profits because of it.  I ended with this comment:

 “I’ve worked as they say, both sides of the street, and now I work in the in middle, part traffic cop, part coach, part target.”

Open Innovation is something I think is very much worthwhile even if I’m constitutionally allergic to the business jargon and buzzwords that surround it these days.  I have a privileged position now, applying my experience to helping other people do this.  I get to see a lot of what goes on inside a great many companies both in the US and now from my seat in the NineSigma office in Europe.

My first observation is that in general people are not as successful at open innovation as I was or current leaders like Procter and Gamble are.  I’m not unique in making this observation. Sieg et al ( J.H. Sieg, M.W. Wallin and G. von Krogh, R&D Management 40, 3, 2010) have looked at the use of intermediaries and come to similar conclusions examining the activities of another OI intermediary.  One of the striking observations is that 7 of 8 of the clients had abandoned their relationships with that intermediary.

Investigating the causes of these failed relationships it becomes clear that project expectations were not met. But is that the whole story?  Were the project expectations reasonable?  Were in fact the project choices reasonable?  In short the answer is mostly not.  This quote is all too familiar to me-

“If I said our scientists were not very enthusiastic, you can imagine what kind of problems the scientists put up and now I exaggerate a bit [ …] they […] didn’t come up with things they think might have a good chance of being solved.”

How is it that the corporate leadership that buys these services doesn’t see this coming?  Consider the possibility that the leadership has either been oversold or all on their own ‘over bought’.  OI is surrounded by hype about easy successes due to scooping up readily waiting technology and making big immediate impacts on bottom lines, promoting growth etc.  The very projects that don’t have a good chance of being solved above are also those that are likely to have hung around gathering dust precisely because if they were solved a great benefit would come.  So a skeptical or threatened scientist puts forward these unsolvable problems as a way to get this culturally new means doing things off their plate and senior management approves them because they fit the big score expectations that they have for OI.  A winning combination. 

The expectation of easy success going outside is one of many mistaken ideas we see.  Another is the false belief that the problems chosen are uniquely recognized.  The idea that the major problems in your market and/or technology space are not recognized by your competitors has no basis in reality.  Our team may be smart, but generally so is theirs.  But following this line of thinking leads to poorly specified requests being created in an effort to hide the real purpose.

A belief that is equally perplexing, but well known to researchers is the idea that our own team isn’t smart, so we need to look outside.  Generally, this attitude develops when scientists point out to management that their pet idea has a problem.  For years consultants have made comfortable livings providing second opinions in cases like these.  Now OI is used as well when internal scientists proffer an unwanted answer.  This in turns leads to projects where the chance of finding something is low.

So what makes a good OI project?  One clue can be found in the Seig article.  In describing progress towards a goal, the authors note that while the main objective is well documented and planned “…when problems occur on the way, they are discussed with colleagues in the group or in the hallway but rarely formulated in an explicit problem statement.  The problems are ‘in the heads of the scientists’…  My experience in delivering results with OI is that those little intermediate problems are precisely where big impacts on time to delivery of the overall project can be made.  Need to blend a mixture of dissimilar size and shape pellets? Need to separate misblended mixtures?  Sure we could have done it in house…eventually.  But going outside was so much faster.  Need to understand how a competitor achieved a longer shelf life?  Sure, we could have collected samples and tried one analysis after another, but finding the right expert got the job done in days to weeks.

What doesn’t get recognized also is that many of those ‘little’ problems are already solved by the use of outside resources.  We needed to reduce coking in a reactor preheater section.  A sales rep provided us with the right feed atomization technology.  This sort of problem solving is routine and because it isn’t a big problem, isn’t captured generally when people speak of OI success.  But without that atomizer or a hundred little things like it, we couldn’t have delivered the reactor model, and without the reactor model we couldn’t have built the pilot plant and without the pilot plant we couldn’t have validated the reactor simulator, and without the reactor simulator we couldn’t have designed the new system that put the millions on the bottom line.  For the want of a nail..the kingdom was lost.  These days, when working with clients, I tell this story and I ask them, “What are YOUR nails”?

NineSigma is, in contemporary parlance an “Open Innovation Intermediary”.  I like to keep it simpler.  We help people with problems make connections with people who might help them solve the problem.  It doesn’t sound as glamorous or hip when presented that way does it?  Or if you look at all the buzz around open innovation, you see a lot of repackaging of old wine in new bottles.  Since I am some of the older wine, I thought I’d share my experience in implementing OI in a SME and what I’ve learned that applies to today’s environment.

Of course, long before someone (Chesbrough, 2003) got the idea of calling getting something from outside your own fences “Open Innovation”,  people were doing just that.  We tend to overlook the roles of suppliers, academic consultants, and consulting firms and technology vendors, development alliances, organized networking and government programs that have been a constant feature of our global industrial civilization.  This means we also overlook the roles of the purchasing departments and corporate policies that engaged these traditional means of obtaining solutions from outside the fences.  The focus on web-centric communication mechanisms, the popularity of terms like “crowd-sourcing” and “innovation ecosystems” tend to promote unrealistic expectations of effortless and cost-free profitability and diminish the perceived value of established innovation infrastructures.  An unfortunate side effect of this kind of promotional language is that it can inspire resistance to OI mechanisms from the very people they can help the most:  The people responsible for delivering new technologies, products and business methods.  People who actually do the hard work of making innovation happen may well regard stories of great, effortless success with raised eyebrows.  The skepticism of working innovators to the management theory du jour or as a colleague puts it “Management by Bestseller” is something acquired easily in an industrial career.  When skepticism is replaced by cynicism, then the game is truly lost.

Before I started my industrial career, I, like all the other NineSigma program managers, was in graduate school.  My graduate advisor had a number of industrial research projects going on his group.  Ziegler-Natta catalyst studies is one such project that a friend of mine worked on.  One alumnus of the group brought in projects dealing with the applications of brassylic acid for macrocycle synthesis.  These are just two, never mind the spinoffs and ventures coming out of the group’s research that led to numerous successful companies and profits.

When I took my first industrial job at Air Products,  it seemed rather natural to cast around for academic groups that would be better places to park some of my research ideas than working on them myself, and I was encouraged to do so.  Air Products was no novice at building alliances and acquiring technology from the outside.  My first assignment (as part of a team) was to evaluate a technology proposal that was coming in from the outside.  Closely attached to the corporate R&D group was a commercial development fellow whose job was technology scouting.   He would visit universities and startup companies around the world, looking at the latest developments that might fit our business objectives.  I remember wanting his job someday.  I like to think my work with NineSigma gives me some of the best parts, seeing the innovations needs of our clients and the amazing range of solution components offered by people around the world.

My second industrial job was with a much smaller firm, Nepera Inc.  At the time we were owned by Schering AG.  What I discovered on arriving was a catalyst development program working together with Union Carbide, a consulting Professor in Munich and  Sude Chemie.  Clearly, this historic German firm was open to outside innovations.  I had a role in taking that project to commercialization 9 months after I started.   As a successor project, I initiated an outside effort for gas phase reaction modeling.  I learned some of the downsides of outside contracting when the supplier turned out to have significantly over-promised and then held out his hand for more money.

Looking outside however really went into high gear when Cambrex acquired Nepera. Cy Baldwin and the late Art Mendolia were old veterans of chemical industry.  Cy had lead marketing efforts at ARCO and Oxirane while Art lead research at Dupont and was later an Undersecretary of Defense.  When they set out on their own, they brought this experience in front of us and dropped it on the table during our first quarterly R&D review meeting. “Don’t think we’re going to spend a lot of money on R&D here,” they said. “We spent lots of money at DuPont and didn’t get a lot to show for it”.  This was rapidly followed with “Why are you doing that?  Couldn’t someone outside do it better/faster/cheaper?”

At our next review meeting we proudly described where we had engaged outside resources only to be questioned again, “What about the intellectual property here; shouldn’t you be doing this yourself?”  We got it right the third meeting, and thereafter, described a carefully thought through balance of internal and externally focused efforts.  Cy and Art did a significant part of their management of Nepera through those R&D review meetings, holding us accountable for all aspects of the project in relationship to our business objectives.  If we didn’t know something about another department’s activities we were chastised with the rhetorical question, “You’re a small company; don’t you guys talk to each other?” 

In between then and now, I worked for other small companies, as a technology consultant and as an entrepreneur trying to sell innovation into large companies.  I’ve worked as they say, both sides of the street, and now I work in the in middle, part traffic cop, part coach, part target.

As Anne Morrow Lindbergh was quoted as saying, “Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.”

We are seeing just this type of communication on Open Innovation. Our clients typically have formal internal communication processes that include company newsletters, websites, cross-business meetings and the like. Open Innovation is fast becoming a topic of choice as companies strive to educate and inform their employees on the impact and potential of Open Innovation. Companies are more openly talking about successes they’ve experienced and the challenges they’ve faced as they work at embedding Open Innovation across the enterprise.  

A long-time client, 3M, recently used Open Innovation in its ‘cover story’ for the company’s internal newspaper. The article discussed 3M’s pursuit of a new platform technology:  “The incubator lab team collaborated with [Robert] Finocchiaro to initiate a global technology search. Together, they enlisted NineSigma, an open innovation service provider, to solicit solutions from researchers worldwide. ‘We got more than 40 responses,” [Rick] Neby noted, and one was from a company based in Switzerland that was coating 1.15 refractive index materials for improving ink reception on inkjet paper. Their material had some very desirable optical properties that could ultimately affect products in several divisions.’” The article went on to describe how the company’s incubator lab was sparking new innovation in ways they didn’t think possible.

Siemens recently referenced their Open Innovation work in the company’s magazine, Pictures of the Future. “Siemens is making use of OI methods in research as well. When faced with particularly tricky problems, Siemens researchers sometimes turn to “e-brokers,” who team up with external problem-solvers. In such cases, developers publicly describe their problem on an e-broker website, such as NineSigma or yet2com, and offer a cash reward for the best solution. And that solution can come from a large IT company in India or from an amateur developer in Germany. Approximately half of the problems are successfully solved in this way. So it’s not surprising that large companies like BASF, Novartis, and Nestlé are likewise using this method of finding solutions.”

Open Innovation will continue to be a hot topic within our client organizations, particularly as OI leaders are able to share big wins and lessons learned through the process.  This will further stimulate creativity among employees and help to get them thinking about the infinite possibilities Open Innovation can create for even the most sophisticated companies.

Here we are in 2010, some seven years after Henry Chesbrough published the book Open Innovation and we are still seeing a wide disparity in results from open innovation initiatives. In addition, there are many companies that are still trying to determine if they should even try or pilot an open innovation program. What does organizational culture have to do with the success of open innovation?

Hill and Jones defined organization culture in their book Strategic Management (Houghton Mifflin, 2001) as “the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization and that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization.”

If we break this definition down (at a very high level) and apply it to open innovation can we glean any insights?

First, let’s explore the phrase “collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organization.” If an organization has always relied on internal resources for innovation and all of the major successes have originated internally, then it will by default be hard to convince this group of people to suddenly change the way they have innovated in the past to look broadly outside of the organization for co-development partners. On the other hand, if there have been innovation successes that have originated through supplier or university partnerships in the past, then this group of people will be much more receptive to changing to be more open to new innovations that originate from outside the firm.

The phrase “control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organization” lends insight as well. Here “interact with stakeholders outside the organization” is insightful. Many times we have seen an organization overcome the hurdle of reaching broadly outside the organization to search for new co-development partners only to hit a wall when having to assess what they find from outside the organization and build agreements for co-development and sharing of intellectual property.

One of the lessons I have learned over the years is that you cannot directly change culture. You can change individual behaviors and through this process slowly change culture. In looking at organizations that have benefited from open innovation, what I have seen is an emphasis on changing behaviors through training, rewards, recognition and managers that constantly ask – Have you looked outside? What did you find? How did you use what you found?

When we talk about culture in Open Innovation, we are usually referring to the openness and receptivity of the organization to collaborative development with external parties.  But what about the old-fashioned culture issues of overcoming country and language barriers?  You might be thinking “That is so last century!  With the internet, there are no global boundaries.”

The speed and ease of today’s communication technology – email, video conferencing, and cell phones –create an efficient global communication infrastructure that was barely imaginable even 30 years ago.   But if we could erase the human element of business collaboration, why are airplanes still full of business travelers?

While your meetings may look like a United Nations convention, your Open Innovation partner might be more firmly rooted in their national culture.  I won’t bore you with all the standard business advice based on cultural stereotypes.  However, if you are aware of cultural tendencies that impact the dynamics of your Open Innovation partnerships, you can avoid pitfalls and surprises.

Each of these cultural partnership dynamics impact the success of Open Innovation collaborations

How the group makes decisions

·        Does your partner share their decision making process

·        Does the group require consensus before a decision can be made

·        Is there a designated “speaker”

·        Do participants defer to a senior figure

·        Are decisions made in the conference room or at dinner

·        Do individuals say one thing in the “official” meetings and something different in casual settings

How the partnership is structured

·        Long term commitment with open outcomes demonstrates value in relationship-based collaborations

·        Short timeframe with multiple “escape” performance clauses reflects a transactional preference

·        Is the partner offering a team or an individual

·        Are payments requested in advance of delivery or after performance

·        Are IP issues of high importance and handled formally through lawyers or are they loosely defined, with a “wait and see” attitude

Borders and Language: An issue or non-issue?

·        How is travel and on-site visitation viewed

·        Is the delivery or collaboration structured to be “virtual” or on-site

·        Is communication primarily written or verbal

·        Is there a team member who is acting as “speaker” who may also be the translator

·        Are emails in eloquent English while verbal communication is challenging

In our last post we discussed identifying and selecting Needs for an open innovation pilot program. In this post we will discuss the next step of engaging with potential solution providers that may have an answer to the Need.

Many organizations refer to this step as a "make versus buy" decision. This implies that there are only two options for solving the Need - either develop internally or find and use an external partner. In reality, there are three options - internal, internal/external and external. By external, I mean either license technology that exists or co-develop. We see many of our clients pursue the internal/external path where they are working on the issue internally at the same time they are searching externally for someone who has either solved the problem or is farther along or on a different, more compelling solution path.

The other process that is undertaken at this point is determining the solution network. For large, global organizations the first step may be to communicate the Need broadly within the organization to see if there is a solution available internally. We are currently working with a large multi-national chemical industry client to create a structure / process to communicate needs internally in order to leverage their globally distributed R&D resources. Once the internal search for a solution is exhausted then the search becomes focused on external resources. Now the decision becomes one of "do I use my existing networks or do I use a firm like NineSigma to communicate the Need broadly?" Again, here the answer is not yes / no, but what factors such as timing, cost, degree of technical challenge and others may play in the decision making. Many times for incremental technology development an existing supplier may be the obvious choice. Or there may be considerations for funding university work such as "community relations" that drive the decision.

Looking broadly, across industries to the global innovation community has one significant advantage and that is the opportunity to find an "unobvious" solution to the problem. In our work in over 1,600 open innovation projects, we have seen many unobvious solutions. Semiconductor research applied to fabric care, candy dispensing applied to appliances, agriculture sensor systems applied to automobiles and many others. In addition to the opportunity to find an unobvious solution, reaching broadly to the global innovation community will bring back considerable information that the project team can use. This external information combined with internal knowledge will help with decision making and ultimately reduce project risk.

Back to getting started with open innovation. We would recommend evaluating the Needs that were the highest priority and selecting some of these to communicate to the global innovation community. There are a number of firms today that can help with this. Evaluate them and select a partner. When looking for a potential partner a couple of key points to evaluate are:
- level of support provided to the OI project team
- breadth of network and is it a passive or pro-active approach to finding solution providers
- how is IP handled
- experience and references
- others

In the next post we will discuss what happens once you have connected with the global innovation community and have initial the results back.

Many of our clients use their corporate website to highlight strategic and tactical needs as a way to solicit solutions from the global science and innovation community.  Today, I wanted to highlight a website from a client of ours, Johnson Controls, Inc. (JCI).  Their Open Innovation website, launched in mid 2009, is interesting because although many similar websites exist within the packaged food and consumer packaged goods industries, I am not aware of any other automotive OEM or Tier One supplier doing this today.  Below is a summary of a few questions I've been bouncing off the Johnson Controls Automotive Experience team (the division behind the OI website).

Kevin:  First, can you give some background - who is Johnson Controls?

JCI:   Johnson Controls is a global leader in energy and operational efficiency for buildings, innovative interiors for vehicles and advanced vehicle power solutions.  The Automotive Experience business of Johnson Controls provides automotive seating, interiors and electronics components and systems to almost every automaker globally. Our seating products include: seat trim, foam, metals and mechanisms, as well as complete seat systems. Our interior components include: door panels; overhead systems, sun visors, overhead consoles; in addition to center and floor consoles and instrument panels. Our electronics products include integrated electronics - displays, instrument clusters, connectivity systems and body electronics; as well as electrical energy management and the HomeLink Wireless Control System.

Kevin: How do people submit solutions, and what process do you have in place to review submissions?

JCI: As with most of these websites, in order to keep the flow of information clean and to avoid disclosure of proprietary information, all submitters must have issued patents or patent applications for their technology.  To review submissions, we have established an expert review process.  Each idea submitted is available to all experts for review, but individual ideas are categorized and sent to the appropriate experts to ensure the right people are notified immediately that an idea in their area of expertise has been submitted for their review. Inventors are notified if there is interest, typically within three months.

Kevin: What technology interests are you seeking from your website?

JCI: We are particularly interested in a few key technology areas.  These include surface / thin-film technology, new cover materials, bio-polymers and natural fiber materials, advanced high strength steels and structural composite materials and the associated technologies to form and join these materials, “smart” materials, injection mold tooling technology that reduces cycle time, technologies to reduce component assembly time and cost (such as unique fastening, assembly automation and in-plant logistics), sensor and actuator technology for electronification of interior features, unique technology to achieve downsized mechanisms like recliners and adjusters, and software tools to improve predictive analysis and design optimization.  We're also always interested in solutions that can reduce product weight, costs, and/or improve environmental sustainability.

Kevin: Why is your product set a good one for Open Innovation, and what kinds of solution providers are you seeking?

JCI: Our broad product scope requires solutions from an array of technologies to create successful systems. For example, many of our products serve a structural role and are important for performance and safety.  But what are ways to weld/join different kinds of components and materials?  This is something that is being addressed in a variety of industries (not just automotive), and therefore, new approaches are always of interest. As for the types of solution providers, we are looking to this website to communicate differently with our traditional supply base, but also of significant interest is the ability to extend our network to the many academic and non-profit research institutions, as well as to inventors working in diverse technologies and other companies searching to license applicable technology.

Kevin: What kinds of results/successes are you already seeing?

JCI: We are pleased with what we’ve seen so far. The submissions have been steadily coming in, and our internal network of experts has been enjoying the experience of reviewing the ideas and connecting with the inventors who have made the submissions to our site.  More than a few submissions have been technologies that have potential for application in more than one product area.  These submissions have been particularly exciting for us.  For example, just last week we had a series of meetings with potential solution providers, and we had a particularly interesting company in for a visit to explore their technology as it might be applied to automotive seating and interiors.

Kevin: What were your biggest obstacles in getting this initiative complete, and what advice would you have for other companies considering creating an Open Innovation-focused needs website?

JCI:  As you know, Kevin, executive support of Open Innovation is important for the success of these initiatives.   Innovation is a core value for Johnson Controls, and we have had great support from our leadership team, so getting this initiative up and running was not a significant challenge. Our challenge is to make connections with the innovative people outside of our organization with whom we have not yet met.  We want every inventor with technology applicable to Johnson Controls to know that we are open to their ideas and know how to share them with us. 

As for advice for other companies, I suggest that having a robust process for reviewing the ideas once they are received is critical.  We are seeing successes, in part, because we have a system in place to ensure that, while all of our experts have access to the submissions, individual experts are specifically notified when an idea in their area of expertise is received.  The initiative can’t be successful if the review process doesn’t expose the best ideas for follow through.

In the last post we discussed defining the scope of the open innovation program. In this post we will discuss selecting open innovation projects or Needs. If you are familiar with the Want, Find, Get, Manage model for open innovation, Needs equals Wants.

What exactly are Needs? Needs are more defined than ideas. They are aligned with the firm’s strategy and help meet a customer value proposition. They have a direct impact on the firm’s business through either revenue generation or cost reduction justified by a simple business case. They should have a sponsor within the organization. The Need may be already being worked on or it may be something that has been identified, but resources have not yet been assigned.

This often brings up the make versus buy question. In reality the question that should be asked is make, buy or pursue in parallel? By parallel, I mean work the Need internally while scouting or searching for a solution or co-development partner through open innovation.

We typically see Needs falling into the following categories:

·         Breakthrough: The big, bold bets that significantly change the industry competitive landscape

·         Strategic: Platform projects that support multiple product initiatives

·         Tactical: Project specific “gaps” that keep a project from reaching its end point

·         Speed, Cost, Quality: Process improvements that impact a company’s cost position through improvements to cycle time, product quality or cost reduction

The process for selecting Needs for the open innovation program can take many forms. The one I find the most interesting is a two step process. The first step is to solicit key Needs from the organization. This step is focused on indentifying the Need and providing some level of detail around the desired outcome, the customer (internal/external) value proposition, the magnitude of the challenge to achieve the desired outcome and any other relevant information that is specific to the organization.

The second step involves getting the key stakeholders together to “hash” out a ranking of the Needs. Once this ranking is accomplished, the group then selects the Needs that will be worked on in the open innovation program. This stakeholder meeting is interesting to observe as the various people represent why their Need should have priority and others in attendance propose approaches to solving or identify existing internal expertise or IP that can be applied to the Need.

The goal is to pick a manageable number of Needs for the open innovation program.