Open Innovation? No, thank you!

Hi everyone, and happy new year 2011! Expect this year to be more thrilling than 2010 but far less than 2012 for all of us working with technology and innovation. Last year, I argued that by lacking any out of three fundamental characteristics, your organization will fail at any innovation strategy, including Open Innovation. In this post I'll try to provide arguments to why this is so for the first characteristic: competence. By "competence" here I'm referring to good knowledge and hands-on experience on some field of science or technology. Why both? One can grasp a fair amount of knowledge about a given field by e.g. reading research papers on the 'net. After that, speaking to anyone unsavyy in the field shall make her feel like he's in the presence of Zeus himself. You can argue absolutely anything and that person will swallow whatever you throw at her. Meet someone with even light hands-on experience in that field and he'll beat you to dust almo