Definitely OI seems a really interesting advance to business relations and it could lead to better companies and referring to pharmaceutical companies it would mean they could become faster which would be great for the consumers.

::When you say ‘closed innovation’ how close is it?? Because usually the people innovating are quite abreast of what is happening in other companies, due to the advanced media you have mentioned.

When I refer to closed innovation, I mean to a secret innovation strategy, such as that pharmaceutical companies follow trying to keep their research undisclosed as much as possible so they could monopolize the market of the new drugs they discover. Or you can also think of how an artist works trying no to reveal his peace until it’s done to avoid imitators.

::So when you say open innovation what level of collaboration do you mean?
Also this collaboration would only HELP the innovations or help implementing the innovations in another company, so fundamentally innovations still need to come from within the company. What do you think?

OI is a different concept from some collaborative production systems, such as Open Source or CBPP. OI doesn’t imply companies neglect the property rights on their research, but it means firms no longer trust all their innovative pulse on their own R&D. Nobody gives nothing for free, and all the firms with an OI strategy want to get something in exchange for releasing their advances. So we could understand OI as a market where the object of trade are innovations. Collaboration is still present in the form of partnerships, common projects and mergers.

The innovative part left to the company is to find a way to adapt the technology they bought to their business model, improving and making it profitable.

::We recently had a post on our corporate blog (www.mahindrauniverse.com) where innovation was disruptive. How can disruptive innovation be caused by OI??

I read your post, direct and concise and also innovative. From my point of view OI could be as disruptive as companies aim to be and let researchers to be. One may take the distinction I made in the post of base technology as the new market disruptive innovation case, and the lower-end disruptive innovation as those ground-breaking innovations intended to open new markets unattended until the moment (i-phone is a perfect example).