Océ is, in effect, open to offers and has been unusually candid about it for a big corporate. Perhaps this is a Dutch thing, or more likely it is because openness is already working for the group. It has, for example, embraced ‘crowdsourcing'. This is a relatively new noun, coined just three years ago by Jeff Howe, a writer for Wired magazine. He has since produced a bestselling book on the topic - Crowdsourcing: How the Power of the Crowd is Driving the Future of Business. A recent example of crowdsourcing came during the MPs' expenses furore. When the documents were officially released, The Guardian published them all online and asked readers to trawl through the submissions for interesting titbits. An astonishing 20,000 people took up the challenge.

R&D challenge
Océ, with its disparate portfolio of products spanning office and low-volume cut-sheet printing, through to high-volume continuous-feed inkjet and wide-format printing, has faced its own challenges in terms of having sufficient R&D resource to pursue all of its potential product development ideas - despite an annual R&D spend of some €24m.

The company was faced with a choice of either skipping developments for some lines, or choosing to focus its R&D spend on certain products. The strategic importance of R&D cannot be understated. Chief executive Rokus van Iperen recently stated that the core of its business today is based on products that have been developed over the past 24 months - the CrystalPoint piezo inkjet printhead being one such example.

So when the recession in global markets causes a squeeze on R&D, the possibility that cutbacks will stymie the future sales pipeline is an obvious peril. For Océ, the trick is to marry being more focused with being more open. The company admits to a certain degree of introspection in the recent past, but now describes its approach thus:

"...this closed attitude has been replaced by an approach that explicitly creates room for partners in the development of new products. Open innovation, as the platform for making maximum use of each others' core competencies, forms the basis for a new period of future innovations."

The firm partners with Konica Minolta on products for the office environment and with Miyakoshi on high-speed inkjet. It is increasingly practising open innovation and crowdsourcing as useful ways of discovering new ideas while at the same time overcoming any limitations in the scale of its own R&D operation.

For example, in the Netherlands, the website www.battleofconcepts.com allows businesses and government agencies to tap into the country's freshest brains. It works like this: a company poses a question or challenge to an audience of students and young professionals up to the age of 30. This is the ‘battle'. Students then submit their ‘concepts', or solutions, in return. Responses are anonymised and the company chooses the 20 best answers. The prize money attached to each particular challenge, which can be between €2,500 and €10,000, is then distributed according to a standard scale. Financial services provider Rabobank recently offered a €5,000 carrot for clever ideas to help it engage with entrepreneurs and business start-ups via social media.

To return to Océ, within its product portfolio the company knows that with the aforementioned CrystalPoint imaging technology it has developed something with potential uses above and beyond the graphics market. Printed circuit boards, solar panels and applications in bio-sciences are just some of the possible applications, and there are many more. By being open to the fact that it can't do everything itself, Océ is effectively opening the door to many new markets.