According to Larry Huston, managing partner of consulting firm 4INNO, future competitive advantage will depend on "innovation networks" -- individuals and organizations outside a company that can help it solve problems and find new ideas for creating growth. A senior fellow at Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation, Huston was vice president of knowledge and innovation for many years at Procter & Gamble, where he was the architect of its Connect + Develop program, an approach that helped extend the company's innovation process to include 1.5 million people outside of P&G. Huston spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about how innovation networks function, the ways they can be nurtured, their potential downsides and the impact they will have on how firms bring products to market. Huston is a faculty member in Wharton Executive Education's upcoming program, "Full-Spectrum Innovation: Driving Organic Growth." (In a previous podcast, he spoke with Knowledge@Wharton about innovation and its role in the global economy.) An edited transcript of the conversation follows.
Knowledge@Wharton: I understand that you have been doing some work on innovation networks and arguing that these will be a major disruptive change, affecting all companies in the future. Could you explain that a little bit?
Huston: First of all, let's define what innovation networks are. Innovation networks are people, institutions and companies that are outside the firm -- they can also be inside the firm, but for purposes here they're outside the firm. They are intellectual assets that companies can link up with to solve problems and find ideas, while beginning to think about those assets as an extended part of their organization -- and therefore quickly create top-line growth and bring new things to the marketplace.
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