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Course Syllabus: Strategic Entrepreneurship through Open Innovation

Course Syllabus: Strategic Entrepreneurship through Open Innovation

By Oliver Alexy • on November 23, 2012

Welcome back! As you may know, I have taken on a new position, which has somewhat kept me from contributing here as much as I wanted to. I am now in a few weeks into my teaching for this term, and as always, a considerable share of it is case-based. On top of that, this time around, I have finally been able to create a brand-new open innovation-related

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Case #8 – NEC in Princeton

Case #8 – NEC in Princeton

By Oliver Alexy • on February 22, 2012

It has been a considerable while since my last posting—I have been teaching quite a lot over the past few months, so I have had a chance to reacquaint myself with some brilliant case studies. The one I would like to talk about today is “NEC:

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First Guest Posting – FIAT

First Guest Posting – FIAT

By Oliver Alexy • on December 14, 2011

It’s a great pleasure to welcome the first guest contribution to the OpenInnovation.net teaching section. It is by Alberto DiMinin, Assistant Professor in Management at the University of Pisa (Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna). It is based on

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Case #7 – The Fate of the Vasa

Case #7 – The Fate of the Vasa

By Oliver Alexy • on November 16, 2011

Admittedly, it has been a lot longer than a few weeks since my last case update – apologies for that. In turn, I will use the chance of this “comeback” to introduce to you a case that is not exactly on open innovation, but is one of my all-time favorites on the execution of innovation projects:

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Case #6 – Siemens Enterprise Communications facing ‘open competition’

Case #6 – Siemens Enterprise Communications facing ‘open competition’

By Oliver Alexy • on September 19, 2011

Having barely been able to hold back for five postings, it’s finally time to begin tooting my own horn – but not only because I think Competition from the Commons? Siemens Enterprise Communications and Asterisk (Case 308-388-1 at

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Case #5 – Exploring the Future through Open Innovation at Intel

Case #5 – Exploring the Future through Open Innovation at Intel

By Oliver Alexy • on July 21, 2011

As promised in a recent posting, I will be continuing my exploration of cases that show how firms organize their open innovation activities. Last time,

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Case #4 – Open Innovation through Acquisition at Cisco

Case #4 – Open Innovation through Acquisition at Cisco

By Oliver Alexy • on June 24, 2011

Having looked at a somewhat “extreme” approach to open innovation in my last posting, I return to a more classical one this time: open innovation through acquisitions. This is a crucial topic for research and practice,

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Case #3 – Threadless: The Business of Community

Case #3 – Threadless: The Business of Community

By Oliver Alexy • on May 31, 2011

A question that I get asked a lot in classes around open innovation is how to make money from being open. For example, no one would disagree that a large user community is a nice-to-have, but how can you best turn it into a profitable source of innovation? The multimedia case Threadless:

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Case #2 – IBM going ‘open’

Case #2 – IBM going ‘open’

By Oliver Alexy • on May 9, 2011

In my view, one of the most important questions in the space of open innovation is how closed companies can make the transition to being open. One of my favorite cases on this topic is Baldwin, O’Mahony, and Quinn’s IBM and Linux (HBS-Case 9-903-083). As the title suggests, this case describes events

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Case #1 – Open and Closed Innovation at Merck

Case #1 – Open and Closed Innovation at Merck

By Oliver Alexy • on April 27, 2011

When teaching about open innovation, I found it much easier to start a clear description of what closed innovation is, and why firms may decide to be closed even when presented with a potentially viable opportunity to open up. With that knowledge in mind, students (in subsequent classes) found it much

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