OpenIDEO, an online offshoot of IDEO, is one of the world’s leading product design firms. Different from the traditional innovation process, OpenIDEO uses open process to innovate. Some feature still in common with the conventional ways, for example, they both basically follow the innovation process flow which the company needs to understand the market, client, technology and constrains to identify the opportunities and then generate the concept in order to find the best ideas to launch as new products. However, the way these two methods execute the flow is so much different from each other. Firstly, instead of forming a small team or an individual, open innovation process brings a crowd into discussion to solve the problem. Secondly, the company doesn’t rely on its own research as much as conventional way does since the opinions or comments generated by crowd are taken seriously by the company. Thirdly, open innovation process is the use of inflows and outflows stimulated via the crowd’s discussion, which is much like multi-ways communication, while conventional way usually uses one-way observation, such as observing people in real situation, in the process.
And in the open innovation process, public usually make the contribution in solving the problems in inspiration, concepting and evaluation stage.

But why company would like to “open” its innovation process to the crowd? The implication may underlie the thought that company nowadays needs to more input from different field and perspectives in order to have the breakthrough products. Openideo, an online platform, act as an environment for creation of new ideas which could lead to the innovation. And it doesn’t need to pay but easily gather the design know-how or other industrial knowledge from the experts all over the world. Without opening the process, the product development team may need to spend lots of