What is Open Innovation

How it started

The concept of Open Innovation was invented by P&G in the early 2000s. It was formalized soon after by Henry Chesbrough (University of California) in 2003.

Since then, its maturity keeps on growing. It is now adopted by many industrials around the world. Corporation are dedicating teams to drive this strategy, new job titles have been created such as “Open Innovation Manager”, “Technology Scout”, “External Relationship Manager”, etc.

Definition

The general idea is that a problem you are facing might already be solved elsewhere, out of your organization and direct reach. Open Innovation is the approach allowing an interaction between the expression of a need and solution providers (internal, from partners, suppliers, or external networks).

Many definitions can be found, here is one from H. Chesbrough: “Leverage external resources to contribute to our innovations”.

We can distinguish two types of Open Innovation effort:

• In-bound: looking for external sources of innovation
• Out-bound: sharing technologies with external organizations

> It might not be new, but it's new to you.

Benefits of Open Innovation

Embracing Open Innovation brings tangible benefits to Corporations, large or small. Here below is a list of a few of them:

• Improving success rate of NPD (reliability)
• Accelerating NPD
• Establishing technological landscapes
• Reducing risk by sharing with partners or intermediaries
• Facilitating disruptive innovation
• Etc.

Where Open Innovation comes from, by Henry Chesbrough