Fujitsu to drive innovation through community collaboration

Fujitsu has launched an ‘Open Innovation’ service, aimed at driving innovation by collaborating openly with private and public sector organisations, as the firm aims to shift away from traditional research and development department approaches.

The firm is to work with individuals, businesses, government and academia to drive innovation at a reduced cost, Fujitsu said.

The Japanese IT manufacturer has offered to provide expertise to help resolve the business problems of its ‘community members’, while also giving them the chance to understand and influence the firm’s R&D roadmap.

Many companies are creating products and services in a closed environment and hoping that they can sell them to meet the needs of users, explained David Smith, Fujitsu UK and Ireland’s chief information officer and chief technology officer.

“It is possible now to take a much more collaborative approach to innovation with web 2.0 capabilities and social networking tools,” he added.

The service was initially trialed internally at Fujitsu, explained Ian Mitchell, chief architect of innovation at the vendor.

“Open innovation [will] provide a front doorway for the outside world to share ideas with Fujitsu. The aim is to establish a community so parties involved can discuss and develop these ideas,” he said.

“The aim is to attract venture capitalists to invest in technology, products and services derived from this in the future.”

The business value of internal ideas were assessed on three principles: the value that they would add to Fujitsu either through increased revenue, cost reduction or brand awareness; value to customers; and benefit to end users, Mitchell added.

However, he noted that even if external ideas have zero value to Fujitsu, the firm will broker collaboration between parties who can develop them further.

Fujitsu is inviting customers, vendors, academics, venture capitalist, collaborators and anyone interested in becoming part of the innovation community to contact the Open Innovation team.