INNOVATION TIME | APR 21

 As companies struggled to adapt to the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, many turned to open innovation — a collaborative approach that plays to the strengths of all companies involved and can produce creative, unexpected solutions. It’s a kind of collaboration, the authors argue, that’s worth pursuing whether or not you’re in a crisis.

Making it work, however, requires that companies: momentarily put aside traditional concerns over IP to focus on other approaches to creating value; leverage their partners’ motivations effectively to maintain a productive working relationship; embrace new partners; and commit to the projects they pursue through open innovation to reap their benefits. This approach can be extremely fruitful, and not just in the middle of a crisis.

During a recession, when many companies face declining revenues and earnings, executives often conclude that innovation isn’t so important after all. According to the authors, that’s because it isn’t integral to the workings of most organizations, so the creativity that leads to game-changing ideas is missing or stifled. Rigby, Gruver, and Allen, all partners at Bain & Company, point to the fashion industry as a model. Every season, successful fashion companies must reinvent their product lines—and thus their brands—or face certain death. They manage this constant challenge by creating unusual partnerships at the top that consist of an imaginative, right-brain creative director and a commercially minded, left-brain brand CEO. The authors call these alliances “both-brain” teams.

Some famous examples exist outside the fashion industry: Steve Jobs and his COO at Apple, Tim Cook; the creative Bill Hewlett and the savvy David Packard; Bill Bowerman, the former track coach who developed Nike running shoes, and his business partner, Phil Knight. But fashion has gone the furthest to incorporate both-brain partnerships in its organizational model. Gucci Group and others have learned to establish and maintain effective partnerships between creative people and numbers-oriented people; to structure the business so that the partners can run it effectively and are clear about which decisions they own; and to foster left-brain–right-brain collaboration at every level in order to continue attracting talent.

What makes these partnerships work? The authors have identified seven characteristics of successful partners: They are aware of their own strengths and weaknesses, have complementary cognitive skills, trust each other, possess raw intelligence, bring relevant knowledge to the team, speak to each other frequently and directly, and are highly committed to the business and each other.

When every brand is making noise, how do you break through? As this past year makes as clear as any, the brands that truly understand themselves have almost limitless possibilities to bring expression to that in a way that resonates with consumers. The brands we honor are varied in their businesses, but united in having figured out their core identity and having fun from there.