New research from APQC indicates that companies should widen the scope of their search for innovation. "Don't stay inside enterprise walls or conventional thinking," the report says. "Leading organizations reach beyond outdated boundaries and find incredible opportunities for innovative advancements.

The report, Putting Ideas Into Action 2009, notes that open innovation takes two forms among the companies  surveyed. One is to throw open the door to ideas from a very wide range of sources; the other is to focus on deeply understanding the needs of a small set of key customers/partners and potentially co-creating solutions with them. Both can be successful, as demonstrated by examples in the study.

APQC data shows that global organizations get an average of 36 percent of their ideas from external sources. The most common sources are partners followed by clients/customers. 

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