Collaboration with Partners

• Innovations are created with the right combination of ideas, know-how, and resources. A company cannot always achieve everything alone. That is why it is important to involve partners.
• Frequently, close cooperation creates synergies that are beneficial for all parties involved. However, it is necessary to share ideas, knowledge, and competencies.
• Through collaboration along the entire value chain, innovations and products are created faster and more efficiently. Often the time-to-market can be significantly reduced.
• The right stakeholders in one’s ecosystem can be identified quickly and easily with the right technology.
• Integrate the right partners directly into your initiatives and bring your supplier or expert network closer to your company.
• Use the possibilities of data connection and keep an eye out for new, useful potential and developments. Search databases for start-ups or patents and integrate new partners into your innovation process.

Innovation does not come about by itself – it is the optimal combination of ideas, competencies, and resources. That is why it is important to involve the right people and stakeholders. Especially in highly specialized industries, the right experts are not always found within the company. On the other hand, if you look for them in your ecosystem, synergies can easily arise, and ideas can be implemented more quickly. Especially external partners such as suppliers, research institutions, or start-ups can have the missing piece of the puzzle for the next innovation.

An ecosystem consists of a wide variety of stakeholders. Each of them can contribute to increasing the innovative strength of your company. While collaboration with customers often results in more needs-oriented products, collaboration with partners can lead to cost savings and higher speed in product development. Especially in highly specialized areas, companies can no longer build up all competencies themselves – but specialized partners can.

The innosabi technology enables the involvement of existing partners and the connection of external data sources through which new partners can be found. With a platform solution, all existing partners can be networked. By including suppliers, start-ups, or experts, existing relationships are strengthened and expanded. In addition, the constant expansion of one’s network and ecosystem is also a central component for growth and innovation in one’s own company.

Involve your suppliers and partners in your innovation initiatives early on. In this way, challenges can be overcome together. With the innosabi technology, you have the opportunity to share current issues with your suppliers in a targeted manner. Invite partners with the appropriate know-how into your projects and use the knowledge and technologies of your network.

 

The Supplier Innovation Approach takes many elements from traditional approaches of the suggestion system – like transparency, evaluation, and disclosure. However, it is not a tendering process but a collaborative way to integrate suppliers and their problem-solving functions. For this purpose, challenges can be placed on the platform. Suppliers who can solve the problem or the need for innovation are invited specifically.

It is important to constantly develop and incorporate innovations into your processes or products to stay ahead of the competition. Therefore, it is worthwhile always having an open ear for the ideas of start-ups, young companies, research institutions, or partners. With the Open Call, these ideas are allowed to enter your company precisely.

 

Open Call is thus oriented to the basics of classic idea management. Define topic areas in which ideas can be submitted. Establish a transparent process around requirements and evaluation criteria and use the regular exchange for new partnerships. In this way, new business areas can be identified and developed early.

Digitalization often requires a rethinking of established processes and a high degree of flexibility. Startups, in particular, can often react faster to innovations than larger companies. For this reason, cooperation with startups is an ideal way for corporations to drive innovation in their own companies and open up new technology fields.

 

The innosabi technology allows connecting specialized databases to ensure access to the latest information on developments in the startup scene. This data can be made available to experts within your company – to check and evaluate the potential of startups. Based on expert analysis, contact can be established via the innovation platform to link startups to innovation initiatives and to use the joint potential.

Not only startup databases but also patents are a valuable source of information in innovation. In Germany alone, over 180 new patents are filed every day. It is almost impossible to keep track of which of them are relevant for your own company with this amount.

 

With the innosabi technology, it is possible to structure public patent databases and make the contents usable for a targeted search. In this way, experts in your company can screen patents in their field and evaluate potential. The artificial intelligence of the innosabi software supports them in this process.

Involving so many different partners in your innovation processes is only possible with the right technology. Not every software is suitable for mapping the various aspects of collaboration with partners. To ensure that collaboration with different partners can be established and intensified and that all legal conditions relating to intellectual property are in place, the following criteria must be taken into account when selecting a technology:

With the various possibilities that cooperation with a partner network offers, one is ultimately faced with the question: How and where is the best way to start? The answer to this question depends strongly on the general conditions, goals, and previous experience of each company. A brief evaluation can help find the optimal strategy: Which partners would you like to work even more closely with? In which areas do you see the potential for new cooperation? Based on which data are decisions made? For which questions can you use external know-how?