Frost & Sullivan Reveals that Coupling Open Innovation with Traditional Product Development Drives Breakthrough Innovation

Frost & Sullivan's Growth Team Membership uncovers Amway Corp.'s open innovation approach to support idea generation and the product development cycle

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., July 9, 2012 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- Frost & Sullivan's new research demonstrates how to move beyond incremental innovation and capture game-changing ideas and technologies through open innovation. Frost & Sullivan's Growth Team Membership's (GTM's) new best practice guidebook entitled: Open Innovation: Gateway to Breakthrough Ideas features Amway, a global consumer goods company, and their use of open innovation to draw on ideas and technologies outside of the company and increase its capacity for systematically identifying and developing breakthrough innovations.

"For the fourth year in a row, research and development (R&D) executives cited 'identifying breakthrough new product ideas' as one of their top challenges influencing planning, in Frost & Sullivan's Annual R&D/Innovation and Product Development Priorities Surveys," said Keith O'Brien, vice president of research for Frost & Sullivan's Growth Team Membership. "There are a myriad of reasons for this challenge, including resource limitations and lack of an established process for idea generation. The in-depth examination of Amway's open innovation process shows how to address many of these challenges. This practice can be adopted by any organization -- regardless of business model or industry -- interested in improving its open innovation process."

Open Innovation: Gateway to Breakthrough Ideasis a detailed best practice guidebook that illustrates how Amway uses open innovation to support the product development process by:

• Creating a formal ideation process spanning need identification and entry in the stage-gate development process
• Assessing the technical feasibility and market potential of new technologies
• Instituting project checkpoints for approval, resources and funding
• Establishing cross-functional engagement points between Open Innovation, Product Development and Marketing

This approach allowed Amway to launch 17 high-impact products in 55 markets and generate more than $700 million in revenue since 2005.

Attend

A complimentary Ask the Thought Leader webcast will be co-hosted by Frost & Sullivan's GTM and Amway Corp. on Thursday, July 12, 2012. This event will feature Amway's open innovation process in greater detail. During the webcast, David Groh, manager of health & beauty's new technology R&D at Amway, will participate in a live question and answer session.  

The Open Innovation: Gateway to Breakthrough Ideasbest practice guidebook and the complimentary Ask the Thought Leaderwebcast are part of Frost & Sullivan's Growth Team Membership™ program, which provides case-based best practices, toolkits and events to address the internal challenges individual executives face within their respective functions. GTM (www.gtm.frost.com) is a part of the Growth Partnership Services, an annual subscription program that provides unlimited access to research, services, and events addressing the most pressing external and internal growth challenges faced by executives today.

The Growth Team Membership research team follows a rigorous methodology to define and identify best practices, profiling only those companies whose approaches:

• Are uncommon and creative
• Solve a critical growth challenge
• Demonstrate repeatable and measurable results
• Could be implemented at another organization (i.e., are not unique to one company's circumstances)

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants.

Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure.

• The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation.
• The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices.

For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies?

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Contact:
Mireya Espinoza
Corporate Communications - North America
P: +1 210.247-3870
E: mireya.espinoza@frost.com 
http://www.frost.com