FRANK PILLER

Frank Piller is a chair professor of management and the director of the Technology & Innovation Management Group at RWTH Aachen University. He also is a founding faculty member and the co-director of the MIT Smart Customization Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Frequently quoted in The New York Times, The Economist, and Business Week, amongst others, Frank is regarded as one of the leading experts on mass customization, personalization, and open innovation. Frank’s recent research focuses on innovation interfaces: How can organizations increase innovation success by designing and managing better interfaces within their organization and with external actors.

Measuring Open Innovation – a Metrics-Based Management Toolkit for Successful Innovation Teams – Part 2

How to apply metrics to open innovation (OI)? That's the question we often get from our clients when they start to develop their open innovation capabilities. In order to provide an answer to this critical question, the following article will focus on the key findings of our Open Innovation KPI 2012 study. Based on this study, a metrics-based management toolkit has been developed, which provides the most relevant key performance indicators from the perspective of innovation managers, subject matter experts, and consultants.

Brokers and Intermediaries for Open Innovation – A Global Market Study

Successful open innovation relies on intermediaries and platforms connecting an organization with outside solution providers, so called open innovation accelerators (OIAs). With more than 180 players, the market for OIAs however is getting complex and difficult to navigate. A recent study by RWTH Aachen compared these OIA market. In this report, we summarize some of the main findings.

2019-11-28T08:00:54-08:00October 14th, 2013|Categories: Blog Archive|Tags: , , , |

Linked Innovation: 5 Keys to Success in Open innovation Challenge Management

Open innovation crowd sourcing methods, when applied to the right problem, can effectively extend the solution provider search beyond the boundaries of an industry. This article presents the application of a targeted broadcast crowd sourcing method to identify unobvious solution providers for a German chain-drive industry consortium. The majority of solutions submitted through this method were previously unknown to the consortium. This evaluation demonstrates the power of open crowd sourcing to provide solutions from discontinuous industries and how effective crowd sourcing can be in open innovation.

Measuring Open Innovation – 3 Key Principles to Improve Your Innovation Measurement Practices– Part 1

Thanks to loads of compelling research studies and best practice cases in open innovation (OI) carried out over the last decade, several companies nowadays begin to embrace and partially apply the new principles and methods OI offers. However, when managing open innovation at the project level, even experienced managers still go blank at the question: how to assess, control, and measure the performance of these activities? In this series of articles, we will address the above issue by discussing a general framework for an open innovation performance measurement system (Part 1). Given this framework, a metricsbased management toolkit will be presented that provides a suite of key performance indicators (KPIs) for a specific set of OI methods that demonstrates the key results of our Open Innovation KPI 2012 Study (Part 2).

Part 8: A Balanced View: Conclusions and Key Learnings

Whenever customers are not getting what they need, business opportunities are opened. When properly implemented, mass customization has the potential to provide a long lasting competitive advantage through better, more adapted products and services that can be sold at premium prices. This final article in the Customization500 series sums up the conclusions and key learnings.

2019-10-15T15:10:09-07:00May 28th, 2012|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: , |

Part 7: Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing Mass Customization

While compiling data for the Customization500 study over a period of 12 months, the researchers noticed that roughly 20% of the companies went out of business during this time. In part 7 of this series, we take a closer look at the reasons why both startups and established companies fail at implementing mass customization and in what areas managers can expect the strongest resistance.

2019-11-28T09:23:28-08:00May 21st, 2012|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: , |

Part 6: Choice Navigation in Reality: A closer look into the Customization500

The customer's experience and a feeling of achievement during the co-design process is vital to the success of a custom product. In part 3 of the Mass Customization Series, Dominik Walcher & Frank Piller explain why managers should look beyond the sheer technology and back office integration of configuration toolkits and also focus on delivering a great configuration experience.

Part 5: Choice Navigation: Turning Burden of Choice into an Experience

When providing a customizable product how can a firm minimize the burden of choice and maximize the customer joy resulting from the co-creation process? In part five in this series on mass customization Professor Frank Piller explains how to turn choice complexity into customer experience and loyalty.

Part 4: Robust Process Design: Fulfilling Individual Customer Needs without Compromising Performance

Offering customized products is a strain on a company's resources. What are the different ways that you can minimize the deterioration in the firm’s operations and supply chain? In part four in this series on mass customization, Frank Piller and Fabrizio Salvador explain the robust process design - whereby the firm reuses or re-combines existing organizational and value chain resources to fulfill differentiated customers’ needs.

2019-10-15T15:10:17-07:00April 30th, 2012|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: , , , |

Part 3: Solution Space Development: Understanding where Customers are Different

A company seeking to adopt mass customization must first understand what the idiosyncratic needs of its customers are. After this crucial step, the company may establish what it is going to offer and what it is not. In part three in this series on mass customization, Frank Piller and Fabrizio Salvador walk through some of the potential methods of solution space development.

2019-10-15T15:10:19-07:00April 23rd, 2012|Categories: Enabling Factors|Tags: , , , , , |

Part 2: The Market for Mass Customization Today

As NetNatives become consumers and buyers are "trained" by personalized offerings, the market is finally ripe for mass customization. In part two of this special series focusing on mass customization, Professors Frank Piller and Dominik Walcher take a closer look at what the current market has to offer and provide their conclusions after observing 500 leaders in the field from a customer perspective.

Part 1: Competing in the Age of Mass Customization

The concept of "the customer is always right" is taking on a whole new meaning as the the ability to manage personalized products is starting to determine whether your company can keep up with the competition. In part one of this series, Frank Piller, a leading expert on mass customization, personalization and open innovation, discusses the goals, scope and core capabilities of mass customization.

Special Series of Articles on Mass Customization from Frank Piller

The idea that consumers can customize their own products on a massive scale is having a tremendous impact on customer experience and expectations as well as the way organizations approach R&D. Following an extensive study of mass customization in the domain of consumer goods, this upcoming series of articles provides an overview on mass customization, its strategic capabilities, and the success factors that drive its implementation in business.

2019-10-15T15:10:23-07:00April 2nd, 2012|Categories: Enabling Factors, Open Innovation|Tags: , , |

Extending Open Innovation to Open Government: a Roadmap for New Opportunities in Citizensourcing

Extending the principles of open innovation to the public sector is a particularly important transition. Public bodies are significant spenders on products and services and yet are often distant from the most dynamic processes in our economy. Dennis Hilgers and Frank Piller look at the wider benefits of an open public service in an extended web article downloadable on Innovation Management. The authors raise some of the most important issues below.