The Evolution of the Concept of Open Innovation

Innovation is not merely about inventing something new. Please memorize the following 3 definitions of innovation:

• Innovation is the use of new knowledge to offer a new product or service that users need
• Innovation = invention (novelty) + commercialization (realization in society or markets)
• Innovation is a new way of doing things that is commercialized or applied in real-life contexts

Eric von Hippel (1988), an eminent authority in Open Innovation research whom you should remember, identified 4 sources of innovation, out of which three stem from outside one’s company:

• Customers
• Suppliers
• Third parties (universities, consultants, etc.)

Henry Chesbrough is another very important expert when talking about Open Innovation. He was the one who coined the term in 2003.

In the last years, digitalization, mass collaboration and sustainability radically disrupted the innovation landscape and open innovation has been applied a lot more, becoming democratized as users and citizens are included in innovation processes, in addition to economy, science and public policy providers. A new innovation paradigm has emerged: Open Innovation 2.0. We explain the concept in detail in the video.

At this point you surely have built up a good understanding of the main ideas behind Open Innovation. Remember that it’s always about targeting the opening of the innovation process, with a very clear, strategic goal behind it. Now you are fully prepared to learn and understand three different and effective Open Innovation methods and which contexts to use them in.