Process for Needs Identification
It’s imperative to quantify the top needs/problems to focus the open innovation efforts. We have initiated a process corporate-wide to quantify and prioritize the top technical needs:
Solicit top needs from business, marketing, and technology management using a common problem format.
Rank order needs that make the first cut by a specific set of criteria based on economics, risk, strategy alignment, etc.
Review and approve top needs list by senior business and technology management.
Use top needs to broaden exposure of the needs internally and to focus the identification of external resources to meet the needs.
Technology needs are also posted on our internal corporate Web site. A new system, called Needs Tracker, has been introduced as a means to identify and log emerging internal needs. This tool is available to all employees to identify their technical needs. Employees can also propose solutions to the posted needs. A screen shot from this new information technology (IT) tool is shown in Exhibit 9.1.
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