Summary
Air Products and Chemicals Inc, the world's only combined gases and chemicals company, operates in over 30 countries, serving customers in the technology, energy, healthcare, and industrial markets. More than half of the company's $8.2 billion 2005 sales came from outside the US, and external technology has long been of great importance to the company. Open innovation is a technology management practice in which external resources are used to supplement a company's internal R&D and commercialization effort. This paper describes some key elements of the Air Products process for open innovation, "Identify and Accelerate." Specifically, it shall review the process of identifying corporate technical needs and the role of external partnering to accelerate the innovation process. The external partnering strategies reviewed are: 1. global R&D insourcing, 2. Internet-based providers, 3. partnering with the government, and 4. licensing-in.
See the full content of this document
Extract
How Air Products and Chemicals 'Identifies and Accelerates'
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., the world's only combined gases and chemicals company, operates in over 30 countries, serving customers in the technology, energy, healthcare, and industrial markets. More than half of the company's $8.2 billion 2005 sales came from outside the United States, and external technology has long been of great importance to us.
Prior to 1995, external technology partnering was conducted by each business area and the supporting R&D group-without any coordination of efforts between business areas and R&D groups. Indeed, it was a "silo" mentality, with no coordination of work processes or central repository of best practices and the resulting contracts. In 1995, Corporate Technology Partnerships was formed to centralize our external technology efforts and to develop and implement best practices across the company; this was the beginning of our "open innovation" effort.Open innovation is a technology management practice in which external resources are used to supplement...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
