Collaborative Innovation through sourcing

Pharmtech published a nice article on "Forward" Sourcing function that is required to improve the innovativeness of a company. In line with the business model thinking you can find on our blog, it requires Procurement to fundamentally change it's model for certain commodities in order to break through the persistent silo's and make a true contribution to innovation.

Global Supply Chain Summit

The Innovation Driven Procurement workshop drew much attention of industry leaders during the Global Supply Chain Summit on October 4th 2010 in Venlo, The Netherlands. During the summit two break-out sessions were held in which the concept of IDP was presented and discussed.


The main focus for the discussions was the role of Procurement in innovation processes, the timing of Procurement involvement and the way to successfully embed Procurement into business functions. It became obvious once again that most companies have some major steps to take for Procurement’s role to crystallize and become an effective contributor to innovation. Main take-away for the participants was the change in focus of Procurement from working for the internal customer to working for external customers – together with their internal partners.

Innovation with suppliers starts inside your organization

Although at first glance this may seem trivial, the answer isn’t that simple. But it’s crucial for the way you organize your innovation process with procurement. Will your R&D department develop on its own, protecting IP from outsiders? Or will it work with suppliers and customers to co-create? Or why not outsource the innovation by asking your partners to deliver certain end-results? And to complicate this decision further; how will this mode of innovation evolve along the stages of the innovation process? Will you start idea generation with your entire supply base? Or with a few partners? This is just the tip of the iceberg of questions that you’ll be asked when you want to decide on how to innovate. There is no ‘one size fits all’, so what you need is a set of structures and processes.

Steps towards organizing innovation with suppliers:

• Define the types of innovation your company wants to apply, and for each;
• Define the procurement business model, and;
• Define process and required competences

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Procurement Involvement in Innovation Processes

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Procurement Involvement in Innovation Processes

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R&D Sourcing Strategy - Increase R&D Effectiveness

Many companies source the majority of their revenues from suppliers and partners. Outsourcing initiatives have been increasing significantly over the years. Following the Open Innovation concept, companies have initiated co-creation with supplier and partners. Now these flows are merging: as part of Open Innovation, more and more R&D will be outsourced. R&D is one of the most protected business functions in the large companies. Driven by IP and risk management, R&D is not something likely to be shared with the outside world. There is hardly any experience, leadership, culture, methods and tools available in the current organisation to really open up or even to outsource R&D effectively.

So how can companies outsource R&D (or at last a part of R&D) in order to increase flexibility and effectiveness of R&D, whilst maintaining focus and dedication to the value chain’s needs?
Companies should assess the importance of their innovation programs and decide on the appropriate model of sourcing using the Global Sourcing of Services (GSS) model. The GSS model is a decision support tool for the right sourcing strategy for their Business Services and or functions. An example of a sourcing strategy for an important R&D program would be to manage the relation tightly, keep the location onshore but outsourced. This combination would provide much control and flexibility of an outsourced function.

Once an outsourcing decision has been made, suppliers/partners must be selected based on their ability and willingness to take over (part of) R&D. The Four Collaboration Enablers model helps companies select the right suppliers and define the required change management. For instance, it is critical there is an incentive for the supplier to take over an R&D program. The program could create spin-offs into other markets of the supplier. Vice versa, the program could gain from technologies from other markets. On the other hand, capabilities will shift from the buy side to the sell side. The business models need careful alignment and for both the buyer and current suppliers, the change from contractor to developer will be substantial and needs to be managed tightly. Interested in how we brought R&D outsourcing into practice? Feel free to contact Robbert den Braber or Ronald Geerts.

R&D Outsourcing Strategy Slide Share

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Does procurement contribute to innovations in practice? Not much, yet...

Welcome to our Blog, which we have launched to discuss one of the key future roles of Procurement. In most organizations innovation is the area of R&D or Marketing, or a combined responsibility of marketing and R&D. When Innovation is mentioned, no one thinks of Procurement. But why not? Procurement has the ideal position in the firm to fulfill a pivotal role between suppliers and the organization, when looking to suppliers as a source for innovation.

This gap became all too clear from research carried out by Capgemini in the Netherlands, in collaboration with Utrecht University (Master Thesis Strategic Procurement and Innovation, written by Casper ten Kate).
How can procurement contribute to innovation?

Twelve case studies of different organizations and market sectors show three determinants of a procurement contribution to innovation:
· The level of strategic procurement
· Supplier involvement
· Procurement integration within the company
Out of the thesis can be concluded that the factors mentioned above indeed enable a procurement contribution to innovation.

Case analysis showed four patterns in relation to the contribution of procurement to innovations:

Pattern 1: Companies achieving a contribution to innovation by procurement
Companies with pattern 1 have obtained a high score for ‘the level of strategic procurement’, a medium to high score for ‘supplier involvement’ and a medium to high score for ‘Procurement integration within the company’. Companies in this pattern have a procurement function in place acting on a high strategic level, and combined with relatively high supplier involvement and procurement integration scores, they are already making a contribution to firm innovation by procurement (1 company in this research) or do this to some extent (2 companies in this research). This pattern fits with the hypothesis, that relatively high scores for the three determinants correspond with a high or above average contribution of Procurement to innovation.

Pattern 2: Companies without innovation via procurement.
Companies with pattern 2 have obtained a low/very low scores on all the three determinants. There is no basis for procurement to be able to contribute to the company’s innovations. The companies within this pattern are still in the process of defining their the procurement function and its position in the company. The majority of their procurement activities are operationally oriented, there is a little room for long-term issues or carrying out a procurement strategy. They do not have a clear overview or understanding of their supplier base, which makes it difficult for them to deal with suppliers in another way than solely transactional. Due to not clearly defined procurement function, the procurement function is not integrated in the company. All this results in no or very little contribution to firm innovation by procurement. Two companies within this research fitted in this pattern.

Pattern 3: companies stuck in the middle.
It’s in the name; companies with pattern 3 obtained scores between pattern 1 and 2. These companies have medium score for ‘the level of strategic procurement’, a medium/low scores for ‘supplier involvement’ and ‘Procurement integration within the company’. Companies in pattern 3 have a clearly defined procurement function in place, albeit not on the highest strategic level. Furthermore, these companies involve suppliers to a certain extent and there is some procurement integration in the company. They have thus far been unable to achieve a contribution to the company’s innovation by procurement. Five companies within this research fit into this pattern.

Pattern 4: companies with entrepreneurial procurement.
Companies in pattern 4 have obtained a medium/low score for ‘the level of strategic procurement’, and high scores for ‘supplier involvement’ and ‘Procurement integration within the company’. The companies in this pattern show an above average contribution to the company’s innovations. The companies in the thesis with this pattern are relatively small, with relatively small procurement staff compared to the companies in pattern 1. This is the reason for the medium score on strategic procurement, but due to the size of the company these procurement departments have close lines to the rest of the organization. This explains the high scores for ‘supplier involvement’ and ‘the extent of procurement within the company’ and this leaves room for procurement to play an entrepreneurial role and thereby contribute to the innovation within the company. Two companies within the research fitted in this pattern.

From the research it can be concluded that the contribution of Procurement to innovation is low in practice. Only 1 procurement department of the 12 major Dutch companies has a sustainable contribution to the company’s innovations. Two others have an just above average score, but a sustainable base to develop a high level contribution to the company’s innovation by Procurement in the future.

A new business model: Innovation Driven Procurement.
The next generation Procurement, is an accepted party in the area of innovation. This is what we call: Innovation Driven Procurement. For companies Innovation Driven Procurement will become one of the key competences to keep the pace of innovation high enough in the ever faster changing world. Organising for Innovation Driven Procurement poses new challenges and a different business model of the collaboration between procurement and the functional departments and external partners.

For becoming more successful in the contribution to innovation, Procurement should stop thinking in “transactions” and start thinking in “Business Models”.

Written by: Ronald Geerts & Robbert den Braber