The Era of Open Innovation

Is innovation dead? Actually, innovation is alive and well ¿ as underscored by the recent advances in the life sciences, including revolutionary breakthroughs in genomics and cloning. But the way companies generate ideas and bring them to market has been undergoing a fundamental change. In the old model of closed innovation, enterprises adhered to the following philosophy: Successful innovation requires control. In other words, companies must generate their own ideas, then develop, manufacture, market, distribute and service those ideas themselves. For most of the 20th century, that model worked well, as evidenced by the spectacular successes of central R&D organizations such as AT&T's Bell Labs.…