GROUP PROJECT

The Open Innovation Initiative

With this assignment, you are asked to come up with an open innovation initiative for your
company/university/workplace and provide a thorough discussion and plan for the initiative. This
assignment provides an opportunity for you to use frameworks and tools presented in class to
champion open innovation activities and identify associated challenges.

You should begin with a quite brief history of the company/university/workplace including its
product/service, ownership structure, location, and so forth. This history should be two pages or
less. The body of the paper should follow after that, discussing the open innovation initiative
you are proposing.

Key issues include (these are suggestions; you can certainly be innovative and include more
details):

- Examine the current open innovation initiatives of the company, if there is any. Discuss
whether you think there is an appropriate level of open innovation in the company.
Discuss the mode(s) of open innovation currently used by the company. Draw
implications.

- Propose and show the details of your open innovation initiative using the “Open
Innovation Project Canvas” as the guidance. Provide descriptions and discussions for
each component of the “Open Innovation Project Canvas”. [The canvas would be
uploaded online].

- Discuss the rationales behind your proposed open innovation initiative. Why do you
propose the particular open innovation initiative? Does this initiative connect with the
external competitive and innovative environment of the company? What are the key
enablers for this initiative? Could you connect your initiative to the company’s business
models?

- Identify potential challenges for the implementation of this initiative. Is there any
intellectual property issue? Could company structure and culture support this? Is failure
tolerated in the company?

- Develop the contingency plan. What if something goes wrong?

Grading:

Report: 100%
- Font: Time New Roman, 12
- 1.5 spaced
- Margin: 2.54 cm top, bottom, left and right

1
 - Page limit for the report: Please include a separate cover page with the name of the firm
and name of all team members. Page numbers are a must. The assignment should
realistically be 10-12 pages in length, excluding support materials/cover page and using
above font and spacing formatting.

What to do next:

1. Form groups of 5;
a. Provide the following to your TA Fei Jipeng (feijipeng@u.nus.edu): name of group
members, email addresses. Indicate clearly that this is for group project 2 – the open
innovation initiative.