Technology continues to change the boundaries of E&P operations. Advances in seismic data collection and processing, drill bit design, hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, subsea systems, and floating production systems are improving the way hydrocarbons are being discovered and produced.

Traditionally, R&D efforts within the industry have been the biggest contributor to technology advances, but that reality is changing. While there are many valuable training and R&D centers being funded by the oil and gas industry, they no longer are the only approach to problem-solving.

In the past, collaborating meant creating joint ventures, partnering with universities, employing consulting services, and outsourcing to contract labs. According to Alpheus Bingham and Dwayne Spradlin, authors of The Open Innovation Marketplace, there are many new approaches to collaborating that now include such things as crowdsourcing and broadcast searches, which open the gates for problem solvers outside the industry to apply their expertise to the challenges of oil and gas operations. Together, these many marketplaces, platforms, and exchanges have begun to create an innovation marketplace that looks to a much broader range of experts without regard to their area of specialization.

Technology development does not take place in a vacuum; when researchers can collaborate, the limiting boundaries of their research are expanded. The more brain power brought to bear on a problem, the faster and better the solution.

The book explains the concept of open innovation in simple terms as “the use of resources other than those internal to an organization, contributing in a meaningful way to an innovative outcome.” This approach is based on the fact that a diverse portfolio of assets outperforms a more correlated one. Not only does it bring more brain power to the table, it allows companies investing in innovative solutions to share risk. Open innovation allows greater diversity in approaches to problem-solving, accelerates innovation, and is more cost effective. By putting industry-specific problems in front of experts outside the industry, companies are discovering radically different solutions, and those solutions are paying dividends.

The change has come about slowly, but today there are many industries that can point to a significant number of product introductions or improvements that did not stem from a corporate lab or a partnership within the industry.

In this issue of E&P, the editorial team took up the challenge of looking outside the industry for technologies that could allow internal products and processes to be improved. We stepped outside our comfort zone to identify technologies in other industries that could have application in ours. In doing so, we made some interesting discoveries. We hope some of them will be the basis for expediting innovation for our readers.

Comments