Open Innovation Ecosystems

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Open Innovation Ecosystems

The term Open Innovation Ecosystem consists of three parts that decribe the foundations of the approach of open innovation, innovation systems and business ecosystems.

The origins of the concept

James F. Moore pioneered the term "business ecosystem" in 1993 and was central in developing an ecological approach to business and economic strategy. He explains business ecosystems as networks of organizations that together constitute a system of mutual support and that co-evolve contributions.

The benefits and driving forces behind increased openness have been noted and discussed as far back as the 1960s, however, Henry Chesbrough articulated a modern perspective of open innovation in his book of 2003 as The new imperative for creating and profiting from technology. The concept describes the use of knowledge penetrating into and out of a company using internal and external marketing channels to generate innovations. In 2014, Chesbrough and Bogers decribe open innovation as a distributed innovation process that is based on purposefully managed knowledge flows across enterprise boundaries.

Open innovation has been discussed in the literature and on a number of conferences like the World Open Innovation Conference of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (see [1]​) or the World Economic Forum (see [2]).

Adoptions of the Model

While James F. Moore researched business ecosystems in manufacturing around a specific business or branch, the open model of innovation with the ecosystem theory was recently studied in various industries. Traitler et all. researched it 2010 and used it for R&D, stating that global innovation needs alliances based on compatible differences. Innovation partnerships based on sharing knowledge represents a paradigm shift toward accelerating co‐development of sustainable innovation. West researched open innovation ecosystems in the software industry, following studies in the food industry that show how a small firm thrived and became a business success based on building an ecosystem that shares knowledge, encourages individuals' growth, and embeds trust among participants such as suppliers, alumni chef and staff, and food writers. Other adoptions include the telecom industry or smart cities.

Fasnacht states that open innovation is hardly aligned with the ecosystem theory and not a linear process. His adoption for the financial services uses open innovation as basis and includes alternative forms of mass collaboration, hence, this makes it complex, iterative, non-linear, and barely controllable. The increasing interactions between business partners, competitors, suppliers, customers, and communities create a constant growth of data and cognitive tools.

Open innovation ecosystems bring together the symbiotic forces of all supportive firms from various sectors and businesses that collectively seek to create differentiated offerings. Accordingly, the value captured from a network of multiple actors and the linear value chain of individual firms combined, creates the new delivery model that Fasnacht declares "value constellation".

Today's use of Ecosystems

The term ecosystem is widely used with prefix "open" and/or "innovation", and/or "business" or a combination of it. Though it is not yet a clearly defined concept, the big four consulting firms all offer services towards open innovation ecosystems and publish studies related to the topic, see e.g. Accenture, Cornerstone of future growth: Ecosystems.

Benefits

Ecosystems foster collaboration and accelerate the dissemination of knowledge through the network effect, in fact, value creation increases with each actor in the ecosystem, which in turn nurtures the ecosystem as such.

A digital platform is essential to make the innovation ecosystem work as it aligns various actors to achieve a mutually beneficial purpose. Parker explained that with platform revolution and explained how networked Markets are transforming the economy. Business ecosystems are increasingly used and drive digital growth.[3]

Pioneering firms in China use their technological capabilities and link client data to historical transactions and social behaviour to offer tailored financial services among luxury goods or health services. Such open collaborative environment changes the client experience and adds value to consumers. The drawback is that it is also threatening incumbent banks from the U.S. and Europe due to its legacies and lack of agility and flexibility.

See also

• Business ecosystem
• Entrepreneurship ecosystem
• Collaborative economy
• Collaborative innovation network
• Complex system
• Digital ecosystem
• Innovation system
• Open innovation
• Sharing economy
• Startup ecosystem

Open Innovation Ecosystems

This article "Open Innovation Ecosystems" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Open Innovation Ecosystems. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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