Many companies start their innovation and digital transformation endeavors with an internal team focused on reducing costs, improving customer care and increasing revenue. Executives should recognize that not all the ideas will come from internal resources and they can successfully expand the scope of their innovation activities. Transformation projects almost always mature over a few years and in order to maintain momentum, the innovation teams can reach out externally to a broader ecosystem that includes universities, research institutions, VC funds and startups. Hackathons for grad students and entrepreneurs or crowdsourcing for innovators are further avenues to gather ideas from the external market.