Australia-based earlybirds.io is an open ecosystem whose platform, services and programs are designed to help organisations accelerate their business. They do this by offering a platform that makes use of a global open innovation ecosystem to match up innovators with interested early adopters and related subject matter experts. This has proven to be a highly successful method for businesses to accelerate capacity, gain competitive edge, and create a culture to innovate and solve business and technical challenges.

Using the company’s platform has also become a popular way to circumvent the slow and disrupted process that more traditional types of research and development (R&D) often offer. The company co-founder Kris Poria addressed this matter by saying, “Key issues with older and more traditional R & D framework is that it takes longer to produce results and it spends too much time focusing on ‘reinventing’ as opposed to ‘inventing’. This tends to provide little value for the investment that governments and companies make regarding research and development projects. Our platform often provides interested parties with better value for their money, quicker outcomes, and it helps make the best use of the innovations that are available from industry.”

Poria went on to talk more about why traditional research and development (R&D) is often being disrupted. He acknowledged the large research programs that universities run with funding from industry and governments have their benefits but producing fast results is not one of them. He gave as an example of long-term ongoing R&D projects such as the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology getting support from Repeat Plastics Australia Pty Ltd, RG Programs and Services Pty Ltd, and SR Engineering Pty Ltd to come up with a solution that better utilises post-consumer recycled plastic aggregate. While the results of this endeavour may prove to be highly beneficial, it is currently moving along at a very slow pace. Part of the problem is that a research and development university’s general focus is engaging more Ph.D. candidates that do most of the work in-house and on extended project timelines that sometimes take years. He stated that this is why those at EarlyBirds decided to design a platform that is challenging the status quo including research. They do this through their platform's ability to use disruptive open industry innovations that can be used to shorten R&D projects, reduce cost, and focus researchers to ‘invent’ and not ‘reinvent’.

Through EarlyBird’s platform and services, these large projects and programs can be divided into chunks of capability requirements, and then the platform identifies potential innovators (startups, scaleups, and mature companies) that are already providing these capabilities. Researchers can then use these commercial capabilities to focus on the components where they really have gaps and then ‘invent’ in that specific area. A researcher from one of the Group of Eight Universities in Australia perhaps said it best when he stated, “Our research methodology has not been updated for hundreds of years and EarlyBirds refreshing approach provides better outcomes from both the researchers and funders whether it’s Government or Industry”.

The company’s co-founder then went on to describe EarlyBirds’ impactful open innovation ecosystem in more detail. It works by bringing together early adopter companies that are looking to find business opportunities much faster with innovators that often do not have the connections or financing to bring their products or services to market. This is something that results in a win for both parties. This usually is a situation that even gets better when subject matter experts and consultants are added into the mix. Even though all of these parties have the desire to connect, the problem is how to go about doing that. Poria says that’s where their unique platforms at EarlyBirds come into play. They have established a global four million innovators looking to showcase their global industry innovation capability.  Early adopter companies that sign up for one of EarlyBirds’ programs can use the platforms’ advanced search, discovery and curation functions to quickly find desired innovators that will help them rapidly create a shortlist of candidate solutions. He says those that are interested in learning more about how EarlyBirds’ open innovation ecosystem works can call them, send them an email, or refer to their website.