P&G Corporate Open Innovation Challenge

The P&G Corporate Open Innovation Challenge looked at how the manufacturer could develop innovative ideas generated by small firms outside of P&G.

Multinational manufacturer P&G first invited interested designers and inventors to submit responses to open briefs on fabric care and health and wellness products. The aim was to find innovations with the potential to produce new global markets worth $100 million.

Judging and developing the ideas

NESTA, not-for-profit organisation British Design Innovation (BDI) and specialist innovation research consultancy Oakland Innovation, acted as mediators between P&G and the designers/inventors to help judge and develop their ideas.

We adapted the open innovation challenge methodology from BDI in this project.

The innovative ideas

170 initial expressions of interest were received and 120 designers/inventors attended the launch events. From this group, 72 ideas were submitted by 25 companies.

The eight most promising applicants were given access to funding, mentoring and business support, worth up to £25,000, to transform their ideas into commercial viable concepts.

Four of these advanced concepts were chosen to present their ideas to P&G. The manufacturer then had three months to investigate the potential of these ideas, two from the fabric care category and two in the health and wellness category.

Intellectual property

P&G had first-refusal on adopting the new ideas however if they decided not to adopt them, the small firms retain the intellectual property of the idea and are free to pitch it to other corporates.