Alpheus Bingham

In Chapter 3 of The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise, Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin share their concerns about inadequacies of the state-gate process, currently the dominant paradigm for internal innovation. They favor what they characterize as “Challenge Driven Innovation” (CDI), a more inclusive as well as more thorough and comprehensive process. What follows is a summary of its seven stages:

1. Idea gathering: The open front-end of the innovation development funnel.

Dwayne Spradlin

2. Filtering: The selection of the projects best-suited to development and marketing by your organization.

3. Dissection: The decomposition of a large, complex project into discrete modules.

4. Channel distribution: The placement if the above work units, or challenges, into the appropriate channels (e.g. contract research organizations, joint ventures).

5. Evaluation/confirmation: The receipt of the challenge modules from the channels to which they were distributed, and the comparison/contrast of results against specifications and performance criteria.

Note: The co-authors point out, “The activities normally associated with the stage-gate mechanism are almost entirely conducted between activities number 4 and number 5, where the default channel is to conduct the work internally.”

6. Assembly and integration: The reassembly of the original challenge modules into a functional whole that is ready for market.

7. Launch: The launch of the new product, concept, or service into the market place.

If you are in need of framework within which to develop open innovation that creates value in what becomes a challenge driven enterprise, what Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin offer what may well fulfill that need.