Breaking boundaries: How open innovation and cross-industry collaboration accelerate business growth

From my vantage point, it’s never been more clear: Today’s business landscape is shifting at a pace none of us have seen before. Each day brings a fresh wave of challenges‌ — ‌and, just as importantly, new possibilities. In this environment, no single organization can expect to outpace change by going it alone.

The real advantage now comes from reaching beyond the boundaries of our own teams, inviting in new perspectives, and embracing the power of collective intelligence. That’s the promise behind open innovation and cross-industry collaboration. We’re unlocking creative breakthroughs, accelerating progress, and laying the foundation for meaningful transformation. 

We’re entering a new era, one defined not by what any one company can achieve, but by what we can accomplish together.

The shift to open innovation: Moving beyond internal R&D

Understanding open innovation

Open innovation goes beyond inviting a few outside voices into the conversation. We must intentionally reach past the traditional boundaries of our organizations, welcoming ideas, technologies, and solutions from a broad ecosystem of researchers, strategic partners, customers, trusted peers in non-competing businesses, and, yes, sometimes even competitors.

Where the old playbook emphasized closely guarded R&D within company walls, open innovation thrives on permeability, trust, and the flow of knowledge.

In my experience, the real magic of open innovation begins when leaders take intentional action to create conditions where people and collaboration flourish. 

Our research shows that the most successful go-to-market teams align around a clear, shared purpose, with well-defined measures of success. When partners align around common goals and success metrics, teams are empowered to create value together and move forward with greater clarity and momentum. That’s how friction transforms into forward motion and collective creativity leads to results.

Closed vs. open innovation

How do I define open versus closed innovation?

• Closed innovation: R&D and idea generation stay within organizational silos.
• Open innovation: Human-centered solutions are imagined, developed, refined, and brought to market through a network of collaborators.

The shift to open innovation results in big wins, accelerated learning, better creativity, and a more balanced distribution of risk and reward, driving true collaborative innovation. A great example of this is the work HPE did to accelerate its customer obsessed innovation culture, powered by Mural and the LUMA System.

The power of cross-industry collaboration: Unlocking value and driving co-creation

Why partner across industries?

If open innovation is about inviting new voices in, cross-industry collaboration takes things to a whole new level. By teaming up with other organizations, we’re able to blend distinctive strengths and fresh perspectives that simply aren’t available to us when we limit ourselves to your own industry.

Again and again, I’ve seen how this approach unlocks value that no organization—or even an entire industry—could create on its own. This is exemplified by Mural’s longstanding partnership with and subsequent acquisition of LUMA Institute. The benefits to this approach speak for themselves:

• Access to a richer set of problem-solving mindsets, tools, and resources.
• Discovery of opportunities in unexpected places, fueled by a diversity of partners.
• Freedom to experiment boldly and rapidly with business models that just wouldn’t emerge in a single-industry setting.

The true power of cross-industry collaboration comes when everyone is crystal clear on a prioritized set of shared objectives and aligned on how to measure success. Partnerships become engines for innovation and transformation. Our experience shows that when teams embrace collaborative ways of working like design thinking, they’re able to unite around common challenges, derive insights from their collective research, and co-create breakthrough solutions.

In these environments, contributors move seamlessly between deep analysis and hands-on making, anchoring their efforts in real needs and a shared sense of purpose. The result? Teams that not only innovate, but genuinely look forward to the journey together.

Real-world impact: Lessons from the field

Organizations that embrace open innovation ideally co-develop groundbreaking solutions through joint R&D, shared resource initiatives, and co-creation with external partners. 

The real magic happens when companies not only connect, but also work together in creative ways that bring everyone’s insights to the table.

Lessons

• Ensuring goals are co-created rather than dictated by one party, fostering a sense of shared ownership.
• Making measurement and desired outcomes transparent, building trust and accountability.
• Applying design thinking frameworks to bring multidisciplinary voices together, problem-solve creatively, and build and sustain momentum, much like how top go-to-market teams align R&D and marketing.

Not all partnerships succeed right away, but the ones that prioritize alignment, shared purpose, and ongoing collaboration see the highest success rates and most transformative results. Leaders who have the vision and humility required to ask for and give help to non-competing peers reap the greatest benefits.

Enabling factors: Open platforms and partner ecosystems

Digital collaboration platforms and partner ecosystems are critical for lowering barriers and making collaboration scalable. Today’s open platforms connect talent, technology, and insights in real time, allowing flexible teams to spin up around shared ventures and break down industry boundaries.

• Open platforms make it easy to find partners and exchange ideas.
• They allow partners to experiment quickly with lower risk.
• Transparency and standardized data-sharing build trust.

Visual collaboration tools further accelerate progress by supporting live brainstorming, real-time project management, and seamless data flow. When everyone can see the same information and work according to shared goals and metrics, friction disappears and innovation flourishes. For instance, our AI solutions enhance this by helping teams synthesize complex information and spot emerging patterns together, driving faster market acceleration.

Building a culture of openness and collaboration

Tools and partnerships are essential, but I’ve found that the real breakthroughs happen when a team’s culture truly supports bold, creative collaboration. It starts at the top. Leaders need to champion openness and make it clear that curiosity, humility, authenticity, and co-creation aren’t just ideals, but core values that fuel meaningful transformation across the business. When these principles are woven into the fabric of how we work together, innovation thrives.

To create a culture of collaboration:

• Leaders seek out and harness diversity; they encourage teams to reach out and share ideas beyond their usual circles.
• Collaborative efforts—both inside and outside the business—are recognized and rewarded.
• Failures are treated as learning opportunities, motivating teams to try new approaches together, fostering psychological safety.

When teams share ownership of both the process and the outcomes, trust and engagement follow naturally.

5 actionable strategies for leaders

Turning open innovation and cross-industry collaboration into real, measurable impact comes down to a handful of practical steps:

1. Start by connecting with the right partners. Look for those who bring complementary strengths and share your vision for what’s possible.
2. From the outset, establish shared success metrics and a clear framework for how you’ll work together, including guidelines around IP, risk assessment, and decision-making.
3. Lean into design thinking and co-creation practices. These methods empower contributors to align on challenges, synthesize insights, and actively prioritize and build solutions as a team.
4. Find the right balance between openness and protection. Share enough to unlock value together, while still safeguarding your core advantages.
5. Commit to continuously learning from failures and be willing to pivot as sound hypotheses are disproven by actual results.

Sustained collaboration is built on transparency, shared accountability, and a culture that encourages continued experimentation. When these elements are in place, teams can navigate change with confidence and achieve results that truly matter. This is the bedrock of our decade-long partnership with LUMA Institute, and our shared quest to make work better, together.

Shaping the future through collective effort

In a world that moves fast, none of us can afford to tackle the future alone. Open innovation and cross-industry collaboration—grounded in shared goals, design thinking, and the right digital tools—are fundamentally changing what we can achieve together.

The organizations that embrace this mindset, break down barriers, and intentionally align on what matters most will be the ones driving real progress. Making bold collaboration and co-creation central to how we work is a necessity for shaping what comes next.

When we choose to create together, we unlock the ideas, talent, and energy that move entire industries forward. The future belongs to teams that collaborate with intention and vision. And together, there’s no limit to what we can accomplish.

FAQs

Q: Why are shared goals and metrics crucial for open collaboration?
‍A: Shared goals and clear success measures are the glue that holds great collaborations together. When everyone is focused on a common outcome, teams can make decisions transparently, avoid missteps, and stay aligned every step of the way. Without that clarity, even the most creative partnerships can lose momentum and miss out on true transformation.

Q: How does design thinking and co-creation accelerate innovative outcomes?
‍A: Design thinking and co-creation invite everyone to the table, giving different contributors a real voice in hands-on problem-solving. By involving all stakeholders—from early research through execution—teams build a deeper understanding of the challenge, create stronger alignment, and design solutions that genuinely hit the mark. This is where collaborative innovation really starts to move the needle.

Q: What role do digital platforms play in open innovation?
‍A: Digital collaboration platforms facilitate real-time knowledge sharing, partner matchmaking, and project execution. When combined with strong collaboration frameworks and clear measurement, they make it possible to manage complexity, scale partnerships, and multiply the impact of every contributor. Our visual collaboration platform, Mural, is built precisely for this.