Journal Research-Technology Management Releases Special Issue on Open Innovation

Open innovation pioneers explore the concept’s evolution in today’s business environment

Arlington, VA July 18, 2012 -- Research-Technology Management (RTM), the official journal of the Industrial Research Institute (IRI), released a special issue devoted to the history and theory of open innovation this month.

The opening retrospective article by Henry Chesbrough, considered the founder of open innovation theory, looks at open innovation since its inception in the early 2000s through to the present day and beyond. Chesbrough’s original research and analysis reveal layer upon layer of opportunities and challenges which present themselves as companies begin to open themselves up to such theories and practices. In his forecast for the future, he notes that the development of communities is becoming a central component of open innovation, where individuals involved in the process need to become invested in the community itself, whatever it may consist of, to truly become innovative in the current globalized business landscape.

“Henry Chesbrough’s name has become synonymous with open innovation,” remarked Jim Euchner, Editor-in-Chief of RTM, “to have him return to RTM, one of the first journals to publish his findings on the subject, and present such a prescient retrospective is a real treat for our readership and any innovation professional.”

Complimenting Chesbrough’s article are the issue’s profiles of other open innovation pioneers. In the issue’s C-Scape section, Alph Bingham, founder of InnoCentive, talks about his work at Eli Lilly, where he helped launch a handful of businesses that each highlighted some element of open innovation. He also offers advice that future intrapreneurs would do well to heed. The second is a conversation with Procter & Gamble’s former CTO, Gil Cloyd, on P&G’s radical transformation of R&D capabilities through the implementation of open innovation, as partially outlined in A.G. Lafley’s book Game Changer. Cloyd details some of the motivations for the change, many of the challenges P&G had to overcome, and his view of why the transformation succeeded.

Two articles highlight open innovation works in progress. GE’s CTO Michael Idelchik and GEN3 Partners’ president of open innovation Sam Kogan explore “GE’s Open Collaboration Model,” and how GE has transformed the way they do innovation internally through the use of open collaboration. Paul Nakagaki, Josh Aber, and Terry Fetterhoff then present “The Challenges in Implementing Open Innovation in a Global Innovation-Driven Company,” investigating how Roche Diagnostics Corp. overcame various roadblocks in getting a large organization to adjust its mindset to be open innovation capable.

Robin Spencer presents an historical analysis of the Longitude Act, passed by the British Parliament in 1714. The Longitude Act, as argued by Spencer, crystallizes many elements that are highly relevant for today’s prize-based innovation efforts and whose replication should be attempted in public-private collaborations.

Keith Groffin, Claus Varnes, Chris van der Hoven, and Ursula Koners provide an overview of ethnographic market research in their article, “Beyond the Voice of the Customers: Ethnographic Market Research.” Although not a traditional tool of open innovation, the act of encouraging innovators to get out of the lab and revisit their cultural biases by conducting ethnography can be a valuable tool, they argue, in creating new ideas from cultural observation. The article is an interesting addition to the discussion of open innovation in this issue.

Media outlets requesting an electronic copy of any of these articles should contact Michele Taussig at taussig@iriweb.org