Open Innovation vs Closed Innovation

First I would like to share a personal experience in my career. During one of my employment period I have had the privilege to visit some local and Asian heat exchanger producers. Interestingly some of my own “pre-assumed” unique and innovative ideas (which also had been confirmed by local producers), actually “already” had been used in some commercial products in Asia! That was an instructive and painful moment for me to learn how traditional thinking in R&D (“Closed Innovation”) can miss-guide us! Recently in a business trip, thanks to listening to one of Lufthansa’s flight entertainment material, I have been familiar better with the correct R&D method, which is called “Open Innovation”.

Open innovation is a term promoted by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor at the University of California in 2003:

“Open innovation is a paradigm that assumes that firms can and should use external ideas as well as internal ideas, and internal and external paths to market, as the firms look to advance their technology”.

Open innovation actually means creative collaboration. Quite contrary in “closed innovation” some special people passively work on some special ideas in some special places and this whole process is controlled.

Although, open/closed innovation concepts are quite old, I still believe we always should look back and evaluate our R&D activities accordingly. Are we doing “Open Innovation” or “Closed Innovation” in our companies?

The below video from Henry Chesbrough, which is rather an old material, still very well explains the difference between open and close innovation for us.