Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology

While the key to succesful innovation once lay in the controlled environment of the corporate laboratory, today the widespread distribution of useful knowledge makes such control unfeasible. Competitive advantage now often comes from leveraging the discoveries of others.

Rather than relying entirely on internal ideas to advance the business, an “open” approach to innovation leverages internal and external sources of ideas.

Rather than restricting innovation to a single path to market, open innovation inspires companies to find the most appropriate business model to commercialize a new offering – whether that model exists within the firm or must be sought through external licensing, partnering, or venturing.

Presenter(s)

Henry Chesbrough is an assistant professor of business administration at the Harvard Business School, teaching the management of technology. This fall he will join the faculty of the Haas Business School at UC-Berkeley. He has consulted to leading companies in both the U.S. and Japan on issues of technology management and technology venturing and is the author of numerous papers, including an article on Xerox's management of its technology spinoff organizations in the Winter 2002 issue of Business History Review. His academic research has been published in Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Business History Review, and the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. He has also published managerial articles in the Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, and Sloan Management Review.

Prior to embarking on an academic career, Professor Chesbrough spent ten years in various product planning and strategic marketing positions in Silicon Valley companies. He worked for seven of those years at Quantum Corporation and was Vice President of Marketing and Business Development for an entrepreneurial subsidiary of Quantum, Plus Development Corporation.

Professor Chesbrough received his B.A. in Economics from Yale University, his M.B.A. from Stanford University, and his Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of California-Berkeley.