UX-Centric Design Method for Open Innovation

To strengthen a company's core competence and to develop new products and services, a collaboration with diverse industries and companies becomes vital in the current global environment of rapid technological innovation. Many studies have thus been conducted on the topic of open innovation, and these have iterated means of creating new product ideas and of executing new product development through the utilization of open innovation. However, only a few research projects have undertaken the task of bridging new product ideas to the actual development of new products through open innovation programs in which a company collaborates with discrete industries. A company's problem joining forces with other enterprises in different sectors seems to vest in the company's lack of adequate knowledge about the technology of other industries. Hence, the company cannot identify requisite specifications. This paper proposes a new method of transitioning from concept to actual development in open innovation drives by detailing a new product designated UX (User Experience) and using it instead of request specifications. This paper describes a case study on the application of the proposed method to a Fast Moving Consumer Goods company.