"The Future of Innovation" Conference

Print
PDF

Written by Alexander Schroll | 17 February 2009

Tags: Academic | Conference | ISPIM | Research

ISPIMThe next ISPIM Conference will be held in Vienna on June 21st till 24th. The main topic is "The Future of Innovation", and there are several very interesting workshop streams like "Collaboration for innovation", "Innovating business models" or "Commercialising and financing innovation". Furthermore, I will present my research paper in one of the sessions regarding "Measuring and managing innovation".

I have very high expectations on the outcome of this conference and I think we can push open innovation a big step further. So, give it a try and sign up for the conference right now! If you want, I can also give you some tips on sightseeing in Vienna!

More information about the conference can be found here: http://conference.ispim.org

Add new comment

Microsoft opening up?

Print
PDF

Written by Alexander Schroll | 16 February 2009

Tags: Intellectual Property | Microsoft | Opening up | Patent

Microsoft opening up?The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently awarded Microsoft Corp. its 10,000th U.S. patent. With their closed innovation model and their hard-line patent policy, Microsoft was (and is) a typical example of a closed company. This was already mentioned by Chesbrough.

Microsoft approach to Intellectual Property was mainly "Quantity matters". But in the previous years, Microsoft started to change its IP policy through shifting from a defensive position to a proactive, collaborative position. They signed more than 500 licensing agreements with companies of all sizes (see here). This results in a major shift towards open innovation, because the licensed innovations enables the companies to develop other innovations which results in a win-win situation for both parties.

 
“Patents are the currency of innovation. They enable Microsoft to share our innovations with others through licensing, and that in turn enables others to share their innovations back with us. What we’re seeing more often in the past several years is that patents and IP are now serving as bridges to collaboration through licensing and other technology collaboration. Let’s face it, the days of the self-contained, go-it-alone company are over. This is especially true during the current economic downturn. Open innovation is more critical than ever in today’s business world." Bart Eppenauer, Microsoft chief patent counsel
 


To sum up: It is a good sign, when even the major players in the market reconsider open innovation as the superior innovation approach. It would be interesting to examine the exact role of the economic downturn in this inner-company paradigm shift. Do you think, they would have changed their mind without this whole financial crisis/economic downturn? I'm a bit skeptical on that.
Add new comment

Defining Open Innovation

Print
PDF

Written by Alexander Schroll | 15 February 2009

Tags: Definition | Open Innovation

As this website focuses on Open Innovation, at first I should clarify my definition of open innovation.

A major part of the theoretical foundation of the open innovation paradigm was provided by Henry Chesbrough. Although the term was coined and popularized by Henry Chesbrough, the open innovation approach was shaped over a long time by different developments in the innovation economy like the lead user approach (User based innovation), Toolkits for user innovation and design, or Commmunity Based Innovation [cf. Piller, 2008].

{tpfont}Related areas of academic research{/tpfont}

The evolution of the internet allowed the use of internet-based design toolkits. Extensive research has been made on toolkits for user innovation and design and mass customization. Simultaenously, the lead user approach was further researched. Under the influence of internet communities and open source software communities the community based innovation model was developed and researched.

Read more... Add new comment