Open Innovation — a myth or reality?

Although much has changed in the use, management, and exploitation of intellectual property, technical research has driven the emergence of this technology. The paradigm of open innovation can be interpreted as extending to external sources of innovation such as customers, competitors, and academic institutions. In other words, organizations that seek open innovation benefit the company and create opportunities that can’t be quantified, at least in the short term.

This idea is at the heart of our argument on the importance of open innovation in addressing societal challenges. So-called open innovation develops an innovation model that encourages companies to use existing external knowledge instead of reinventing the wheel. The central idea behind Open Innovation is that companies should not rely on their research to buy or license innovation processes but rather have a world of distributed knowledge. Innovation tends to be produced by outsiders, whether they are startups or founders of existing organizations.

Open innovation explores a wide range of internal and external sources. In contrast to closed innovations, where companies use internal R & D processes, there is a more holistic approach. Open innovation can be analyzed at the corporate and organizational level and in organs of non-organizational systems such as industrial and regional companies.

Open innovation is a great way to gather ideas from across the organization to create better and more cost-effective solutions for customers and integrate external partners into your innovation process to plan and implement these solutions. Companies that are not internally innovative must rely on external sources of open innovation in the hope of becoming more innovative. On average, companies have little or no open innovation experience, and the transition from internal innovators to open innovation firms is difficult in traditional industries. The strategic challenge for Open Innovation is to select the right partners to work with to pursue your goals.

In this article, we examine the steps and challenges that companies face to open innovation companies. Existing scientific studies (e.g. Almirall, Casadesus, and Masanell, 2010) provide limited insight into innovation development options for either closed or open companies but underscore the need for companies to become open innovators.

As the initial enthusiasm for open innovation has waned, companies recognize that to succeed, and they must rely on the voluntary and active participation of employees and partners where traditional command and…