Today, let me share with you insights on innovation from Henry Chesbrough Executive Director, Center for Open Innovation, Haas School of Business, University of California Berkeley.
Over at Product Development and Management Assn (DMA), Michael Docherty interviews Henry Chesbrough. Read the interview and learn about open innovation, P&G, and innovation in general.
Michael Docherty: What do you think is behind the interest in and popularity of Open Innovation?
Henry Chesbrough: I think that many people in many companies felt that the earlier model of internal R&D [research and d evelopment] was no longer effective. Too little productivity, too many spillovers, too long a timeframe to go from inception to market—these were longstanding complaints. Two additional factors that have compounded the problem are the rising cost of R&D and the ever-shorter product life cycles in the market, should one be so fortunate as to get a project through to the market.
What was missing was any alternative way to address these problems. Open innovation increases R&D productivity, captures or leverages spillovers in other markets, shortens the time to get to market, and shares the rising R&D costs with others.
One thing I learned from the interview is that innovation efforts take a lot of hardwork and focus on what you want to achieve. Without the focus, the initiative could get bogged down.
