In an increasingly digital and connected environment, leaders of
established companies frequently find themselves facing opportunities
that they—or even their industries—cannot seize alone. Instead of
relying on start-ups to create innovations and then buying in to them,
organizations are taking part in a process that the authors call
ecosystem innovation, collaborating to develop and then commercialize
new concepts. Cisco Hyperinnovation Living Labs (CHILL) differs from
seemingly similar approaches, such as R&D alliances, because it
focuses on the fast and agile commercialization of ideas without a
complicated intellectual property agreement. It also differs from
traditional partnership efforts, because it brings multiple partners
together at a very early stage all at once. In this article the authors
discuss how large companies can develop their own ecosystem innovation
capabilities, using Cisco’s process as an example. They describe the
basic principles and the process, identify the most common traps, and
explain how leaders can capture valuable opportunities. The process
allows companies to bring extremely diverse ideas, skills, and resources
together to solve ecosystem-level problems at an astonishing speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]