Nec est mirum ex intervallo magna generari (And it is not surprising, either, that greatness develops only at long intervals), Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius)
Not obstructed by preconceptions, open innovation can aim at harbouring those ambitions that appear at the first sight to be oversized. Contrary to Seneca's statement, the birth of highly transformational ideas is shortened by the quality of the conversation in the "mental space of open innovation" (see our article published here on July 5, 2017). As we have already said ("Open Innovation: The New Age of Conversation", published on March 9, 2017), the culture of conversation at the root of the present forms of open innovation had its cradle in Paris between the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet, that Age at the crossroads between the Scientific Revolution with its two great agitators, Galileo and Newton, and the Enlightenment, symbolised by the Encyclopédie under the direction of Diderot and D'Alembert, is not the exclusive prerogative of Europe, with France and England contending for the primacy.
