Are You Practicing Symbiotic Innovation? There Is a Prize for You!

Nannette Stangle-Castor

There’s nothing better than being rewarded for something you’re already doing—especially when you didn’t even realize you were doing it!

For those of you who have been following Fuentek’s blog posts on Symbiotic Innovation, you know that Symbiotic Innovation applies to a broad range of groups – universities, government agencies, and corporate entities. You also know that Symbiotic Innovation is the proactive and concerted operation of spin-out and spin-in, recognizing that these are interdependent activities. Think of it as open innovation on steroids!

Perhaps you have been looking at the R&D and licensing activities at your organization and found instances where the line has blurred between in-licensing new technology to fill needs/gaps and pushing your own technology out to other industries/applications. Maybe you found areas of overlap and formed collaborations that have provided mutually beneficial outcomes.

If you have and you’re in the southeastern U.S., you might be interested in a new prize in open innovation. The Przirembel Prize recognizes collaborations of diverse organizations in the southeastern United States. The prize promotes best practices in open innovation and builds a greater sense of identity of the region as an innovation powerhouse in the world. The Przirembel Prize is an initiative of InnoVenture Southeast, which is managed by InnoVenture LLC.

And if you’re not in the southeast (or even if you are) and are implementing Symbiotic Innovation in your organization, let us know about your experiences. Sharing tips about what worked well (or what didn’t) will help all of us to become more effective. Our upcoming posts on Symbiotic Innovation will give some practical guidance and case studies from our experiences. Those experiences have shown that taking a proactive approach to implementing Symbiotic Innovation results in even better outcomes for your organization than when reactively capitalizing on those exchanges that just seem to happen. We’d love to hear about your work “in the trenches” and your lessons learned too.

–By Nannette Stangle-Castor