New shapes and new stakes: a portrait of open innovation as a promising phenomenon

Abstract

An important literature in organization sciences has recently developed around the issue of open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003; Chesbrough et al., 2006, Gassmann et al., 2010, Huizingh, 2011). According to this stream of research, innovation is less and less frequently undertaken in-house, in a closed and integrated way, but becomes more “open” in the sense that many actors are involved in the different steps of the innovation process. Innovat- ing firms increasingly rely on knowledge developed outside their borders. According to Chesbrough (2003; 2008), adopting an open innovation strat- egy is the key for success (Isckia, Lescop, 2010), although it is not the only one as remarked by Pisano and Verganti (2008). Following the logic of open innovation, new forms of distributed innova- tive models and practices recently emerged (such as co-conception, innova- tion with customers, markets for ideas, crowdsourcing, open source, co- development, etc), which all shed new light on the nature of the economic problems and the management challenges at stake. This article aims at introducing and defining the concept of open inno- vation, at presenting the new heterogeneous forms of open innovation that can be envisaged by firms and, most of all, at discussing the advantages and limits linked to each modality. In the first section we provide the main out- lines of the concept of open innovation as it has been defined by Ches- brough (2003). In the second section we present the new modalities of open innovation practices (the shapes of open innovation). In the third section we discuss the costs and benefits of open innovation for organizations (the stakes of open innovation). In particular, we focus on the determinants that affect the success of such a strategy.