The Next Wave of Open Innovation
How InnoCentive aims to exploit sophisticated technology and networking capabilities to connect problems with their potential solvers
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Open innovation has become an important management trend over the past decade. Yet, despite great initial success, some of the most prominent examples of open innovation have had serious limitations. We are now on the brink of a major evolution of open innovation.
Henry Chesbrough, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, coined the term "open innovation" to describe a growing number of initiatives by companies to reach beyond their own walls to use talent and ideas from others. Perhaps the poster child of open innovation, inevitably mentioned in any discussion of the topic, is InnoCentive, a Waltham (Mass.) company spun out from Eli Lilly (LLY) in 2001.