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Making a Case for Open Innovation – Why Now?
I have a series on open innovation running at the EnterpriseLeadership.org show. This is the lastest episode with Tom DeGarmo.
Here is the background on topics we covered:
DeGarmo, a principal in PricewaterhouseCoopers advisory practice, talks about why companies must practice open innovation, especially in this economic downturn.
What do the Apple iPhone and Linux have in common? They are both products of some form of open innovation. Linux came about through the collaborative efforts of the thousands of developers who participate in the open source community. Applications for the iPhone mushroomed when Apple made the phone’s platform available to application developers. Other companies, such as Google and Microsoft, have followed in Apple’s open innovation footsteps.
DeGarmo was first exposed to open innovation when he worked at Bell Laboratories, AT&T’s research arm, back in the 1980s. He says that Bell Laboratories’ culture thrived on sharing experiences, ideas and research for the sake of research. He says, “We took the best of what we learned and applied it to problems outside of the lab.”
With traditional innovation, or what DeGarmo calls closed innovation, companies have ownership over their assets and their intellectual property. They look at how they can leverage their employees’ expertise to solve problems. “This type of innovation can be somewhat limiting and very constraining. In a down economy, companies need to explore every avenue for innovation.”
Companies which practice open innovation, on the other hand, look outside for smart problem-solvers. “Some of these people might have already solved your company’s particular problem, might have people working on your particular problem, or might have people with insight to share. You might find people who are working on totally unrelated problems. If you apply these problems to your situation, you might solve your problem. If you are open enough, you can take advantage of what the world has to offer.”
In this on-going series of innovation podcasts, DeGarmo provides insight from his research experience with open innovation, gives examples of open innovation communities, and gives CIOs and CTOs several takeways for using technology to carry out open innovation initiatives.
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Note: The image for this blog article is from http://open-tube.com/
© 2010 Tom Parish Inc. All rights reserved.
Making a Case for Open Innovation – Why Now?