We began by publishing a brief research report to increase the Company D’s understanding of the Company E prior to the initial meeting. Moreover, we enabled smooth operation by creating guide documents for upcoming meetings, workshops, and methodologies to enhance the pre-engagement of participants.

The partnership with the Company E took place in earnest after signing an MOU after the Overview meeting. The workshop was held for about two weeks, with the goal of identifying the solution outlines that both companies should ideally develop. The senior architect of the Company E stayed in the Company D’s Open Innovation center during the period and conducted a workshop with the field department.

This was done by preliminary setting of the main categories based on the requirements investigated by both companies, and then intensively discussing and arranging one or two topics per day. The organizational culture of small and midsize IT companies with global leading solutions is quite progressive, compared with domestic large IT companies.

It was also very important to mix the cultures of both companies for good partnership. The biggest concerns for this were the ‘environment’ and the ‘tools’. We completely changed the look of a conference room for the two-week workshop.

Boards with picture of OI Canvas, our self-developed frame, were developed by category on the wall. Dozens of post-it notes were attached on them as the workshop progressed. The Me-Cards were posted on the one side of the wall showing the participants’ names, tasks and hobbies. It was important to maintain the concentration and tension on the content and to feel like ‘one team’ through this environment. The workshop produced an optimal solution outline, followed by subsequent workshops that set the scope for the PoC progress in developing this solution. The two companies agreed on a priority for the features that the PoC would develop first, reflecting market requirements and input resources. The Invention Lab designed and operated the entire process, largely in the order of requirements-solution outline-derivation of PoC development priorities, and used visualized tools. This was a way for clear action points to be shared within the stakeholders and at the same time overcome the handicap of language barriers, by avoiding workshops that end with words, recording and visualizing.