open innovation and innovation ecosystems
Fruitful discussion on business models and open innovation with Wim Vanhaverbeke, prof. at Hasselt and ESADE, visting prof. at NUS this month (web). Together with Henry Chesbrough and Joel West, Wim co-authored the highly cited book Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, Oxford University Press, 2006. More recently, he released a nice report on Open innovation in SMEs. In this report, he described the fascinating evolution of the Curana’s business model, a micro-company that is active in the bicycle accessory market.
He was also enthusiastic about the book published this year by Ron Adner “The Wide Lens: A New Strategy for Innovation”. The book defines the world of innovation ecosystems, in which the success of a value proposition depends on creating an alignment of key partners who work together. This notion of ecosystems has similarities with our concept of “multiple business models” such as portfolio of business models, value network or ecosystem of business models, triple bottom line business model (see previous post). I specially enjoyed the BetterPlace case, a company that develops and sells transportation infrastructure for supporting electric vehicles. (wikipedia).
