Defining Open Innovation

What is Open Innovation?

Open innovation has been variously described as a process, a set of interfirm relationships, and a cognitive paradigm. As originally explained by Henry Chesbrough:

Open Innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology. Open Innovation combines internal and external ideas into architectures and systems whose requirements are defined by a business model.

Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: The New Imperative (2003: xxiv)

Prof. Chesbrough’s more recent (and preferred) definition is:

“Open innovation is the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. [This paradigm] assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as they look to advance their technology.”

Henry Chesbrough, Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (2006)

These are the two earliest (and official) definitions; subsequent definitions are given by an August 2007 posting in the Open Innovation blog.

OpenInnovation.net is a portal for the latest research and practice regarding the open innovation. The open innovation paradigm originated in the 2003 book of the same name by Dr. Henry Chesbrough of U.C. Berkeley, and has been extended by other research since, including the 2006 academic book on open innovation and various special issues.