Book Review

摘要

In his book Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology, Chesbrough (2003) coined the term 'open innovation'. Based on close observation of a small number of companies, Chesbrough (2003) described an innovation paradigm shift from a closed to an open innovation model. In a closed innovation model, firms internalize their firm-specific R&D activities, and commercialize them through internal development, manufacturing and distribution processes. In contrast, an open innovation model is characterized by the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation, respectively. While the closed innovation model considers R&D as an inherent part of a vertically integrated system within firms, the open innovation model treats R&D as an open system in which external ideas and external paths to market are placed on the same level of importance as that reserved for internal ideas and paths to market. Recently, numerous companies (e.g., IBM, Intel, P&G) have started to adopt the concept of open innovation.