In most com­pa­nies, the inno­va­tion process is orga­nized as fol­lows: A research unit sug­gests to build a pro­to­type of some inno­v­a­tive prod­uct or fea­ture, a line-of-business spon­sor signs off on the project, the research unit devel­ops the pro­to­type, a prod­uct unit receives it and turns it into a real product.

The crit­i­cal point is the trans­fer from research to prod­uct unit. Here, many things can go wrong, for example:

• The pro­to­type is incom­pat­i­ble with the cur­rent prod­uct technology;
• The inno­va­tion does not address the real prob­lems of the prod­uct unit;
• The pro­to­type and inno­va­tion are incom­pre­hen­si­ble to the prod­uct unit;
• The pro­to­type is late and the prod­uct unit is already devel­op­ing its own solution.

The under­ly­ing prob­lem is the orga­ni­za­tional sep­a­ra­tion of research from prod­uct unit. In most com­pa­nies, research is sep­a­rated from prod­uct units to pre­vent imme­di­ate prod­uct needs from usurp­ing research and inno­va­tion resources. For effec­tive trans­fer, how­ever, research units need to con­sult with prod­uct units dur­ing the devel­op­ment of the research pro­to­type. Unfor­tu­nately, prod­uct units are typ­i­cally too busy to worry about research projects. Hence, prod­uct engi­neers are rarely assigned to engage with research projects early, or if they are, they fre­quently are too busy to do it properly.

At SAP, we have been com­ple­ment­ing the tra­di­tional top-down process of research-to-product unit trans­fer with a self-organizing bottom-up process that we call open col­lab­o­ra­tion [1]. Open col­lab­o­ra­tion is char­ac­ter­ized by the fol­low­ing three core principles:

• Egal­i­tar­ian: Every­one can par­tic­i­pate; no bor­ders to join­ing a project are erected.
• Mer­i­to­cratic: Con­tri­bu­tions are eval­u­ated based on merit; senior­ity is less important.
• Self-organizing: The col­lab­o­ra­tors choose their own col­lab­o­ra­tion processes.

Open col­lab­o­ra­tion hap­pens, when forward-looking engi­neers from prod­uct units engage with researchers on their own free will rather than as the result of a top-down assign­ment. We have found that let­ting engi­neers choose by them­selves is crit­i­cal to the suc­cess of the engagement.