Question

What caused the Open Paradigm? Give examples

Answer 1

Open Innovation model was first coined to Dr. Henry Chesbrough, Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation, Haas School of Business, who defines it as “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.”

The open innovation aims to improve the organization ability to innovate new ideas for products and solutions through the exploit external ideas presented by consumers and partners to achieve market success. The ideas which are gathered and evaluated during the research stage can hep the teams to reduce the innovation risk, costs, time and dedication as the ideas come straight from external contributors.

There are various examples of implementing different types of open innovation in small, medium and large enterprises. Previously, we explored the implementation of open innovation in companies like NEST Thermostats. Below are successful examples for companies who adopted open innovation using different business models.

GE

GE is one of the leading companies implementing different open innovation models. Their GE Open Innovation message highlight their understanding to address world problems through implementing crowdsourcing innovation. Their Open Innovation Manifesto focuses on the collaboration between experts and entrepreneurs from everywhere to share ideas and passionately solve problems.

NASA

Open innovation was adopted by NASA in order to build a mathematical algorithm that can determine the optimal content of medical kits for NASA’s future manned missions. In order to reach an innovative software who can solve this problem, NASA collaborated with TopCoder, Harvard Business School, and London Business School. In this collaboration, TopCoder members provided 2,833 code submissions to help NASA build the intended algorithm. The winners are offered $24,000 in cash prizes plus having seats to watch remaining shuttle mission launches.

Coca-Cola

Coca-Cola is one of the pioneer companies in the field of innovation back to the Coca-Cola fountain dispenser designed by Raymond Loewy in 1960. Currently, the company is adopting open innovation models on levels between the team and other entrepreneurs from one side and the company and its consumers from the other. The Coca-Cola Accelerator program aims to help start-ups in eight cities around the world; Sydney, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin, Singapore, Istanbul, San Francisco, and Bangalore. Those start-ups aim to think in innovative ways to build a the Happiness Coca-Cola brand.

Samsung

While Apple is adopting closed innovation model, Samsung adopts an open innovation in order to build their external innovation strengths through Samsung Accelerator program. The initiative aims to build a collaboration between designers, innovators, and thinkers to focus on different solutions. The program provides office spaces, statical capital, and product support to entrepreneurs to help them to build software and services. Currently, Samsung Accelerator program is available in New York, Palo Alto, and San Francisco.