Let's face it. Executives are under a lot of pressure to follow the latest management trends.
Columbia business school professor Eric Abrahamson, who has written about the diffusion of managerial innovations, calls this the "norm of progressivity": the expectation that you either follow the latest management innovations — even if they later prove misguided — or suffer a diminished reputation among your peers, the press, and your shareholders.
Thus it's little surprise that nearly every company now has some sort of experiment or program relating to open innovation. Open innovation means reaching out to take advantage of talent beyond the firm (or responding to such outreach opportunities). It's a terrific concept, borne out by several oft-repeated examples such as InnoCentive and GoldCorp.
But are companies, with all their good intentions, getting the most from open innovation? We suspect that the initial successes, encouraging as they are, represent only the beginning. What if open innovation were defined more broadly and more ambitiously? Could even greater value be realized? If so, what would the next wave of open innovation look like?
To read the full, original article click on this link: - Bloomberg.com
Author: John Hagel III and John Seely Brown
