Andrea Meyer was a speaker at last weeks’ Open Innovation conference in Orlando (here’s a link to a conference summary). Andrea kindly offered us a post based on that and her experience of covering innovation issues.

Andrea has written for the Norwegian Center for Leadership Development, French Ministry of Education, and Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development (OECD) as well as for organisations  like McKinsey and Harvard Business School. Her company Working Knowledge helps people synthesize novel and complex information.

The picture illustrates a welded 3D fabric from Gabriel Denmark

One of the lessons Andrea wants to draw from innovation practice is identifying and selecting companies from other industries to use as models and even partners.

“Gabriel is a Danish manufacturer of environmentally-friendly upholstery fabrics. Founded in 1851, it’s one of Europe’s leading suppliers of furniture textiles and was voted the most innovative company in Denmark in 2007.

Because Gabriel knows that it can’t create every idea in-house, the company uses open innovation to weave in the capabilities of outside partners. Open innovation means intentionally leveraging the research and technologies of outsiders, rather than only relying on internally-generated innovations. Gabriel is constantly looking for new materials, new production technologies, and new applications for furniture textiles.

In particular, Gabriel gives special attention to how it forms partnerships for open innovation.

First, Gabriel ensures that its partners have the right competencies to match the innovation activity at hand. Second, partners sign a confidentiality agreement so that the ideas can be exchanged freely. Open innovation is even possible with competitors, provided that the companies create clear and explicit contractual agreements from the outset.

In one example, Gabriel looked at the manufacturing technologies used by the car industry to make car seats. After all, a car seat is like a chair on wheels.