Innovation Marketplaces

As open innovation grows in popularity, the need for intermediaries to connect companies and innovators becomes more urgent. These marketplaces come in a range of forms, including niche or general portals, set up by companies or third party vendors. Small businesses can benefit from connecting with these portals, which offer teams of global experts and skill-building opportunities. For instance, technology platform IdeaConnection offers a big process to bring together crowdsourced teams to tackle R&D or business needs for businesses of any scale. Open innovation intermediaries can even help small businesses develop their own challenges and work on solutions. By connecting with like-minded, diverse experts, employees can also build valuable skills for open innovation. Using intermediaries removes the need to build infrastructure and saves time, with prizes for successful solutions ranging from $5,000 to over $1 million.