Open innovation has become fundamental to technological progress and involves collaborating both internally and externally. Henry Chesbrough popularized the term "open innovation" in his book and argued that companies should use both internal and external ideas and partnerships to advance their technology. Adopting open innovation provides advantages like access to qualified global talent and helps companies find business models faster through collaboration with universities and other organizations. When done effectively through clear partner selection, knowledge sharing, and project governance, open innovation can benefit all involved parties including companies, partners, and society.

1. Edvaldo Santos
Director, Ericsson Innovation Center Brazil
Open innovation has been fundamental to major technological breakthroughs of current times. The Networked Society – in which
everyone and everything are connected in real time – will change the way we innovate and collaborate, and is a key enabler of open
innovation.
The term “open innovation” was popularized by Henry Chesbrough in his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and
Profiting from Technology. He wrote, “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.” Chesbrough demonstrates
how, for several years, the corporate world has been adopting this process of collaboration, idea exchanging, experience sharing and
integration of researchers inside and outside companies. But these concepts have never been as important as they are now in the 21st
century.

2. The increase in availability and mobility of highly qualified human
resources in different locations is one of the advantages of
adopting a research and development (R&D) process based on
open innovation. It is also the fastest and most effective path to
finding the right business model for company’s products and
services.
The results are significant. And in a way, they explain the agility
and quantity of technological innovations available to the society
in the modern world.
We increasingly see shorter and shorter lead times between
prototyping activities in R&D labs and market deployment, thanks
to open source software which, inspired by open innovation, has
further bolstered the concept.
In this scenario, investments in open innovation have increased
the R&D budget of major players in strategic industries, such as
infrastructure, telecommunications, oil, gas and automotive. The
exchange of ideas, as well as R&D processes based on
collaboration between private companies and universities, have
proven efficient in keeping companies competitive and up to date
with the latest cutting-edge technologies available.
Innovation has gone beyond the top of corporate agendas to
governments worldwide, as countries compete to be well
positioned in the knowledge-based economy. Therefore, the
experience of large companies already providing R&D under the
principles of open innovation warrants consideration and should
be followed.
Although some companies still practice closed innovation, it
stands to reason that the choice for open innovation is
increasingly strategic: the competition between companies based
on the use of open innovation lies in mastering the process of
creating and managing the innovation ecosystem.
This process should have objective criteria for selecting partners,
should offer knowledge-sharing tools and practices and,
additionally, should consider geographic distribution of teams.
Most importantly, this process should have efficient practices of
project governance and coordination, so that agreed project
targets are met. Moreover, the knowledge needs to be
transformed into products with a competitive edge and developed
within the lead time and cost parameters, as defined by the
market.
This methodology promotes a win-win situation to all involved:
companies enjoy increased competitiveness (as a result of cost
reduction), increased knowledge base and an accelerated
learning curve. Partners, universities and development institutes,
enjoy access to technological knowledge and applications that
generate immediate value for the society. Industry as a whole is
subject to a more competitive business environment. And finally,
society benefits from cheaper products and all the other
advantages of global scale production.
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