The workshop on Open Innovation is being organised by The Programme on Regional Innovation, The Cambridge-MIT Institute Partnership Programme; the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Thursday 22 and Friday 23 May 2008
Venue: Newnham College, Cambridge, England
Start date/time: Thursday 22 May 2008 at 9am
End date/time: Friday 23 May 2008 at 2pm

Workshop Outline
Traditionally, innovation was done internally and firms rarely resorted to sharing innovative results as a means to generate competitive advantage. More recently, firms have moved increasingly to a more open innovation model. In an open innovation model firms leverage the discovery of others and are also willing to commercialize their innovation by using third party firms whose business models might be better suited to bring the innovation to market. As a result, firms are able to accelerate their rate of innovation and create a more compelling competitive position. The forces that are shaping the move to a more open innovation model include:

• Globalization: The force of globalization contributes to the higher mobility of capital, labour and knowledge. This in turn have lowered entry barriers and increased opportunities for firms that can innovate fast.
• Technology intensity: The shorter product life cycle coupled with increasing complexity of the R&D process implies that often no one firm can innovate fast enough by themselves.
• Shift in industry borders: The rapid shift in industry borders, for example in telecommunication, telephony and financial services, creates new opportunities which need to be served by new cross industry business models.

Open innovation models require systematic innovation processes that engage third parties for both idea generation and commercialization. However, many questions remain open such as:

• When, to what extent, and what conditions are necessary for firms to embrace the open innovation model?
• What are the systems, processes and people needed for a successful open innovation model?

To address these issues in a systematic manner requires scholars from multiple disciplines covering management, economics, engineering, mathematics, computer science, political science, as well as the natural sciences. The aim of the workshop is to bring together young scholars from different disciplines to improve knowledge exchange, and provide a platform for future shared research projects in the area of innovation generally and explore further the concept of open innovation. The workshop will combine presentations by students, faculty and senior management from major corporations. Each session would be followed by an open forum to facilitate the discussion of relevant research issues and managerial implications.