Hewlett Packard

Business type

Open Innovation

Service/product description

Within their HP Labs department Hewlett Packard opened up an open Innovation Office. HP Labs’ Open Innovation Office pursues and coordinates research collaborations with top researchers and entrepreneurs in academia, government and business around the world. It ensures joint research endeavors result in high-impact research that meets HP and its partners’ scientific and business objectives. The office consists of a global team, bringing together expertise from around the world to foster discovery and address important issues; connecting the world’s leading researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs through ground-breaking programs; and collaborating with them to tackle the next generation of breakthrough technologies. An important program under this office is the HP Labs Innovation Research Program. This formal request for proposals (RFP) program offers universities worldwide the opportunity to participate in joint research with leading HP Labs scientists on a competitive basis.

What does 'openness' mean in this case?

HP Labs Open Innovation Office is mainly about creating collaborations with external parties like researchers, scientists, and entrepreneurs. Their focus is on the front end of the innovation journey, like research and possisble technology developement in which they want to partner/collaborate with external parties, not necessarily the actual development of new product/services. So openness here is about collaborating with extrenal parties in the first bit of the process.