Why it’s time to rethink Open Innovation
It's about open minds, not just open doors
🤔 Why it’s time to rethink Open Innovation
The success of China’s DeepSeek AI model came as a surprise to everyone last month.
With a team of fewer than 150 people and a budget of around $6 million, the company managed to both challenge the giant incumbents and wipe $1tn off US stocks.
A lot of that success was put down to DeepSeek’s open source policy (which is, ironically, more open than that of OpenAI’s). But DeepSeek’s approach to innovation goes, well… deeper than that
Their flat management structure, emphasis on worker autonomy, and collaborative culture not only stands in stark contrast to the grueling schedules and rigid hierarchies typical of many other Chinese tech firms; they redefine what we mean when we talk about ‘open innovation’.
This month’s Download explores this new frontier of open innovation. One that prioritises continuous evolution powered by diverse thinking and psychological safety, as key to creating the kind of environment that drives creativity and accelerates progress.
📡 Signals Detected
Here are a few of the things that have pinged on our radar recently and got us thinking about how open collaboration and diverse perspectives drive innovation:
How DeepSeek broke the China tech mold
Jordan Schneider examines how DeepSeek managed to rival OpenAI, not through state funding, but by empowering young talent in flat hierarchies.Diversity isn’t a nice to have; it’s an innovation essential
A 2024 study by Deloitte and Fast Company found that 83% of companies asked said they are actively seeking diverse voices because it helps attract talent, fosters unconventional thinking and enhances productivity.South Africa’s G20 presidency is reimagining innovation as a people-first endeavor
The proposed Open Innovation Platform of Platforms prioritises inclusive collaboration, equity, and diversity in science and technology to tackle global challenges like the SDGs.
🤷 The ‘So What’: Open innovation demands intentional culture design
DeepSeek’s leap of innovation would simply not have survived in the rigid, top-down, structures typical of the 996 system that governs the working culture across many Chinese tech firms.
Without the flat team structures, academic-style collaboration and radical transparency there would have been no wellspring of creativity for the team to tap into in the first place. But that idea-friendly culture didn’t happen by accident. It was intentionally designed and carefully nurtured. And, perhaps most crucially, Deepseek did all this with the clear-eyed knowledge that the culture they were aiming to create would go against the hardwiring of every human they introduced to it.
Like it or not, we are all cognitively wired to be competitive and proud. Our instinct is to guard our ideas and solve things on our own before turning to others. To rewire your organisational DNA and cultivate ‘structured serendipity’ means recognising those evolutionary instincts and intentionally designing an environment that counteracts them.
It won’t happen overnight, but by treating this cultural evolution as a ‘living experiment’ it is possible to build an environment where diversity of thought is valued, collaboration is encouraged across hierarchies, and failure is viewed as a stepping stone to success.
🛠️ Carving out the space for innovation
For a practical framework on how to create this kind of environment, our Innovation Carve-Outs whitepaper is a great place to start. It outlines five principles for establishing dedicated spaces within organisations where innovation can thrive, free from the constraints of day-to-day operations. These principles provide a roadmap for anyone looking to intentionally cultivate the kind of open, collaborative culture that fuels breakthrough innovations.
💬 Sharing our work in progress: What’s next for open innovation?
As AI capabilities grow, we’re likely to see new forms of collaboration between humans and machines that tackle challenges in ways we can barely imagine today.
To explore this further, we’ve put together a visual timeline of open innovation’s evolution and potential future. We invite you to take a look at our slides and share your thoughts. What possibilities excite you? What concerns you? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
📚 Brain Food
Your curated resources for diving deeper:
📖 Read: In September of last year, the ‘godfather of open innovation’ Henry Chesbrough, wrote a paper on the history of the concept, where it has succeeded and failed, and what its prospects for the future might be.
👤 Follow: Author of The Open Culture Handbook, Drew Jones writes about the emerging challenges of innovation, culture growth, and employee retention in the AI economy.
🎧 Listen: Brink co-founder Lea Simpson recently appeared on the EduTech Podcast (along with Bernd Roggendorf of EIDU and Barnabas Sang from the Ministry of Education in Kenya) to dig into why open-source models in education offer transformative potential. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
At Brink we work with partners to create real change in the world and to deliver a better future through the application of Behavioural Innovation, our proven approach for unlocking outsized impact.
If you would like to talk to us about the challenges you’re facing and how we might work together to shift systems, transform mindsets and create news possibilities, then you can reach our co-founder, Abi Freeman on abi@hellobrink.co.
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