Chesbrough participates in open innovation at the School of Economics
05.03.2012
In picture from left Harri Kujala, CEO, FIMECC, Rebecca Piekkari, Vice Dean, School of Economics, Henry Chesbrough, Professori, UC Berkeley and Stuart Macdonald, Visiting Professor, School of Economics.‘Open innovation’ is a term that Professor Henry Chesbrough coined in his work Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology (HBS Press, 2003). Activities related to open innovation comprise a wide range of means and practices, including crowdsourcing, user-centred innovation, technology development networks and patent sale.
Henry Chesbrough is a guru in the field of open innovation and a researcher at the Haas School of Business unit of UC Berkeley. Chesbrough has studied the means of companies to combine both company-internal and external product development into business, and at the same time, speed up the time to market, share risks and accelerate growth. He has studied the invention commercialisation activities and management of various laboratories and several international top companies.
Chesbrough has also written the books Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape (HBS Press, 2006), Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm (Oxford, 2006), and Open Services Innovation: Rethinking Your Business to Grow and Compete in a New Era (Wiley, 2011).
Gap between Finnish technology and marketing
In February, Henry Chesbrough participated in an unofficial round table session on open innovation activities, organised at the Aalto University School of Economics. Professor Kristian Möller from the School of Economics was the convener and moderator of the event. At the event, both current and future research activities and other operations in the field of open innovation were discussed.
The participants noted that there is often a gap between research- and technology-driven innovation activities and the commercialisation and marketing of innovations – a gap that is difficult to cross. This is a problem for Finnish companies, in particular, due to the small size of the domestic market. The Finnish tradition of strongly emphasising technological development is also a cause of the gap between technology and marketing.
It was further stated that better knowledge and understanding of using and managing the various forms of open innovation must be quickly obtained. Successful innovation activities often necessitate an ecosystem that promotes learning and openness. The formation and development of the ecosystems, and the steering of these processes also require added knowledge.
Participants at the event included ten innovation activists, policy-makers and researchers from the Ministry of Employment and the Economy, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes), the Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster (FIMECC-SHOK) and the School of Economics. They found the session useful, and similar events are also likely to be organised later.
Further information: Professor Kristian Möller, tel. +358 50 383 6190
