Open Models of Innovation

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Open Models of Innovation Croplife, Brussels,
June 2 2005
Charles Leadbeater
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Closed Innovation Organisations

• Hire bright people
• Put them in special conditions
• Free from market pressures
• Pipeline of ideas to products
• Delivered to passive waiting consumers

Open Innovation
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Closed Innovation Assumptions

• Knowledge is created, codified, sent and received
• Authors of inventions can define their use
• Intellectual property should be protected to
  create incentives
• Consumption is passive - a yes/no choice
• Innovation comes from within, self-reflective
  process

Open Innovation
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Closed Innovation Applications

• The R D Lab Thomas J Watson, Bell Labs
• Specialist creative activities in companies
• Professional disciplines of architecture and
  design
• Elite university education
• The Pipeline view of the world

Open Innovation
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Closed Innovation Reforms

• Not a fixed model
• Overlapping or simultaneous rather than
  sequential
• Cross functional teams in organisations
• Use consumer insights earlier in development
• Market oriented R D

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Generation

• Multiplying sources of ideas
• Technology costs down
• Combining ideas in networks easier
• Skilled labour more mobile, independent
• Outsourcing distribution of labour leading to
  distribution of knowledge
• End of knowledge monopolies
• A new phase of globalisation from money and
  materials to ideas

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Propagation

• Consumers are innovators
• Radical innovations the users work out what
  innovation is for
• Disruptive innovation passionate users innovate,
  producers follow
• New markets and business models start in marginal
  markets
• Service innovation requires users to rewrite
  scripts
• Leisure economy Pro-Am users and serious leisure
• Who invented the mountain bike?

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Assumptions

• Innovation essential social and dynamic
• Authorship joint, cumulative and evolutionary
• Knowledge created by interaction
• Innovation as a mass activity
• Complex products should be modular
• Innovation comes from creative conversation
• Structured communities of co-creation

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Attractions

• Multiple experiments in parallel
• Mobilise fascination and curiosity
• Low cost maintenance - the users do it
• Users are part of the productive resource
• Continual evolution and accretion

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Organisations

• Open source communities - Linux, BIOS, Cambia
• Quasi open source shared platforms - IMEC
• Platform innovators a controlled commons -
  Intel, the Sims
• Innovators are orchestrators - Nokia
• Hybrids - some parts closed, others open - IBM
• Structured communities of co-creation achieve
  complex tasks

Open Innovation
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Open Innovation Challenges

• Who provides the kernel?
• What performance measures?
• Who decides what works or not?
• Where are the boundaries?
• How create a culture of self-motivated inquiry?
• Who leads the creative conversation?
• How do you mix public/private, collaborative and
  commercial?

Open Innovation
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Open Models of Innovation Croplife, Brussels,
June 2 2005
Charles Leadbeater