Open Innovation’s Latest Papers: Wicked Acceleration, Entrepreneurial Ecosystems & More

At OpenInnovation.eu, we are on a mission to bridge the gap between education and industry. That’s why we continuously scan the newest, open access, publication in the field of innovation & entrepreneurship for you. These are some of the most interesting publications recently:
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A Visual History of Innovation Theory

A Visual History of Innovation Theory

The history of innovation theory is as rich as innovation itself. Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle already used the term καινοτομία coming from καινός (new) and τομ (radical craftsmanship): crafting in a radically new way. In modern theory, it was Schumpeter who popularized the term innovation in 1934 as part of his line of thinking about business cycles and creative destruction as the basis for (capitalistic) market economies. While he may have based his theory largely on 19th century and early 20th century economists, such as Tarde, Weber and Marx, his work was unique in the way that it combined all of these theories and that he described the important role of the ‘entrepreneur’ in innovation. Different scholars have later addressed the invention of the term ‘entrepreneur’ to Schumpeter.

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Crisis-Triggered Innovation Systems

Crisis-triggered Innovation Systems

While the Corona crisis is currently affecting millions worldwide, I wanted to already share with you a fragment of a book I’m currently writing about innovation in the new economy. The fragment is about how a crisis or disruption can create a (spontaneous) need for innovation and could open up opportunities for innovative companies to address new and changed market needs.

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Innovation Management Canvas

Innovation Management Canvas

As part of a simulation game on innovation management we have been running at universities and in corporate training programs for over 4 years now, we have developed an integrative model for dealing with innovation management on a daily basis. Innovation Management is a strategic activity that isn’t necessarily needed to implement throughly for every company. Mostly large companies have included structured processes that include administrative stages to following the (large number of) project that are in progress and to be able to follow-up on them and calculate the effect of innovation management in general. For smaller companies however, that is not general practice: having such a formal process in place simply doesn’t weigh up to cost efficiencies will generate. But for them, innovation management is just as important – but they rather use a toolkit than a formal process. Based on our 8 Types of Innovation Processes model this is a useful canvas design that makes it easy to start working on formalizing your innovation activities and processes in your organization.

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Business Model Generator

The use of Open Innovation is to a large extent related to the rise of technology. Not only does technology smoothen Open Innovation, also the adaption of new technologies to the core business (model) can be accelerated by participating in Open Innovation networks. In fact, when talking to businesses the questions that they have do almost never directly include the use of Open Innovation as a goal. It’s assumed a logical and necessary step to take when dealing with actual problems. Simply said, many innovation questions that companies have follow the simple pattern: ‘How can we [change something] in order to improve our [business model construct] in line with [trending topic]?’. These are as such practical, design-oriented questions, not about why [something] happens, or what is the effect of [something] but about how to change to adapt to that [something].

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11 Artificial Intelligence Eurekas for Organizations: my recap of World Summit AI 2017

11 Artificial Intelligence Eurekas for Organizations: my recap of World Summit AI 2017

In 1990 Kurzweil instantly incubated the way we think about Artificial Intelligence (AI) with his work The Age of Intelligent Machines. While there is now, almost 30 years later, still a long road ahead of us, the technology readiness level of AI is getting significantly closer and many applications are trying to implement AIs state-of-the-art features and starting to accelerate the creation of the Smart Business: AI-enabled organizations that thrive digitally, are hyperconnected (both digitally and physically), use machine learning and cognitive techniques to work smarter and that are increasingly becoming autonomous organizations. In his 2016 book the Fourth Industrial Revolution Klaus Schwab mentions 6 basic technologies that are based on AI and currently impacting business: 1) the Internet of Things (IoT), 2) Autonomous Vehicles, 3) Advanced Robotics, 4) 3D-printing, 5) new materials and 6) the biological revolution.

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33 routes

33 Routes to Open Innovation

It has been a while since Henry Chesbrough coined the term Open Innovation and formulated its definition: “combining internal and external ideas as well as internal and external paths to market to advance the development of new technologies.” (Chesbrough, 2003). Over the course of time, the terminology relating with Open Innovation has evolved alongside developments in management literature and practices. Open Innovation as a paradigm on itself is on its quest to touch base outside the academic world. Rather than taking a (technical) process-oriented approach, Open Innovation is now also about Open Business Models (Chesbrough, 2006), Open Services (Chesbrough, 2010) – both from a more strategic perspective – and practical tools (Vanhaverbeeke, 2017) – more from a tactical or operational point-of-view.

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Clarifying Design in Business Sciences: a Design Thinking Taxonomy

Clarifying Design in Business Sciences: a Design Thinking Taxonomy

This article is an extended book review of The Quest for Professionalism of George Romme, a 2016-published book by Oxford University Press. The book is a one-of-a-kind taking a much needed reflective approach to leadership and a critical note towards the level of professionalism that many of us are approaching the science of management and entrepreneurship with. His work is exceptional, because it integrates major scientific perspectives on management from a holistic point-of-view without getting too descriptive. The book chooses a slightly philosophical approach without getting too abstract. The book takes a slightly life-work approach without giving too much self-credit.

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11 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurial Thinking: why entrepreneurship can hardly be taught

11 Paradoxes of Entrepreneurial Thinking: why entrepreneurship can hardly be taught

Introduction

Entrepreneurial thinking is described as one of the most relevant skills for the 21st-century workforce (Bacigalupo, Kampylis, Punie, & Brande, 2016). And for that reason it has become an integral criteria in many prescriptive regulations for (higher) education and in increasing numbers also explicitly and implicitly part of curricula (Saavedra & Opfer, 2012). As opposed to entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial thinking is not necessarily bound to entrepreneurs (to be); it is an essential skill for ‘strengthening human capital, employability and competitiveness’ (Bacigalupo et al., 2016).

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