all their advertising to prevent it to fall in the public domain. Spanx®. Human fat ... Sandals. Just sandals made of a
Not So Open Innovation By Luis J. Rodriguez. Open Innovation*. What a wonderful and revolutionary concept. The disruption of the status quo in the corporate world. Beautiful! just beautiful! But wait a minute! Does that ‘Open Innovation’ philosophy eradicate the proverbial NIH (Not-Invented-Here) syndrome that precluded inclusion of outside inventions and outside creativity? This syndrome is often caused by an inherent conflict of interests within the insiders in charge of R&D of a company when evaluating outside submissions. And this may be motivated by very good and innocent intentions. But it is absolutely clear that objectivity is indeed clouded within this formula. In short, ‘Open Innovation’ and the infamous ‘Not-Invented-Here Syndrom’ can not coexist. Tragically, NIH has the upper hand. It will always prevail. Always. I have lived the experience of rejections by ‘open innovation’ companies based on assumptions —with admonishment included— of poor prior art search on my part, as somehow related technologies or products exist. And they do indeed exist. In fact, I actually cite those technologies/products in my submission. Other reasons given by some of these companies include the fact that the innovation provided is small. Or too simple. Well, regardless of the amount of distinction of the submitted idea with respect to any prior art, regardless of the level of innovation itself, regardless of how simple the idea might be; what is valuable in any submission is how proprietary and desired the submission might be. All of this is even more truer in industries where innovation is defined by non-technical aspects, like appearance, presentation and oftentimes ‘gimmickry’. And the first key word is “proprietary”. The second key word, and equally, if not more important is “SIMPLE”. The third key word of course is “desired” and that is essential. We are of course, assuming in this discussion that the idea is indeed desired and desirable. * http://www.innoget.com/about-open-innovation Open innovation was defined as the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively (Chesbrough, 2003). Once open innovation is adopted, the organization's boundaries become permeable and that allows combining the company resources with the external cooperators.
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The word ‘Proprietary’ refers to your ability to exclusively exploit your invention/idea and exclusively profit from it. From a business, financial point of view you don’t want your intellectual property to be anything other than “SIMPLE”. The simpler, the better. Regarding the patent form of intellectual property protection, a very slight variation or modification to your patented disclosure will bypass it, and avoid infringement, leaving you, as they say, “dead in the water”. You spent a lot of time, a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of enthusiasm to gratuitously allow the first slightly clever opportunistic to alter a tiny aspect of your not so simple invention to legally bypass any obligations towards you and in fact, profit from it., paying you zero royalties. And whether you are the owner of the intellectual property rights or you licensed them to a big (or small) company, other big companies, with big pockets, and big name attorneys, are naturally very good at legally taking advantage of the system. Then, we also have other important forms of Intellectual property, that individually, by themselves define innovation ownership, and which are further maximized when combined with others, namely: a. Design Patents (In addition to the above discussed Utility Patent) b. Copyrights c. Trademark d, Trade Dress (Packaging/appearance/presentation, e.g. the Coke bottle) The following extraordinarily successful and profitable but extremely simple innovations are just some examples of this beautiful doctrine that: simpler is better and that very likely made it to market thanks to the fact that they were conceived internally, and not by “Open Innovation”.
Post it®. What is Post It? A slight variation of adhesive tape. Paper + adhesive. It can not get any simpler than that. This commodity comes at a hefty premium. At a local ‘Stop & Shop’ supermarket, a ream of 3” x 3” of Post It is sold for $6.49, while a ream of 8.5” x 11” letter size paper is sold for $5.49. Not bad for —2—
such a simple idea.
Kleenex®. Kleenex is, in essence toilet paper for the nose. A ‘disposable’ handkerchief worth 3,1 billion dollars. (http://www.forbes.com/companies/kleenex/)
Wite-Out®. Just white paint to cover typos. Wite-Out was sold for $47.5 million six months after its inventor, Bette Nesmith died. (http://abt.cm/1Sh2GmE)
Band-aid®. Just gauze with adhesive tape. The brand just became synonymous with the generic product. So much that they must emphasize that Band-Aid is a brand in all their advertising to prevent it to fall in the public domain.
Spanx®. Human fat compressing underwear. That is what it is: A fabric a little less resilient than “Lycra”
Crocks®. Sandals. Just sandals made of a cheap rubbery material with purportedly enhanced resilience. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocs)
Lifesavers®. Candy shaped as lifesavers. Here we have a double gimmick: Shape (Trade Dress) and trademark.
Kisses® by Hershey's. Chocolate shaped as a big chip. Here we also have a double gimmick: Shape (Trade Dress) and trademark. Then we have a third proprietary gimmick: The flying narrow label on top of the piece.
Double blade razors. This reminds me of a recent invention of mine, that is very analogous to this twin blade razor. It doubles one of the elements in an unexpected way with synergetic effects. I was told by the leading company in the field that my innovation was ‘minimal’. Well, that ‘minimal’ innovation made Gillette earn —3—
an exponential amount of market share of razors in 1971, when the Trac II was launched. The apparently simple idea proved to be so good, that now there are razors with up to 5 blades. I am sure somebody is secretly working on the 7 blades version. Not really, I am just kidding.
Undetachable closure for beverage aluminum cans. This invention (US patent 3,967,752) does nothing but prevent the closure of beer and carbonated drinks to detach from the can. That is it. However, it changed an industry and had an important positive effect on the environment, and made hundreds or thousands of millions of dollars in the process. See? In general terms, the simpler an innovation is, the better and stronger it is. Thus, it is pertinent to ask: What ever happened to ‘Connect & Develop’, the now defunct or dying Open Innovation program of ‘Procter & Gamble? What happened to the periodically published ‘needs’? The ‘Not-Invented-Here’ syndrom and other toxic Internal policies. That’s what happened to ‘Connect & Develop’ and other ‘Open Innovation’ programs. This is what I believe. As stated above, to truly embrace “Open Innovation” companies must get rid of the evil “Not-Invented-Here” (NIH) syndrom, and other toxic corporate policies. Open innovation literally requires open minds.
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