To innovate, knowledge needs to be moved from where it is based to where its needed.
Open innovation is a strategic approach that involves collaboration between an organization and external sources, such as customers, consultants, suppliers, universities and startups.
Unlike traditional models, where innovation is developed internally, open innovation seeks to leverage ideas, knowledge and expertise from external resources to generate new solutions, products or services.
While there have been successes, the major barriers to open innovation are identified as being internal to organizations themselves. Internal problems, like resistance to change and the existence of compartmentalized structures, are obstacles for collaborating to external actors.
Henry Chesbrough’s Twenty Years of Open Innovation discusses strategies for overcoming these barriers.
Twenty Years of Open Innovation