Crowdsourcing is a form of open innovation (and in some cases, user innovation) that attempts to get a large pool of outsiders to solve a problem. Product recommendations at Amazon etc. are probably the most often seen example.
As Scott Gallagher & I noted in our 2006 book chapter, many of these contributions are motivated by nonmonetary incentives. Reputation and publicity are the most likely rewards — whether they can be monetized to get a job or sell a product, or just as a way to stroke an ego.
However, some organizations are using large (e.g. $1 million) prizes to encourage a supply of external innovations. Two examples this morning were the Netflix algorithm challenge and NASA’s search for a new lunar lander. More on both at my Open IT Strategies blog.
September 21, 2009
September 18, 2009
Open innovation progress in last three years
About 18 months ago, the journal R&D Management called for papers on open innovation. This month, the journal has published the resulting special issue, edited by Ellen Enkel, Oliver Gassman and Henry Chesbrough. (No one told me the issue was out, but I found it while updating the Open Innovation website.)
Below is the list of articles. The most striking thing about the nine articles (not counting the introductory article by the editors) is how German the issue is: seven articles by German authors, one from Switzerland, one from the U.K. (and none from outside Europe).
But if you dig a little deeper, what’s more impressive is that almost all of the articles are about Open Innovation. This means there’s a depth of open innovation research and researchers (at least in Germany) producing open innovation research good enough for a good journal like R&D Management.
Having articles about open innovation seem unremarkable. However, if you look at the previous R&D Management special issue in June 2006, five of the nine articles were clearly about user innovation with only passing mention (if at all) of open innovation as generally defined. This is no big deal if you want to argue that open innovation has subsumed and supplanted user innovation, but it is encouraging to draw the distinction if you believe (as I do) that they are related but distinct streams of research.
The most personally gratifying paper was that of Klaus Fichter on innovation communities, which picked up on two suggestions I made for open innovation researchers to expand their focus. One was the call (with Karim Lakhani) to more precisely use the “community” construction in open and user innovation research. The other (in the editor’s closing chapter of our 2006 book) was for a broader range of methodologies and levels of analysis in open innovation research. If open science is supposed to be the cumulative production of shared knowledge, as a researcher it was rewarding to see the work I’d done has had some impact.
It was also nice to see publication of the paper by Christina Raasch and her Harburg colleagues on tangible goods — including “free” beer and open source car — that was presented in a well-attended session at OUI 2009. Congratulations to all for their newly published papers.
Below is the list of articles. The most striking thing about the nine articles (not counting the introductory article by the editors) is how German the issue is: seven articles by German authors, one from Switzerland, one from the U.K. (and none from outside Europe).
But if you dig a little deeper, what’s more impressive is that almost all of the articles are about Open Innovation. This means there’s a depth of open innovation research and researchers (at least in Germany) producing open innovation research good enough for a good journal like R&D Management.
Having articles about open innovation seem unremarkable. However, if you look at the previous R&D Management special issue in June 2006, five of the nine articles were clearly about user innovation with only passing mention (if at all) of open innovation as generally defined. This is no big deal if you want to argue that open innovation has subsumed and supplanted user innovation, but it is encouraging to draw the distinction if you believe (as I do) that they are related but distinct streams of research.
The most personally gratifying paper was that of Klaus Fichter on innovation communities, which picked up on two suggestions I made for open innovation researchers to expand their focus. One was the call (with Karim Lakhani) to more precisely use the “community” construction in open and user innovation research. The other (in the editor’s closing chapter of our 2006 book) was for a broader range of methodologies and levels of analysis in open innovation research. If open science is supposed to be the cumulative production of shared knowledge, as a researcher it was rewarding to see the work I’d done has had some impact.
It was also nice to see publication of the paper by Christina Raasch and her Harburg colleagues on tangible goods — including “free” beer and open source car — that was presented in a well-attended session at OUI 2009. Congratulations to all for their newly published papers.
| Authors | Title | DOI |
|---|---|---|
| Ellen Enkel, Oliver Gassmann, Henry Chesbrough | Open R&D and open innovation: exploring the phenomenon | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00570.x |
| Ulrich Lichtenthaler | Outbound open innovation and its effect on firm performance: examining environmental influences | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00561.x |
| Marcus Matthias Keupp, Oliver Gassmann | Determinants and archetype users of open innovation | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00563.x |
| Winfried Ebner, Jan Marco Leimeister, Helmut Krcmar | Community engineering for innovations: the ideas competition as a method to nurture a virtual community for innovations | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00564.x |
| Klaus Fichter | Innovation communities: the role of networks of promotors in Open Innovation | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00562.x |
| Gordon Müller-Seitz, Guido Reger | Is open source software living up to its promises? Insights for open innovation management from two open source software-inspired projects | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00565.x |
| Christina Raasch, Cornelius Herstatt, Kerstin Balka | On the open design of tangible goods | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00567.x |
| Sara Holmes, Palie Smart | Exploring open innovation practice in firm-nonprofit engagements: a corporate social responsibility perspective | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00569.x |
| Anne-Katrin Neyer, Angelika C. Bullinger, Kathrin M. Moeslein | Integrating inside and outside innovators: a sociotechnical systems perspective | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00566.x |
| René Rohrbeck, Katharina Hölzle, Hans Georg Gemünden | Opening up for competitive advantage – How Deutsche Telekom creates an open innovation ecosystem | 10.1111/j.1467-9310.2009.00568.x |
September 17, 2009
Updated website
Tonight I took care of some long-deferred maintenance and fixes for the open innovation website. That includes
In particular, right now I’m looking for teaching cases that can be used to teach open innovation (as I’ve defined on this blog). If you have any suggestions, drop me a line.
I’m also trying to fix a quirk in Apache server side includes (accessing a header file in another directory), but hopefully that will be transparent to the reader.
Finally, I’m experimenting with the color scheme for this blog to more closely match that of the website while still being readable. Please be patient.
- fixing the navigation header (on at least some pages),
- update the research page, with long-overdue reference to Daniel Fasnacht’s new book; and
- add a preliminary page for teaching open innovation.
In particular, right now I’m looking for teaching cases that can be used to teach open innovation (as I’ve defined on this blog). If you have any suggestions, drop me a line.
I’m also trying to fix a quirk in Apache server side includes (accessing a header file in another directory), but hopefully that will be transparent to the reader.
Finally, I’m experimenting with the color scheme for this blog to more closely match that of the website while still being readable. Please be patient.
September 10, 2009
Berkeley resumes its Open Innovation series
Next week, the Center for Open Innovation at UC Berkeley is resuming its speaker series on Open Innovation that it began last year. The talks are being held at 2pm on Monday afternoons at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society on the Berkeley campus.
Below is the current schedule (with one small correction):
Henry said today that last week’s organizational meeting was full — mostly with engineering and business graduate students. I’m looking forward to seeing how big the audience is on Monday.
Below is the current schedule (with one small correction):
| Aug. 31 | Henry Chesbrough | COI Executive Director | UC-Berkeley |
| Sept. 14 | Joel West | Associate Professor | San Jose State University |
| Sept. 21 | Judy Estrin | CEO | J Labs |
| Sept. 28 | Keval Desai | Director of Product Mgt | |
| Oct. 5 | Joachim Henkel | Chair, Professor | Technical Univ. of Munich |
| Oct. 12 | Hyun Park | Head, Global Offering Mgt | Nokia |
| Oct. 19 | Sabine Brunswicker | Manager/Senior Researcher | Fraunhofer Institute |
| Oct. 26 | Lesa Mitchell | Vice President | Kauffman Foundation |
| Nov. 2 | Wim Vanhaverbeke | Professor | Leuven University |
| Nov. 9 | TBD | ||
| Nov. 16 | Rob Valli | Academic/Consultant | Cambridge University, UK |
| Nov. 23 | Vivek Wadhwa | Professor | Harvard Law School |
| Nov. 30 | Marco ten Vaanholt | Vice President | SAP Community Network |
| Dec. 7 | Johann Fueller | Co-Founder | Hyve |
Henry said today that last week’s organizational meeting was full — mostly with engineering and business graduate students. I’m looking forward to seeing how big the audience is on Monday.
September 9, 2009
Silicon Valley technology sourcing
More than 15 years ago, when I was helping to start a software trade association in San Diego we flew up to study the Software Developer‘s Forum. Today SDForum is helping foster solutions to technical and business problems across a wide range of industries.
Next week, on Sept. 18 SDForum is hosting something it calls its “Second Annual Open Innovation and Corporate Research Fair.” The event is being held at Techmart, next to the Santa Clara Convention Center. Since I didn’t go to the first, I wasn’t sure how this year’s session relates to the definition of open innovation or whether it even would count.
The program has keynotes from EMC, Forbes, IBM and Nokia Research. So far, it sounds like yet another Silicon Valley conference. However, three hours in, there is a single one hour panel discussion
Of course, that’s not the definition of open innovation. Still, there is a plausible enough overlap to use the buzzword.
It would be nice if someday the conference were to actually talk about open innovation in its totality — transforming how firms think about creating and commercializing innovations. But right now the term seems to be used mainly for big companies firing their R&D staff to outsource technology development or to rebrand existing university relations efforts.
Next week, on Sept. 18 SDForum is hosting something it calls its “Second Annual Open Innovation and Corporate Research Fair.” The event is being held at Techmart, next to the Santa Clara Convention Center. Since I didn’t go to the first, I wasn’t sure how this year’s session relates to the definition of open innovation or whether it even would count.
The program has keynotes from EMC, Forbes, IBM and Nokia Research. So far, it sounds like yet another Silicon Valley conference. However, three hours in, there is a single one hour panel discussion
11:30am: Panel Discussion: "Open Innovation in Practice"OK, so here “open innovation” is being used as a synonym for “buying outside technology.”
Panelists will discuss how large high-tech corporations source technologies from outside developers explain how partnerships are formed, technology acquisition and transfer deals are structured.
Of course, that’s not the definition of open innovation. Still, there is a plausible enough overlap to use the buzzword.
It would be nice if someday the conference were to actually talk about open innovation in its totality — transforming how firms think about creating and commercializing innovations. But right now the term seems to be used mainly for big companies firing their R&D staff to outsource technology development or to rebrand existing university relations efforts.
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