EarlyBirds Shows How Product Managers Can Take Advantage of an Open Innovation Ecosystem

EarlyBirds, the company that operates Early Birds, a business to business (B2B) open innovation ecosystem designed for innovators, early adopters, and subject matter experts (SMEs), wants to show how product managers can use their platform and services to apply actionable innovations to enhance product capabilities and reduce time to market. This is important because Product Managers often play a key role in driving innovation in their organisations.

Product Managers often have a good idea of what is possibly missing in the market and this can result into innovative ideas. However, such innovation rarely occurs in just a single person. Rather, it is often an outcome of collaboration, which is why the EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem can play an important role in such innovation for the creation of new products or in the improvement of an existing product.

Product Managers can stimulate company-wide innovation in a number of ways. First, they can encourage employees throughout the organisation to come up with innovative ideas and make the sharing of such ideas a fun activity. Second, they can share what they are currently working on to the entire company. This can encourage various employees to come up with creative ideas on how to further improve the product or offer a solution to a particular problem. Third, they can encourage creative thinking in the whole organisation. Fourth, they can foster a company-wide focus on the organisation’s vision. And lastly, they can promote cross-functional collaboration through the establishment of innovation teams.

Meanwhile, the EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem allows product managers to get in touch with the innovators or developers of disruptive technologies, which they may then apply to challenges they have encountered in product development and product improvement. They can also get to work with Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) who act as consultants within the EarlyBirds open innovation ecosystem.

EarlyBirds provides the Explorer and Challenger programs specifically designed to help Early Adopters convert organisational strategy into actionable innovation. The SMEs,,who play the role of consultants will then work closely with external and internal stakeholders, innovation teams, and business units, to examine those business challenges and come up with solutions, such as those made available by the innovators and developers of disruptive technologies.

The Explorer program is designed to deliver innovation to the entire organisation as a service. The program offers: weekly webinars that can stimulate innovation within the organisation; a nominated SME for the entire enterprise; a platform enterprise license; monthly and quarterly innovation days; and a focus on a particular type of innovation. In the Explorer program, an SME will provide help to the entire organisation in identifying opportunities for introducing Innovators who can offer the right solutions to business problems, which in the case of Product Managers are product innovations and new products.

Meanwhile, the Challenger program is designed for those who want to focus on a specific business challenge. For instance, a Product Manager may want to focus on an innovative idea for a new product. There are a number of key features of this particular program, including: help provided by the EarlyBirds SMEs in defining the business challenge and working with stakeholders to elicit the requirements for identifying potential innovators who could resolve the business problem, the identification and evaluation of innovations that may be applicable, and the creation of a roadmap of the various alternatives to be given to the customer after the program has ended.

It should be noted that the EarlyBirds encourages developers of disruptive technologies to participate in the open innovation ecosystem. Similarly, Product Managers who join the ecosystem will be exposed to such innovators and possibly find the solution they have been looking for their particular business challenge.

Product Managers and Innovators who would like to know more about the services provided by EarlyBirds should check out their website or contact them.