When discussing the elements and processes involved in sustainable development, recent times have seen much emphasis placed on the need for innovative solutions. There are many methods of innovation used to produce products or services that help serve the needs of society, reduce human impact on the environment, and provide businesses with streams of revenue and market opportunities.
Here, I would like to share some of the content I posted for a blog assignment in one class I attended on Innovation. The assignment originated from one of our class activities in which we were instructed to contribute our ideas on how to make EOI more sustainable. We were given passwords that enabled us to log on to an online platform where we could state our ideas and elaborate on the vision we had in mind. The ideas we uploaded were then shared with students from our class and with those from other Masters programmes at EOI. We commented and added on the ideas proposed by our colleagues, which resulted in a sort of online brainstorming where we were able to exchange thoughts and recommendations on the proposed ideas.
Through participating in this activity, I learned about the concept
of “Open Innovation”. The term was coined by Chesbrough in his book “Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology”
(2003). It derives from the notion that companies have begun shifting
from “closed innovation” processes towards a more open approach to
innovation due to several factors. These factors include the increase of
mobility and availability of highly-educated people, significant
increase in availability of venture capital, and also the important
roles of other companies in the supply chain. This new model of
innovation differs from the traditional model, which placed more emphasis on research and development laboratories. The process of the
traditional model involved trimming down large numbers of ideas and
concepts and selecting a few that was considered to best meet the
requirements of the company. According to openinnovation.eu, Open
Innovation functions differently as it works on “combining internal and
external ideas as well as internal and external paths to market to
advance the development of new technologies.”
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| Closed Innovation |
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| Open Innovation |
There are, in fact, many companies out there that have been and still
are actively using open innovation in their business models. According to a Forbes article by Raul Chao,
there are many modes of open innovation used in delivering new
products, services, and processes. He states that perhaps an expanded
interpretation of open innovation may include user-innovation and lead
user methodologies, innovation ecosystems and platform innovation
models, co-development and short-term non-equity alliances, innovation
contests and tournaments, and crowd-sourcing or "the wisdom of crowds".
This concept of collaborating and innovating together to produce a product or service that improves customers’ experience and satisfies their expectations is a very interesting approach that a company could adopt. It shows how businesses could benefit by sharing ideas and collaborating through open innovation to not only gain profit, but also add value and make a difference in the lives of their customers through their innovative products.
Click below to watch a video of Mr. Chesbrough himself explaining the concept and processes of "Open Innovation":
This concept of collaborating and innovating together to produce a product or service that improves customers’ experience and satisfies their expectations is a very interesting approach that a company could adopt. It shows how businesses could benefit by sharing ideas and collaborating through open innovation to not only gain profit, but also add value and make a difference in the lives of their customers through their innovative products.
Click below to watch a video of Mr. Chesbrough himself explaining the concept and processes of "Open Innovation":
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