Bernard Munos, Strategic thinker at Eli Lilly, reflects on openness as a benefit for society. Bernard is writing about and promoting Open Innovation in the Life Science Industry.
The second day of the conference Innovation in Lund started with three parallell tracks, consisting of 1) User innovation (Franke etc), 2) Open innovation (Chesbrough etc) and 3) Social innovation (Shirky etc). I finally took the choice of attending the Open Innovation track.
The session started with Christopher Lettl, from Vienna University, talking about user innovation in the medical technology area. Fascinating examples of surgents building fantastic and advanced robots and other tools, that have revolutionized industries, on user communities helping each other finding good solutions etc. Second was Mats Lindoff, who has a history from Ericsson and SonyEricsson, presenting the evolution of mobile phones. Mats argued that it needs a quite high amount of technology push until the infrastructure is developed enough to let users in. It took the telecom industry 20 years. Finally, Henry Chesbrough had a presentation on Open Innovation Business Models, highligting the business model as a key driver for generating profit. A "open" platform based business model such as Apple´s AppStore was pinpoined as the optimum, where outside actors spend thousands of research hours to bring in value to Apple´s platform.
After a short coffee break, some sessions about innovation strategies around the world were held, including Curtis Carlson from SRI International (Silicon Valley), Mu Ronping from Institute of Policy and Management from Bejing and after lunch Harvard Professor Amar Bhidé discussing the failure in the financial sector leading to the financial crisis.
The afternoon ended with two parallel sessions, with 1) discussions on how EI can support regional innovation strategies and 2) a younger generation of entrepreneurs discussing the future.
All in all, the event was very interesting. Especially the first day was enlighting and it is nice to listen to inspiring thoughts. True, it becomes evident from the various examples that the notions of Open Innovation and User Innovation are complex, not easily defined. Often the success stories of openness gets more attention and fascination than critical thoughts or failures. But the conference has anyway nurtured new ideas and relations that will hopefully develop over time.
The conference Innovation in Mind had a fantastic first day. Bengt-Åke Lundwall (the guy behind the notion innovation system) had a presentation, followed by professor Henry Chesbrough talking about open innovation and Nikolaus Franke about user innovation. Their inspiring examples are captivating. After lunch, a passionate speach from entrepreneur Sahar Hashemi seduced the audience with a lifestory linked to the winding road of creating Coffee Republic in UK. Then Clay Shirky talked about the new media landscape in a very inspiring way - much thoughts are following the argumentation he has in the book "Here Comes Everyone" - about a networked society that do not ask for permission to interupt industries and businesses. The user-innovation guru Eric von Hippel was talking to the audience on videolink fråm MIT, and the day ended with a panel discussion and reflections. Wonderful event. Looking forward to tomorrow.
The 4th of August, the US White House sent out a memorandum to the top executives of the agencies and departments regarding "Science and Technology Priorities for the FY 2011 Budget". In it, the Administration explains the prioritization regarding their science and technology activities and funding, stressing the importance to increase the productivity of the research institutes and universities, as well as strenghtening science, technology etc. Further reading in the Obama instructions to his staff:
"Agency budget submissions should also explain how the agency plans to take advantage of today's open innovation model—in which the whole chain from research to application does not have to take place within a single lab, agency or firm—and become highly open to ideas from many players, at all stages. Agencies should empower their scientists to have ongoing contact with people who know what's involved in making and using things, from cost and competitive factors to the many practical constraints and opportunities that can arise when turning ideas into reality. Agencies should pursue transformational solutions to the Nation’s practical challenges, and budget submissions should therefore explain how agencies will provide support for long-term, visionary thinkers proposing high-risk, high-payoff research."
Two interesting interrelated launches connected to Open Innovation this weekend.
First. The Stanford Law professor Lawrence Lessig published his new book “Remix – making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy” available free to download as PDF under the Creative Common license (www.bloomsburyacademic.com/remix.htm). In it he argues for the need to adjust intellectual property laws to the way the new generation uses technology in their way of expressing themselves and their opinions – by remixing, copying, blending, rewriting, adding to existing culture (music, film clips, texts etc) with own produced material (see for instance www.opensourcecinema.org).
In the act of writing, there is an accepted practice of “citing” – which means that one can borrow quotes from others without asking for permission as long as one puts references. This facilitates for instance the academic open science work to “stand on the shoulders of giants”, boosting ongoing creative conversations. The same approach would in the music and film industry call “piracy”, and there are even ID content algorithm scanning the internet for amateur infringements on such copyright “abuse”. It is clear that Lessig is against piracy in the purest form (distribution for pure consumption against the IP owners’ will). Ways of dealing with these issues must be developed (Spotify is an example of an alternative to the Pirate Bay). However, the solution is possibly not sole prohibition. A very nice presentation held by Lessig on the TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in March 2007 is available on Youtube. He ends the session by the following:
“We can not kill creativity, we can only criminalize it. We can not stop our kids to use it, we can only drive it underground. We can not make our kids passive, we can only make them “pirates”. And is that good?”
Second. On the 3rd April, the release of a collaborative, non-profit movie production took place on the web. The movie is called “the Hunt for Gollum”, and is a fan-produced movie inspired by Tolkien´s books and Peter Jackson´s movies “The Lord of the Rings”. The micro budget for filming was less than 3000£, and the director Chris Bouchard describes the work as a “labour of love”. Film effects, music, casting, costumes etc – all was made by enthusiasms, and in the disclaimer of the movie it says; “This work is produced solely for the personal, uncompensated enjoyment of ourselves and other Tolkien fans”.
A nice documentary of the production of the movie can be seen here.
This creative collaborative work would be suspiciously close to infringement of the intellectual property rights of New Line Cinema and Wignut films. However, seen in the past relations between Peter Jackson and the Tolkien fans, the risk of lawsuit is minimal. After all, Jackson has has recently closed a new deal with Stradella Road and Gordon Paddison, who successfully managed to involve the Tolkien fans into one of the most successful movies in history. This is perhaps just the continuation of that dialogue.
On the 16th of April, the Open Innovation research team will hold a presentation at the Volvo IT Innovation Centre, Lindholmen, Gotenburg. It will be a short introduction to Open Innovation, tailored to AB Volvo, and also a presentation of the research project to the Volvo staff.
Last week, the research project participated in a workshop in Stockholm together with the other 11 projects funded in the VINNOVA call "Open and distributed innovation processes". It was interesting to listen to the status in the other projects, and it was obvious that we will find good linkages with at least some of them in the future.
The fact that so many research projects are run on the same topic in Sweden (for three years) makes it a wonderful opportunity to build lasting infrastructural relations. The projects are located in Gothenburg, Stockholm, Linköping, Jönköping, Umeå and Luleå.
Now, the homepage of CIP FORUM 2009 is up. Continously during the spring, it will be updated with content and more information about speakers and workshops.
One of the tracks is Open Innovation, where our platform is very much involved in setting the agenda. We have extremely interesting ideas of diverse speakers and participants from various industries and geographical locations. Noreen Krall (SUN microsystems), Bo Heiden (Qatar Science & Technology Park), me (Björn Remneland) and Jens Bördin (CIP Professional Services) is the main coordinators for the Open Innovation track.
CIP Forum 2009 will be held in the Swedish Convention Center in Gothenburg 6th-9th of september. Marshall Phelps, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft will be the Chairman of the event. Over 600 persons from around the world are planned to attend.
"CIP FORUM 2009 focuses on the Future of Innovation as an engine to drive wealth and welfare creation in the 21st century. Central to the discussion is the changing nature of innovation from an industrial to a knowledge-based process where the management of intellectual assets, property, and capital takes center stage. The event will explore new innovation paradigms such as Early Innovation and Open Innovation where development and collaboration are dependent on packaging knowledge as transactions of technology."
Open Innovation is presented from various perspectives on the Open Innovation Speaker Series at Berkley University, California. They have had, and will have, very distinguished guests, where for instance Henry Chesbrough himself has had a session, as well as my friend Linus Dahlander, who now is a postdoc at Stanford. Glancing through the presentations (they are available on http://openinnovation.haas.berkeley.edu/speaker_series/index.html), the one that caught my eyes and ears most was the presentation made by Alpheus Bingham, founder and former CEO of InnoCentive.
Bingham brings forward three core areas where Open Innovation has a potential to really excel business innovation; 1) acting as spot capacity, 2) risk management and 3) enhancing diversity.
The first point (acting as spot markets for innovation work) is bringing forward the Nobel Prize winner Ronald Coase´s theories on transaction costs, suggesting that platforms such as InnoCentive can reduce these transaction costs immensely, giving opportunities for companies to work with geniuses outside of the company without much red tape.
The second point (risk management) is based on that Bingham argues that most innovation work leads to failure, suggesting that companies “waste” lots of internal resources on things that never in the end reach the market. While working with outside experts, risk of failure is shared with the crowd, making it possible for companies to bring in innovations while not necessarily paying for the failures.
The third point (diversity) implies that ideas and solutions often arrive from unusual suspects. Harvesting creativity from a diverse crowd will therefore lead to better solutions, faster. This is of course in line with Jeff Howe´s Crowdsourcing, and James Suroviecki’s Wisdom of Crowds.
Bingham also says that today most of the companies arguing that they are applying Open Innovation, are not really utilizing these three potentials much. Even if organizations apply collaborations with outside actors, they still have extremely much work laid down on long-term contractual arrangements and control mechanisms, they are still keeping much of the risk internally, and they are mostly looking for formations within their already established network/industry. Thus, they are not using the open innovation approach to its full potential.
The School of Business, Economics and Law at Gothenburg University is preparing the annual report of 2008. The Open Innovation Platform has been one of the most sucessful applicants of research grants during the year. The project "Open innovation in theory and practice" (funded by Vinnova with 4,8 MSEK) was the second biggest research project grant given to the school, and the project Open Innovation in Society (funded by Swedish Research Counsil with 3,6 MSEK) was among the top six. Both projects are cross-disciplinary, involving also the IT-University at Gothenburg University.
Linked to our platform is also a donation from Sten A Olsson (25 MSEK) which will support the formation of a new Department of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the School of Business, Economics and Law. Head of this department is professor Ulf Petrusson, who also is participating in the open innovation projects.
Top 50 List of Researchers in the Technology Innovation Management Field
In the latest issue of the research journal Technovation (Volume 29, Issue 4, April 2009, Pages 235-236), a Top 50 list of researchers within the Innovation&Management field was presented.
Among them were (connected to Open Innovation);
Bierly,P.E. James Madison University, USA Chen, C.J. National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan Chesbrough, H., University of California Berkeley, USA Gassmann, O., University of St.Gallen, Switzerland Park,Y. Seoul National University, Korea Probert,D. University of Cambridge, UK Salter, A. Imperial College London, UK Von Hippel,E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA
The award was created by the International Association for the Management of Technology (IAMOT) to identify the established and "hot" researchers in the field. The approach is built on the number of publications they have done the last five years in prestegiouos peer-reviewd innovation journals (eg. Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Managment, Tecnovation, etc).
Today (perhaps this afternoon), the new version of www.cipforum.org will open.
The conference, held in Gothenburg 6th-9th of September, will discuss the Future of Innovation - the fundamental changes of the rapidly growing knowledge economy.
CIP FORUM is aiming to become the leading arena for discussing issues related to the knowledge economy, where Gothenburg will be a hub for interactions between university, business, healthcare and policy actors.
This year, Open Innovation will be one of the main tracks, and we work much for the moment to fill the content with interesting topics, speakers, workshops and participants.
Today, in the trial against Pirate Bay, my collegue on the Open Innovation Research Platform in Gothenburg, Kristoffer Schollin, was called in as an Expert Witness. A tough long day with questions after questions. The trial is recorded and available on SVT24 (in Swedish of course). He was questioned by the defence, Per Samuelsson, and the prosecutors Håkan Roswall, Peter Danowsky and Monique Wadsted.
Many bloggers have also commented Krisoffer's performance. See knuff.se
