Main Ideas of Professor Chesbrough’s intervention at Kim Conference, Barcelona, 27/02/2009

27 Feb Main Ideas of Professor Chesbrough’s intervention at Kim Conference, Barcelona, 27/02/2009

Henry Chesbrough is executive director at the Center for Open Innovation at the Haas School of management (University of California, Berkeley).

“In this context of economic downturn, we must do more than cutting costs; we should think of how to preserve the abilities to grow when the markets will come back.”

How do Open Innovation can help? 6 moves to make for small and medium size enterprises:

– To share risks and rewards with others in your value chain: turn yourself into a customer (or supplier) of your stranded internal projects.

– Spin off non-strategic initiatives, so that other’s time and money develop that project.

– Make your IP assets work harder, via licensing spinoffs. Focus your company, but even as you narrow your own internal activities, nurture the wider ecosystem at the same time.

– Create open domains to share ideas, reduce costs, and expand participation.

– Convert fixed costs to variable costs.

– Treat departing employees as potential ecosystem partners, not rejects. Advantages of SMEs:

– Access to specialized markets that are too small for larger firms

– Greater ability to execute – Specialization – Entrepreneurial, external focus on results, much less internal politics.

– Speed: ability to move faster, faster execution and results – Large firms increasingly value collaborative partnerships

– Customers also innovate and we need to provide tools and ways to engage them actively

– Ability of SME to expand geographicly at lower costs “It isn’t the strongest or the most intelligent that survive, but the most adaptable, and SME have tremendous adaptation advantages in times like that.”

– Innovation involves taking risk and it is not all going to succeed the first time.

– Your hability to growth not only depends on your internal activities but also on the ecosystem activities.

– In times of crisis, put your discontinued projects into the ecosystem.

– We have to develop good measures to track and improve the health of the ecosystem

– Think of connected activities and markets emerging between the different activities, and leverage these markets. – We cannot be serious about innovation if we do not involve business in the project.

– We need businesses to supply capital, take risk and create business models that are going to transform the potential of an innovation into market value. – Many areas want to have their own cluster.

Not all of them are going to be successful.

– Have a smarter approach from valorization and commercialization, not from looking for extra public funding money.

– Some models of innovation, like the ones used by drug companies, are dying. The costs and R+D are increasing, while the number of new drugs is going down. It doesn’t mean the end of innovation in this area, but the end of a model of innovation. The future model will be based on smaller pieces of the market, and more collaboration among companies who will take different roles in taking the product to the market.

– If you want young companies to become global, you need people who have grown global, that come from other places, as well as send your people outside, and build the relationships and networks that will facilitate it. – Starting of a position of trust instead of a position of fear.

– Many organizations have spent millions of dollars in creating new products and services, but do not have processes for testing business models to commercialize these new products and services.

Knowledge Innovation Market BCN es una fundación privada destinada a ofrecer soluciones a las necesidades de innovación tecnológica de las empresas y las entidades, aportando una visión global y la capacidad de interrelación con todos los agentes del sistema de innovación y desarrollo.  

Artículos relacionados: 

Innovación abierta, por Alfons Cornella

Open Innovation, por Esteve Almirall