Rarely do press releases get my heart fluttering, but this one did. By now it's been talked about quite broadly (PSFK and Core77.com both have blurbs), but Nokia is opening up their IP library. It felt important enough for me to write something down about it.
Nokia seems pretty darn serious about pursuing an open strategy. Their Ovi platform demonstrates this. And you can check out the Nokia Conversations site to watch it happen and see other indications of the approach.
Much of the conversation over the last few years around open innovation is starting to come to fruition: P&G's Connect & Develop, General Mills has a program, Best Buy's IdeaX, Starbucks MyIdea, and other networks like Innocentive.
(Update: My colleague Doug points me to Ideas Project which I knew about, but kind of didn't even think of as Nokia. How about that for open, if not a bit diffused, brand impact?)
As a "generic" strategy for large companies, open is becoming more prevalent and one to consider when designing an overall innovation strategy. To do it well, you have to commit to it. P&G, Mills, Best Buy and Starbucks have all been working on this for years
I wonder what it will take for companies not experimenting in this space to catch up and what acceleration strategies exist to help. I also wonder whether "open" is something that stands alone or is more of a cultural orientation? It takes a ton of systems design work, but that cultural piece is the trick.
