Beyond high tech: early adopters of open innovation in other industries

TLDR

Companies have historically depended on large in‑house R&D departments, but this model is eroding as a more open approach—where ideas can originate externally and internal ideas may not be marketable—gains traction, though open innovation has mainly been linked to high‑technology firms. The authors aim to identify early adopters of open innovation in industries outside high technology. They locate these organizations by examining their adoption practices and documenting how they apply the concept. Their findings show that open innovation is already employed across diverse sectors, with practices that facilitate adoption and evidence that it is not merely a means of outsourcing R&D.

Abstract

Companies have historically invested in large research and development departments to drive innovation and provide sustainable growth. This model, however, is eroding due to a number of factors. What is emerging is a more open model, where companies recognize that not all good ideas will come from inside the organization and not all good ideas created within the organization can be successfully marketed internally. To date, Open Innovation concepts have been regarded as relevant primarily to ‘high-technology’ industries, with examples that include Lucent, 3Com, IBM, Intel and Millenium Pharmaceuticals. In this article, we identify organizations in industries outside ‘high technology’ that are early adopters of the concept. Our findings demonstrate that many Open Innovation concepts are already in use in a wide range of industries. We document practices that appear to assist organizations adopting these concepts, and discover that Open Innovation is not ipso facto a recipe for outsourcing R&D. We conclude that Open Innovation has utility as a paradigm for industrial innovation beyond high tech to more traditional and mature industries.