How to Work with Small Companies to Expand your Open Innovation Capabilities

This chapter provides insight for engaging small companies for the Open Innovation (OI) initiatives. It is essentially a thought guide for building a partnership between, “the company,” and the small company (“the vendor”). The chapter presents the terms and definitions of OI. It is difficult for the large corporation in most cases to have predictable innovation processes, there seems to be two paths that one can follow. First, one can acknowledge that innovation is difficult and should be outsourced, at least in its early stages. The alternative, the intrapreneurial organization, is that one may take the path of trying to emulate what small successful startups do, but to do it underneath the tent of the large organization. The chapter also addresses the working conditions that companies can set up to encourage entrepreneurship, or what is now being called intrapreneurship, within an organization.